By now, everybody pretty much expects that politicians in Louisiana are greedy and corrupt and that they’ll find ways to gouge the public at every turn. So what you read below might not be much in the way of “news” to you.

That said, I’m going to say it’s worth looking into Ricky Templet, a former Jefferson Parish Councilman who not long ago was mentioned as a potential candidate for a couple of statewide offices. Templet never did run, and we can see why: things would have come out that he might not have wanted to have to defend.

At issue is this piece of property…

That’s a Google Maps Street View of a house with a listed address of 4969 DeCamp Street in Laffitte, and it’s owned by Templet. Back in 2018, it looked like this…

Templet, according to parish records, owned two adjoining lots on Decamp Street in 2018. Only one of them had a house on it, which is the one you see in the two images above.

Here’s what that property looks like now…

That new house sure looks nice.

It’s Templet’s place as well. And boy, did he get a good deal on it. He should thank you, because you’re the sucker who gave him that deal.

How?

Well, In 2008, Hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana. The designation FEMA-1786-DR-LA refers to the major disaster declaration for Louisiana due to Hurricane Gustav. TWELVE years later, Templet filed to receive funds in association with FEMA grant number 1786-33 2016a.

And more than a decade after Hurricane Gustav landfall, Templet took FEMA ICC money ($30k)4, which is used for mitigation costs (raising a home) on a home that WAS ALREADY RAISED, as you could see in the 2018 image above.

Templet combined the FEMA ICC money for mitigating the original home ($30,000) with FEMA HGMP money ($167,250)5 which is meant for demolition, repairing, rebuilding, or elevating a home.

In total, the FEMA funds totaling $197,250 were then used to build a brand new home right next to the older home. The final value of that home according to parish documents, is $225,1787.

Records show Templet only paid out of pocket $17,928 towards the construction of this new second home. (See page 24.)

You might not think the place is Nottoway Plantation, and that’s fair, but it’s a hell of a nice crib for eighteen grand.

How does this work?

First, Templet had the two lots (Lot 17 & 18) combined into a single address matching that of the original home. This was done presumably to avoid any red flags or suspicion on required FEMA paperwork by giving his second home the same address as the older home. It’s not all that hard to bamboozle a bureaucrat, you know.

On parish documents, Templet asserted that demolition and mitigation efforts were completed with an “in kind” effort performed by Templet himself. Estimate documents reveal the initial “reconstruction” cost for 4969 Decamp St. included a line for demolition would be “addressed by the homeowner with in-kind work measures” (i.e. Templet would conduct the demolition himself), yet there is no evidence of any applicable demolition on the property.

And you can see for yourself that there wasn’t any demolition of that house.

Templet rezoned the property bearing that second house into self-declared “storage.” According to him it isn’t a crib, it’s a shed.

Then we have Ricky Templet’s Personal Financial Disclosure Statements before the Louisiana Department of Ethics, which continued to report the original home as rental real estate.

Upon further inspection of Jefferson Parish Tax Records, the value of the new home was either omitted completely or underrepresented for a nearly two year period.

On his self-reported Public Finance Disclosure with the Louisiana Department of Ethics, Templet valued the real estate as a Category III Value of Interest of $25,000 to $100,000 in value. This disclosure ignores the obvious value of a new, second home worth in excess of $225,000 and does not include the value of the original home or the value of the two lots that were combined into a single larger lot.

The value reported on his ethics reports apparently only included the value of his older home now zoned as “storage.”

Can you get a deal like this? Probably not, and the guess is that if you try to pull a stunt like it you’ll find yourself in some pretty hefty legal trouble.

So far, Templet hasn’t gotten popped for this, but maybe the voters on the West Bank in Jefferson Parish can do something about this sort of conduct. He’s running to get back on the Parish Council, and some people think he’s the favorite to win.

Maybe that’s not such a great idea.