Louisiana environmental chief Aurelia S. Giacometto is again facing scathing criticism of her leadership from a departing employee, the latest in a line of officials to leave the agency since her appointment by Gov. Jeff Landry.

In a seven-page letter sent to almost all Department of Environmental Quality employees Friday, Roger Ward, a longtime human resources attorney and ethics liaison at the agency, accused Giacometto of “singlehandedly destroying the workplace culture” with erratic and vindictive behavior. 

He alleged she worsened efficiency with her initiatives and micromanagement, contrary to her public pronouncements about streamlining the agency.

“Although she presents an affable public persona with her saccharine smile, she is in actuality a vindictive individual behind the scenes who seems to relish bullying and harassing her subordinates,” Ward wrote in the letter shared with The Advocate and other media organizations. “She has no regard for anyone but herself, she is manipulative, and completely disingenuous.”

The letter is only the latest criticism of Giacometto’s leadership and the toxicity that some say she has fostered at DEQ, but one of the few airings with an employee’s name attached to it.

In her more than 15 months on the job, she has also seen other executives leave, many of them her own appointees. Some have shared criticisms of her leadership style, while others have said they were simply moving to different jobs in Landry’s administration or federal posts.

Giacometto and Landry have previously defended her leadership, arguing change is necessary at the agency as they seek to streamline operations and make it more business-friendly.

In a statement sent Friday evening, Giacometto made a similar case and said she disputed “any and all of these baseless accusations by this disgruntled employee.”

“I was not appointed to take the easy or popular road. I am inspired daily by the dedication of LDEQ’s hard working employees and I am not going to allow a few to undermine their great work and the success of this agency. LDEQ has an important mission from our governor — having clean air and water while growing a healthy economy,” she said.

“In my 15 months, we are building an internal infrastructure to enable technology to help us do our jobs better and provide transparency to applicants and the public. We have been successful in implementing cost saving measures, as well as making LDEQ more approachable to the public.”

She also wrote that she has focused her early tenure on touring the state, visiting 40 parishes and making more than 110 visits across Louisiana to see through her “top priority” that the public is served “effectively and efficiently.” 

‘Attention of the governor’

In an interview Friday, Ward confirmed the letter was his and said he had personally witnessed Giacometto’s abusive behavior before his one-on-one contact with her ceased in May, when she moved him from his 10th-floor executive office to a smaller one in the agency without a reason.

Though Ward was a classified employee with nearly three decades in the department and was not one of Giacometto’s appointees, he said he is a Republican who voted for Landry.

Ward said he hoped his letter would convince the governor to reconsider Giacometto’s appointment.

“I hope it gets the attention of the governor finally and he removes her, because she’s not fit to be leading an organization,” he said.

As the agency ombudsman, Ward’s role included hearing employee complaints about the department, sitting in meetings with Giacometto in the first months of her tenure and often crafting her write-ups that he asserted had flawed criticisms of employees.

In the letter and interview, Ward said he was initially prepared to support Giacometto and help her give DEQ the improvements he admits it needs, but became increasingly uneasy as she began to target employees, particularly those from the prior administration.

He said he believed her reasons did not revolve around violations of rules or policies but were because employees rubbed her the wrong way, saying “she didn’t want to be challenged on anything.” 

“There was really no basis to write people up or threaten to discipline people,” he said in the interview. “They weren’t doing anything wrong.”

He cited the example of Yolunda Righteous, the head of DEQ’s waste permits division and an agency employee since 2011. She recently announced her planned retirement at the state annual solid waste association meeting in Lafayette.

Ward said Giacometto went after her “viciously” for her involvement with the group while Righteous also remained waste permitting administrator. Ward said the group is an educational organization that DEQ helped found, and Righteous’ involvement in the group does not violate any agency policies, though he alleges Giacometto wrote her up for the involvement.

Righteous has not said why she is retiring and, in a recent interview, declined to discuss it.

Ward’s letter comes weeks after a state workplace audit and employee survey was made public Feb. 28, turning up mixed views of the agency and its top leadership. It also follows the recent loss of Giacometto’s second executive counsel, Noah Hoggatt, in less than a year and a half.

In Ward’s letter, he ticked off 10 executives, all of whom were Giacometto appointees and left after short tenures.

Many of them didn’t air criticisms but said they were leaving for other opportunities. At least one, Tanner Magee, a former legislator and briefly an interim deputy secretary until January, described his working relationship with Giacometto in an interview earlier this year as a good and professional one.

Another, however, wrote of witnessing “atrocities,” accusing the DEQ leader of harassing employees and trying to make her a “hatchet man” who would push workers out of the agency.

Ward’s letter also raises questions about Giacometto’s travel expenses and contracting decisions, and, in the interview, he accused her of creating a “shadow” human resources department with new employees because she disliked the existing department.

‘Unflattering feedback’

While majorities of employees who responded to the audit survey said they liked their direct managers and jobs, near majorities had far less positive views for executive leadership.

More than three-fourths reported low morale, and about one-third also reported working in a toxic environment. A small percentage reported being asked to do things that they believed were procedurally or legally improper.

Though the audit was driven by workplace concerns that have arisen during Giacometto’s tenure, it didn’t indicate that employees were asked directly in the survey about her leadership individually.

Ward said it was troubling that legislators and the governor haven’t exercised what he considers proper oversight. He said inquiries by the Legislative Auditor’s Office and another he said was conducted by the Division of Administration were “to no avail.”

In the interview and letter, Ward said he decided he could no longer stay at the agency that has been his only job for close to 30 years — though he wasn’t ready yet to retire — because of Giacometto’s “increasingly erratic and alarmingly vicious behavior” toward agency personnel.

“LDEQ used to be an enjoyable place to work. Now, employees both long and short term are leaving the agency in droves solely because of her,” Ward wrote.

Ward also claims other midlevel and rank and file employees are leaving to escape Giacometto, noting that several top positions remain open. The letter listed a handful of examples without identifying the employees.

In response to a public records request filed months ago, a DEQ organizational chart the agency provided on Friday for the period of early February showed four openings in the secretary’s office, with at least three other departures that followed that time period.

Despite those openings and Ward’s allegations for this year, civil service data show the agency’s turnover rate was below the state average in the 2024 fiscal year, which included the first six months of the secretary’s tenure.

The state average voluntary turnover rate is 14.3%; DEQ’s voluntary rate was 10.2%, according to an annual report.

In the interview, Ward said he sent the letter to the department after he was told by HR employees that DEQ no longer was using its long-standing exit interview form following “unflattering feedback” about Giacometto’s leadership.

Ward confirmed that the unflattering feedback came from a departing employee who called Giacometto “cruel,” “evil” and “vindictive” in an exit interview, which The Advocate obtained through a public records request and reported about earlier this year.