On Wednesday, Mayor LaToya Cantrell withdrew her appointment of Kimberly Thomas for a spot on the board of directors for the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board. Thomas was slated for approval by the New Orleans City Council, which seemed ready to overlook years of state ethics-law violations to approve her nomination.
Thomas had already served a stint on the board from 2014 to 2017. For all four of those years, she failed to submit legally required financial-disclosure forms on time. Her disclosure for the 2015 calendar year was never filed, nor was a required disclosure from the year after she left. She incurred two $1,500 fines for her failures, one of which was paid just two weeks ago. The other fine was rescinded, but only because the state didn’t collect it within the prescribed time.
In July 2024, after sending more than a dozen late-fee administrative orders and a past due notice, the state ethics board notified Thomas — in a notification repeated again last month — that it would exercise its right to publicly object to Thomas as a candidate if she chose to run for public office. The S&WB board seat is an unpaid appointed position.
The Council had seemed likely to confirm Thomas on Thursday, because Thomas received the unanimous recommendation of the Council’s Governmental Affairs Committee on July 2. Thomas did not respond to emailed questions from The Lens.
In her Wednesday letter, Cantrell requested that Thomas be withdrawn from consideration – for now. “Upon submission of updated paperwork, my office will submit her appointment for consideration again,” the mayor wrote.
The Council withdrew the motion for Thomas’ confirmation at Thursday’s meeting without any comment.
Prior term ethics troubles
In 2014, Thomas had been named to the S&WB Board of Directors by then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu with nine other members. Five of them, including Thomas, were brand-new to the board.
The 2014 cohort, which took over mid-year, were part of major reforms to the selection, makeup and term lengths of the board. The reforms were passed at the state legislature as part of a package of board-related measures in exchange for City Council approval of eight years of water and sewer rate increases.
During and after her term on the board, Thomas was required to file five financial disclosures on time and complete three annual one hour ethics trainings. Three of her disclosures were filed late, two were never submitted and she only completed one training.
The required state trainings and disclosures are intended to ensure that public servants don’t use the office for private gain, accept improper gifts, dole out special treatment – and that they know the laws under which they serve.
Thomas submitted her 2016 disclosure in February 2019 and her 2017 disclosure form in August 2024, a combined eight years late. The ethics board put lots of effort into getting that form and others, as well as collecting two $1,500 fines arising from the late 2016 and 2017 submittals – attempting to contact Thomas about her failures 30 times over a ten-year period, including nine subpoena requests, two of which were eventually served, according to records released on Tuesday.
Thomas’ account of events differs from the ethics board records. Writing to the ethics board in 2023, she claimed she “always maintained the highest ethical standards throughout my tenure with the [S&WB], and I have upheld my obligations diligently. It is not in my nature to deliberately avoid any legal or financial obligation.”
S&WB board members are legendarily bad in complying with state ethics-board requirements. Of the 51 individuals who have served since 2014 either on the S&WB Board of Directors or the agency’s Board of Trustees (which oversees the Board’s pension system), 47 have either filed disclosures late or not at all, or have skipped the required annual training, according to publicly available state ethics records. Five current members have racked up 5 or more violations: Janet Howard, Robin Barnes, Tamika Duplessis, Maurice Sholas, and Joseph Peychaud.
But Thomas’ performance during her previous term stands out. Her overall disclosure/training violation rate was 88%, placing her in the top five of everyone who has served since 2014, according to a Lens analysis. The other four board members who made the S&WB’s top-five list had violation rates of 100%: Stacy Horn-Koch, Eric Blue, William Raymond Manning, and Charles Webb. Unlike Thomas, all served just one or two years. None of them have been renominated.
Thomas is nominated to replace Sholas, whose term is ending. Barnes is also leaving the board, to be replaced with lawyer Courtney Scrubbs during the same Thursday council meeting when Thomas was due to be confirmed.
Contesting fines in 2023, failing to pay in 2024
In May 2023, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies successfully served Thomas with subpoena orders for the 2016 and 2017 fines. A month later, Thomas moved to get a waiver for both $1,500 fines.
In a June 30, 2023 letter faxed by Thomas to the ethics board, she wrote that she had been unaware of the requirement to file a disclosure in 2017, blaming assurances supposedly given her by then-Executive Director Cedric Grant.
The ethics board found Thomas’ argument unpersuasive. At its November 3, 2023 meeting the board unanimously rejected her request for a waiver of the fine for the 2017 violation. The 2016 fine had been rescinded in August due to an expiration of time to collect it.
Seven months later, Thomas had still not paid the fine and on June 7, 2024 was sent a “past due” notice with a threat to have the $1500 penalty sent to the state attorney general’s collections unit. The state made good on their threat, turning her case over to collections October 18, 2024.
The June 30, 2023 letter from Kimberly Thomas included an additional curiosity. While it was faxed from an Office Depot in Harvey, the header of the letter was her name and address: 542 East 32nd Street in Savannah, Ga, a house that had made headlines because of its 2014 sale from Kimberly Thomas’ uncle, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and his relatives to Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. Justice Thomas was forced to amend his 2014 financial disclosure when the sale, originally undeclared, was exposed by ProPublica. ProPublica also reported Leola Williams, Justice Thomas’ mother, was living in the house rent free as of April 2023.
S&WB nomination
This year, with the $1,500 fine still in collections, Thomas was included in the list of five potential candidates for a newly opened seat on the Sewerage and Water Board of Directors. The seat represents City Council District C, which covers all of Algiers and part of the east bank including the French Quarter, Bywater, Treme, and the Marigny. A selection committee, made up of university presidents and heads of local chambers of commerce – or their representatives – met on May 6 and winnowed the list to three per state law.
Based on application packages assembled by S&WB staff, the committee advanced Thomas to be considered by Mayor LaToya Cantrell, along with two other candidates – Patrick Hernandez and Nathalie Jordi. Cantrell chose Thomas and submitted her to the Council for confirmation.
When asked if during the selection committee preparations, S&WB staff checks for outstanding state ethics fines or failures to file disclosures – both of which were publicly available for Thomas on the ethics board website in May – or if they will do so in the future, agency spokesperson Ceara Labat responded, “No comment.”
Mayor Cantrell’s team did not respond to emailed questions about whether they were aware of Thomas’ ethics violations before being asked about them on Wednesday by The Lens.
As part of the Council’s confirmation process, Thomas had to answer a six -page questionnaire about her background and qualifications. On the last page of the questionnaire, just above the section for the notary to affix their stamp, the application reads, “Material misrepresentation of any information provided in this questionnaire shall constitute cause for dismissal from the position appointed.”
The two “Objection to Candidacy” notices sent to Thomas in July 2024 and June 2025 both emphasized that the $1,500 late fee was “absolute and final.”
But in response to the question “Have you ever received a final judgment for any violation of City of New Orleans or Louisiana ethics laws, professional license regulations, or a final judgment for administrative adjudication proceedings, other than for parking violations?” Thomas typed – in large capital letters – “NO.”
Five days after the questionnaire was notarized, she paid the fine, nearly six years after it was first imposed. It was posted to her collections account July 2.
That same day – July 2 – Thomas appeared before the Council’s Governmental Affairs Committee in support of her nomination, with the notarized questionnaire still including the “NO” to the question about final judgments attached to the meeting agenda. At the podium, she touted her commitment to “providing transparency” to the community.