BATON ROUGE - BREC Chief Financial Officer, Don Johnson, submitted his letter of resignation to the agency. Johnson is one of several high-profile employees to either quit or be fired.

During Thursday night's special meeting, BREC interim Superintendent Janet Simmons addressed the personnel changes during her report. She says Director of Finance Rhonda Williams will be taking over the CFO's responsibilities, but will remain in her capacity as finance director.

"Probably spent 5 hours with her this week, she's got it covered. So, I'm not worried about it," Simmons said.

"You don't foresee there being a delay?" a commissioner asked.

"No, I don't foresee there's going to be any delay in that. I don't see there being a delay in the budget. We're moving forward on that. I really don't see there being a delay on anything," Simmons said.

Simmons says the finance department is structured well, and she believes under the leadership of Williams and the comptroller, the agency will be just fine.

"I think they'll be able to handle the budget, the audit, and have the audit complete by the end of this year and the day-to-day activities. I don't think it's that much of a hiccup," Simmons said.

The WBRZ Investigative Unit has been following the controversy surrounding finance and the turnover of employees in BREC for years.

Central Mayor Wade Evans is one of the BREC commissioners. He's been vocal about BREC's financial situation. BREC had been behind on annual audits. The organization has since caught up, but is still one year behind schedule.

"I believe that our employees deserve to be treated with respect, and we need to lead with a service mindset, and so I'm excited about the opportunities, and if people don't want to be apart of what we're doing I'm ready for them to go away and I'm ready to bring on people that want to serve with us," Wade said.

Simmons says the CFO role was a newly created position for the agency.

"I know the structure of the agency pretty well, and the position wasn't even filled before, so that was a new position that was made in April of last year, and I'm not sure that it really was necessary," she said.

Simmons says currently there aren't any plans to fill the position.