Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn used city employees, trucks to deliver equipment to star's far-off festivals
Zahn faces new questions about how he deployed city employees and equipment for actor John Schneider's annual Bo’s Extravaganza.
Outgoing Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn directed city employees to deliver city equipment free of charge to a privately run festival more than 40 miles away in Livingston Parish, interviews and city records show.
Zahn declined interview requests, but a Kenner spokesperson said the city got a promotional benefit for providing tents and barricades for "Bo’s Extravaganza," an annual birthday bash in Livingston Parish for Zahn’s friend, actor, movie director and musician John Schneider.
However, an ethics attorney who reviewed WWL-TV's reporting said Zahn should not have provided free public equipment and employee labor for Schneider’s private interests. And Zahn’s critics dispute that Kenner citizens could see any benefit from donating labor and equipment for an event more than an hour’s drive away.
It’s the latest controversy surrounding Zahn’s use of public resources. He was soundly defeated in his re-election bid in March, and the loss was fueled by contentious debates over the city budget, a vendor’s lawsuit alleging that Zahn had engaged in backroom dealing over the city’s garbage collection contract and questions about massive overtime and emergency pay for Zahn’s top deputies in the wake of Hurricane Ida.
Zahn’s political fate was likely sealed in February, when the FBI served a subpoena at City Hall seeking payroll and other financial records.
But now, with less than two months left in office, Zahn faces questions about how he deployed city employees and equipment for Bo’s Extravaganza in April 2020 and April 2021.
The Festival
The festival is largely an homage to Schneider’s most famous role, as Bo Duke on the CBS television series The Dukes of Hazzard. The public can pay to enter Schneider Studio’s sprawling property in Holden to take in live music, a crawfish boil cookoff, a classic car show, Civil War reenactments and dozens of Confederate flags flying high.
Last month was the fifth – and Schneider says likely the last – Bo’s Extravaganza, and a crowd gathered on a sunny Saturday afternoon to watch Schneider filming movie scenes with monster trucks on a dirt track and shooting arrows at a wooden outhouse filled with explosives.
Schneider spoke to WWL-TV after wrapping up the movie shoot. He said he considers Zahn a friend who is always looking for ways to improve Kenner’s standing. Zahn’s administration hired Schneider to play country music at the 2019 Freedom Fest in Kenner, and Schneider said he and the mayor then discussed ways Kenner could help with Bo’s Extravaganza.
“But, I mean, what do friends do?” Schneider said.
Ethics violation?
Ethics attorney Dane Ciolino said public officials cannot legally give things of value to private citizens.
“It has the potential for violating … virtually every rule in the book,” Ciolino said.
The question is whether the city of Kenner received a service or benefit in exchange for providing its tents and barricades to Schneider’s privately owned and operated festival. Schneider believes it did.
“I love Kenner, and I love Kenner because of Ben,” Schneider said in an interview with WWL-TV at last month’s Bo’s Extravaganza. “In my mind, what Ben was doing was getting a national presence -- because we have people here from New Zealand, we have people from all over -- to an event outside of his area to bring more people into his area.”
Schneider said Kenner’s tents provided shade and comfort for festival-goers, and the barricades protected onlookers when he jumped a car over the Tikfaw River for a movie production. He also said the tents displayed banners with the city of Kenner’s name on them, although two city employees who were there said the tents were plain white and were not adorned with any banners or Kenner logos.
Schneider also said he was surprised to learn the city employees who delivered the equipment were on the clock and used a city truck to do it, according to city payroll and GPS tracking records.
“If it was a city truck, which you say it was, then I suppose… I don't know. What could we have done? Made a donation or what?” he said.
Schneider, a private citizen, graciously answered all of WWL-TV’s questions about Kenner’s donated equipment. Zahn, on the other hand, is an elected public official but declined the station’s interview requests. Instead, his administration issued a written statement that claimed donating the equipment was “a great opportunity to engage our brand.”
Police Cars
The City’s statement also claimed the request for barricades and tents came “at the behest of the Kenner Police Department” as “augmentation for the police vehicles that were being donated for the filming of multiple motion picture films."
Police Chief Mike Glaser, who soundly defeated Zahn at the polls in March and takes over as mayor July 1, called that “an outright lie.” Glaser did say that he provided “deadlined,” or surplus police cars for Schneider’s production company to use while filming within Kenner city limits.
Glaser said a police officer assigned to Zahn came to the chief and said the mayor wanted some police cars for Schneider to use in the movie.
Glaser and Zahn’s electronic signatures do appear on a formal agreement in early 2020 for donating the surplus police cars for Schneider’s movie “Stand On It,” a “Smokey and the Bandit”-inspired road comedy filmed partly in Kenner.
The trailer for “Stand On It” includes one of the Kenner surplus police cars. It’s used in the film by a fictitious sheriff’s deputy to chase Schneider’s character as he speeds by. The Kenner city seal is partly visible for a split second on one of the car’s doors in the movie's trailer.
Glaser says Kenner can get a benefit when movies are shot in town, particularly if the city’s name is listed in the final credits, but he doesn’t see how the city gains from providing equipment for Bo’s Extravaganza.
“Whatever was brought up to Holden, La., I don't think the city of Kenner gets anything out of it,” he said.
Witnesses said Zahn went with city employees to Holden in 2020 and again in 2021, traveling in a police SUV with two Kenner police officers assigned to his administration.
Three workers from the city’s General Services Division also went both years, using a city-owned flatbed truck to carry the tents and barricades to the studio grounds and setting them up, sources said. Those sources also said the workers went back to pick up the equipment after the weekend festivities were over.
Lunch Meeting
GPS tracking on the flatbed truck on April 7, 2021, shows it traveled 132.5 miles between 11:01 a.m. and 4:18 p.m. to go to Holden and come back to Kenner. Along the way back, the records show they stopped for lunch at a barbecue joint in Hammond. State campaign finance records show Zahn charged his re-election campaign $112 at the restaurant for what’s described as a “lunch meeting.”
But city payroll records show the three employees who were there to deliver the equipment and joined Zahn at the hour-long lunch in Hammond were on the clock that day.
One of the employees there was the city’s General Services director, Mark Glorioso. The GPS records show the flatbed went 12 miles back toward Holden after the lunch in Hammond and stopped for almost 10 minutes at Glorioso’s house in Springfield. Glorioso told WWL-TV the other workers dropped him off there before making the hour-long drive back to Kenner because his shift had ended.
Glorioso he said he made the 100-plus-mile round trip three other times over the two years, either delivering and setting up the equipment or taking it down and bringing it back to Kenner. He said he’s delivered tents for hundreds of events over the years in and near Kenner, but never as far away as Holden.
Glorioso is one of two witnesses who recalls the tents delivered to Bo’s Extravaganza as plain white, without any Kenner banners or logos. Glorioso said he didn’t consider whether the trek to Holden was proper or not; he did it because Zahn told him to.
“Any time the mayor gives me a directive, I don’t question it,” Glorioso said. “It comes from him, then we do it.”
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