BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Mayor-President Sid Edwards hired a new chief administrative officer without conducting the national search his office previously promised.

Last week, Edwards’ office announced Dr. Christel Slaughter would be the new CAO. She has served as acting CAO since September.

RELATED: Despite announcing a search for Baton Rouge’s next CAO, none was ever done

At that time, the mayor’s office said there would be a national search. Slaughter’s company was supposed to lead the search, but it never happened.

Edwards said the plan was to kick off the search in December, but things changed.

“Well, the more I worked with this lady and as day and days went by, I finally sat her down. I said, I just want to ask you something. I said is there any chance you’d be interested? a

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