Looks like maybe the "making amends" step?

Or maybe something else is going on. Anyway, here is Karen Carter Peterson, still serving a prison sentence for defrauding the state Democratic Party, asking the state to take back one of the last public-private partnership schemes she signed off on before the downfall.  

In early 2022, shortly before she resigned her post amid a federal investigation into her embezzlement of Democratic Party and campaign funds, state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson helped earmark $7 million in state funds for the Odyssey House in New Orleans to create southeast Louisiana’s first residential gambling treatment center.

More recently, less than seven months into her 22-month prison sentence, Peterson was moved from a minimum-security camp in Dallas to a re-entry facility in New Orleans, and she quickly became a central figure in the project. She is now pushing to get the state money moved from Odyssey House, a nonprofit, to the Metropolitan Human Services District, a state-run entity.

Peterson, who is working as an advisor to the Davillier Law Group, says she believes the Human Services District, which gets state money annually for gambling treatment services, is better equipped to stand up the facility.

Peterson goes on to say she "has no financial role in the project."  And we have to assume that is true... now. At the time she approved the earmark? Who knows. Since that time, a lot has changed. Peterson is where she is and the real estate deal Odyssey House had in mind isn't looking viable anymore for some reason not quite given. 

For its part, Odyssey House, which runs treatment centers around the state, raised concerns about the proposal last week, with its CEO saying he wasn't given a rationale for transferring the money. Peterson and the Louisiana Department of Health have asked Odyssey House to sign off on transferring the funds through a mid-year transfer process that requires buy-in from area lawmakers and all parties involved in the transaction. 

But on Monday, Ed Carlson, CEO of Odyssey House, said his board has decided to go along with the request and sign off on the deal. (Note: The deal signed off on here is Odyssey House giving the money back)

Carlson said Peterson approached him about the project ahead of the 2022 legislative session. She put the nonprofit in touch with a real-estate agent to look at a building, but it wasn’t suitable for the project, he said. With most of the money still not available, Odyssey House has so far been unable to move forward, he said.

Carlson said he found out only a few days ago that Peterson and the LDH wanted to see the money transferred to the Human Services District — a division of the LDH. He said no one had discussed it with him beforehand. 

"At this point, we just want to get as far away from this as possible," Carlson said Monday.

Anyway whatever the original plan was is in the trash now.  We'll never know who was kicking what back to whom.  One footnote that didn't get mentioned in the article is Ed Carlson was the third candidate in this year's bizarre and acrimonious District 91 race for State Rep.  For some reason, he still thought he needed friends in Baton Rouge as late as this fall.  Interesting.