A Blanchard Grant Grab Shows Why Baton Rouge Needs to Watch Every Dollar

The Louisiana Legislature set aside $75,000 for Divine Kingdom Ministries Inc. to run academic support and life skills training for kids in north Louisiana. The state Treasury cut the first check, an advance of $37,500, and deposited it into an account controlled solely by the nonprofit's director, Jazmine King, 35, of Blanchard. According to Attorney General Liz Murrill's office, that money went toward a car note, car insurance, consumer debt, jewelry and home utilities, along with travel. King was arrested Tuesday and booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on felony theft and filing or maintaining false public records charges.

The details, as laid out by the attorney general's office, read like a checklist of exactly what a cooperative endeavor agreement is supposed to prevent. Treasury employees reviewing the nonprofit's first cost report noticed cash-back transactions that did not add up, invoices that did not exist and an Airbnb purchase that had nothing to do with tutoring children. King had also paid herself a salary without keeping timesheets, a payroll ledger or any record of the days and hours she actually worked. Investigators say she withdrew cash, bought a vehicle that was never authorized under the grant, and paid people for work that was never performed. Inspector General Angele Davis put it bluntly: "Our investigators found it paid for a car note, jewelry, and a weekend in Monroe."

Give credit where it belongs. Treasury caught the red flags in the cost report and referred the matter to the Office of the Inspector General, which brought in the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation to build the case before it went to Murrill's office. Davis called that sequence "the system working the way taxpayers should expect it to work," and she is right that this is how it is supposed to go. Murrill's statement was equally direct: "Instead of enriching the lives of young people in north Louisiana, Ms. King appears to have used the hard-earned tax dollars of the men and women of Louisiana to enrich herself instead."

King's bond was set at $40,000 on the theft charge and $5,000 on the false records charge, both marked release on recognizance, meaning the jail records do not show she paid to get out. The announcement from the attorney general's office does not say whether the remaining $37,500 of the original $75,000 appropriation was ever disbursed, which is itself worth a follow-up question from whichever legislative committee handles Treasury oversight.

Here is what should bother every taxpayer in Houma, Monroe and Lake Charles as much as it bothers me. The state caught this because a Treasury employee happened to notice an Airbnb charge and cash-back transactions that looked wrong. That is good work, but it happened after the first $37,500 had already left the building. A nonprofit with no timesheets, no payroll ledger and one person controlling the bank account should never have gotten past the front door of a cooperative endeavor agreement in the first place. Louisiana has spent years appropriating money to small nonprofits through the legislative earmark process with minimal vetting up front, trusting that Treasury's cost-report review will catch problems on the back end. That approach worked this time. It will not always work.

Legislators who write these earmarks into the budget owe their constituents more than a promise that the Office of the Inspector General will clean up the mess after the fact. Basic conditions, proof of a functioning payroll system, an independent board with real signing authority, staggered disbursements tied to documented outcomes, ought to be attached before a dollar goes out, not discovered missing after $37,500 has already funded someone's car note and jewelry. Murrill's office and Davis's team deserve praise for running this case down quickly. The Legislature's job now is to make sure the next Jazmine King never gets the first check.