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BATON ROUGE — A lawyer for the state Board of Ethics asked a panel of judges last week to order the firing of Doris Roché-Hicks, CEO of Friends of King Schools, for violating nepotism laws.
If not, the lawyer said her son-in-law and sister should lose their jobs.
The state Board of Ethics has charged Roché-Hicks and her relatives with violating laws against nepotism by employing her son-in-law Darrin Cook and her sister Iris Ponson, and by signing checks to her daughter Monique Cook for consulting services.
In a hearing on Feb. 22, a lawyer for the state Board of Ethics asked a three-judge panel to order Monique Cook to repay her consulting fees and to order Roché-Hicks to pay a $10,000 fine for signing the checks.
Roché-Hicks’ attorney, Willie Zanders, acknowledged the violations in the hearing.
But he said Roché-Hicks and her family members should not be penalized for working to reopen schools after Hurricane Katrina. In fact, he argued, the difficulty in finding employees after the storm justified their hiring.
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