BATON ROUGE -- Facing questions about her relationships with contractors and a fight over federal money, the woman who runs the agency that controls Road Home buyout properties resigned in disgust Thursday.

Nadine Jarmon stepped down as executive director of the Louisiana Land Trust, the quasi-public body once known as the Road Home Corp. It had appeared before the meeting she might be fired; she pre-empted any such move by quitting and venting publicly at the state agency with whom she has tangled bitterly during her tenure, the Office of Community Development.

"I request that the (Land Trust) board to do an independent audit to clear my name of any implications of misappropriations," she said. "Put your cards on the table."

She had complained that the Office of Community Development withheld money from the Land Trust, then tried to blame her for the state agency's failures, identified in a federal audit. She further suggested that state officials started questioning her performance and connections to an investigation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development only after she publicly criticized them.

State e-mails indicate Jarmon's overseers at Community Development and the Louisiana Recovery Authority began to question her connections to a federal investigation of former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who resigned last week under accusations that he funneled post-Katrina public housing contracts to a friend.

The questions about Jarmon's connections to those contracts stemmed from the fact that she was the HUD receiver in New Orleans at the time.

The Office of Community Development questioned Jarmon's existing business relationships with two consultants at Ira Peppercorn Inc. of Alexandria, Va. Those relationships were disclosed in the company's bid for the $57,000 consulting contract.

Jarmon had co-founded a separate company with one of the consultants, and was the boss of another one when both worked at the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

Land Trust board Chairman Ernie Broussard, of Lake Charles, on Thursday stepped in to say the investigation of Jackson didn't appear to involve Jarmon.

Jarmon alleged she fell out of favor with the state agency and its director, Suzie Elkins, after she publicly complained that the state was ignoring the agency it created to handle the critical transfer of damaged properties to parishes for redevelopment.

Last year, Jarmon pointed out that the Land Trust's $2.5 million allocation was insufficient to maintain and secure thousands of Road Home buyout properties, mostly destroyed homes that were beset by structural dangers, debris and high grass.

After the initial embarrassment for the state, the Land Trust's maintenance of the properties over the past six months has been one of the most visible successes of the Road Home process. A contractor, Baton Rouge-based Task Force LLC, has cleaned up and secured about 7,000 properties. About 2,000, mostly in New Orleans' Lakeview neighborhood, have yard signs identifying them as Land Trust properties.

Jarmon spoke out again in December, when she publicly castigated Community Development for turning over Road Home properties without proper documentation, some with wrong addresses and even a few that were still occupied.

Her complaints led the Louisiana Recovery Authority to approve a revolving fund to keep the agency operating. Community Development later changed it to a $9 million grant, but never documented it in a grant agreement.

On March 7, HUD auditors who were checking on the use of HUD grants for the Land Trust found the $9 million grant wasn't being spent quickly enough and demanded that Community Development pay $3.2 million back to Washington.

Jarmon said that was Community Development's fault for choosing an arbitrarily high dollar amount for the grant. But Elkins, who was essentially demoted recently to report to LRA Executive Director Paul Rainwater, pinned the blame on the Land Trust in a letter Feb. 25.

Elkins said the Land Trust's financial operations were inadequate and questioned several of the agency's contracts, ordering that all payments to contractors get the extraordinary step of HUD approval.

The Land Trust now doesn't have enough money to pay its bills, and at Thursday's meeting, Community Development officials acknowledged they needed an operating agreement in place by Monday.

Jarmon made $117,500 a year. She agreed to stay on for 30 more days to help with a transition.

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David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3322.

Copyright 2008 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company