BATON ROUGE - A parish agency that distributed money for federal housing during the COVID-19 pandemic spent too much on developer fees, spent money before contracts were in place and made duplicate payments, an audit said.

Officials are investigating the agency's actions during former Mayor Sharon Weston Broome's time in office.

The audit was done under Broome's administration and highlights a project to build three small homes in Central. The cost for the homes grew from $220,000 to almost $500,000, the audit said, and the developer collected more than quadruple the amount of personal fees he was originally owed. 

The developer, Jason Hughes of Hughes Consultant Group LLC, told The Advocate that any excess fees he collected were the city-parish's fault, not his. 

"In my opinion, after looking back on it, the people that were in place had no idea or no understanding of how that money worked and how it was supposed to be spent," Hughes told the newspaper about the city-parish development office. "That led to putting people like myself and other developers in bad situations."

WBRZ reached out to Jason Hughes, who said he does not wish to give any statements at this time. 

Mayor-President Sid Edwards' office said they were "made aware of the audit findings from January of 2024."

"The administration has complied with all requests made by the authorities," the statement continued.