…over the Baton Rouge Council on Aging’s checkbook, right? Because Miz Tasha is now getting to run the whole show over there without any guardrails, and we know she’s of the highest moral and ethical character.

Employees at the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging are ringing alarm bells after they said the board recently granted CEO Tasha Clark Amar sole authority to sign checks for the agency. Two signatures on expenditures are no longer required, and employees said Clark Amar needs more oversight, not less.

Clark Amar was exposed by the WBRZ Investigative Unit in 2017 after she named herself in an elderly client’s will. A series of stories led to tremendous fallout. When the dust settled, Clark Amar backed away from the will.

Years have passed since. Recently, an employee came to the WBRZ Investigative Unit expressing concerns about what happened. One employee speaking to us on condition of anonymity said the situation smells awful.

“I do not believe based upon what happend in the past with a senior and Ms. Amar possibly manipulating her out of her personal money, being able to only sign checks,” the employee said. “Being the only signature required for the Council on Aging.”

The change was made during an April board meeting. During that meeting it was discussed that the bank no longer requires two signatures, so the COA was planning to remove that requirement too.

“I do not think it is wise at all considering what happened in the past,” the employee said. “Ms. Amar is just very insistent upon being the only one to sign checks for the Council on Aging.”

This week, that employee said more questionable decisions were made when the board ousted long time board member C. Denise Marcelle as the agency’s chairwoman. Marcelle still sits on the COA board, but is no longer the leader. Two other board members who were out because of term limits are back on.

“It grants her job security to control who is on the board and who is the officers of the board,” the employee said.

The real scandal around Tasha Clark Amar is that she could have attempted to fleece that woman like she did, and have it be so blatant and obvious, and have kept her job.

Given that she wasn’t fired for what she did, it’s also a scandal that nothing’s been done to the Council on Aging. It didn’t lose its charter, it wasn’t defunded…nothing.

We have a real problem in this country with a lack of consequences for bad behavior. That’s been an exceptionally big problem in Baton Rouge for a long time, particularly where there’s politics involved.

And this is the biggest sore thumb in town. At this point, it’s a rotting, stinking gangrenous thumb that hasn’t worked since 2017.

It’s something the state legislature and the governor must fix, and it should happen in the next year.