EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH, La. (WAFB) – East Baton Rouge Parish officials and municipal leaders are clashing over whether cities are paying their fair share for parish-wide services as budget problems mount.
The dispute comes as the Public Defender’s Office faces a proposed budget cut of nearly half a million dollars for next year. Chief Public Defender Kyla Romanach said municipalities are not contributing enough to constitutional offices.
“Those communities need to pay their fair share,” Romanach said. “We represent people from St. George, Central, Baker, Zachary, and currently those communities are not chipping in to pay for the constitutional offices, including the public defender’s office.”…