Peterson case is reason for lack of public trust

If you wonder why so many people are skeptical about politicians, you need look no further than the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans and the press release they put out last week in reference to former Louisiana Sen. Karen Carter Peterson.
To a man or woman, we see individuals’ campaign for office and usually tout their honesty and reliability to “work for the people.”
Yet, with this state position, and what we have witnessed for the past 10 years or more in St. Tammany Parish, it is clear that far too many public officials can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar when they are in office and seek many ways to line their own pockets.
Fortunately, in the case of Peterson, she was caught red handed. But it’s incredible to look at how far this woman went to violate the trust of the people she claimed to be serving.
Peterson was sentenced to 22 months in prison after pleading guilty to using public dollars for personal use, taking money that dozens of supporters donated to her campaign with the idea she was going to serve in an honest way for the good of the people.
According to court documents, Peterson was the state senator from 2010 to 2022 and elected chair of the state political party. She solicited money for her campaigns, but then used over $94,000 that was diverted to herself, or her friends. She would write checks to friends, who would cash them and give her most of the money, with Peterson paying them off with a small amount of cash.
Peterson went further to defraud her Democratic Party by holding a position of authority that supervised campaign-related services, directing those contracts and work to companies owned or operated by her associates. But in reality, the U.S. attorney said, the companies performed either minimal or no services and Peterson directed the companies to remit a portion of the funds paid to them to her. She received an additional total of over $53,000 from this fraudulent scheme.
She was ordered to repay all the monies obtained fraudulently and was fined an additional $115,000.
Seeing such blatant dishonesty in the highest levels of our state government makes it easy to understand why so many do not trust public officials. Add to that a host of St. Tammany officials at the upper levels of government who were convicted of doing similar things over the past decade, and you see how hard it is for the honest ones to be trusted.
Gives you even more appreciation for those who are still willing to run for office. The burden of trust from the public is harder than ever to achieve these days, especially when you see stories of how far someone like the highly respected former state senator would go to ruin that trust and steal from taxpayers.