LAFAYETTE, La. (KPEL News) — A veteran Lafayette Parish School System employee says he was targeted and disciplined after cooperating with the forgery investigation that eventually landed former LPSS construction director Robert Gautreaux in front of a grand jury. Now his attorney is seeking state whistleblower protection and raising the possibility that the forgery problem runs deeper than anyone has publicly acknowledged.
Huey Joseph Manshack, a licensed electrician who has worked for LPSS for more than 15 years, says he’s been written up twice, subjected to workplace hostility, and possibly had his own name forged on district purchase orders. All of that came after he sat down with school investigators and later cooperated with Lafayette Police detectives working the criminal side of the case.
Download the KPEL-FM Mobile App Now
His Lafayette attorney, David Rutledge, sent a letter to Superintendent Francis Touchet on Nov. 6 laying out the retaliation allegations in detail. LPSS disputes key parts of the account.
What Manshack Says Happened
According to the Nov. 6 letter, the trouble started on May 27, when two of Manshack’s supervisors directed him to meet with an LPSS investigator. Those supervisors were Robert Gautreaux, then the district’s construction, facilities and maintenance director, and John Young, who oversees maintenance.
The session was part of the district’s internal probe into alleged forgeries of contractor quotes tied to a school drainage project awarded to unlicensed contractor Bosco Oilfield Services the previous summer. Manshack’s conversations that day were connected to the decision to hire Bosco for the work…