In January 2004, then-County Commissioner Janice Gilley brought up the idea of instituting such a code of ethics for county employees and an annual performance review of Touart and County Attorney Janet Lander. The discussion went nowhere.
It was the time of the Arety’s credit card scandal – when Touart’s son had run up over $7000 in charges on his dad’s credit cards and the strip club owner alleged that the County Administrator and Sheriff Ron McNesby had pressured her to forgive the charges.
The News Journal reported that Touart had gone on a dove-hunting trip in Mexico in Sept. 2003 that included Jerry Long, vice president of Panhandle Grading and Paving Inc., and Mike Broussard of Hatch Mott MacDonald. Panhandle Grading was awarded $8.6 million and Hatch Mott MacDonald was awarded $3.75 million in county contracts for fiscal year 2003. Touart to the PNJ that his expenses for the trip were covered by Global Employment Services Inc. (his Miss. labor company)
In the summer of 2003, Touart, and the county director of facilities management and the county architect went on a daylong deep-sea fishing trip out of Orange Beach, Ala., that was coordinated Turner/Benchmark Construction companies – Benchmark built the county office complex. Touart said he paid for his and the county employees’ expenses.
The county commission never enacted an ethics policy and Touart satisfied them that the trips had garnered no special favors for Panhandle Grading, Hatch Mott or Benchmark. Touart was later cleared of any ethics violations on the Arety allegations.