BATON ROUGE - Voters in November renewed two property taxes to fund BREC despite criticism surrounding late audits and a perceived lack of transparency. Still, a state legislator says it's time for the city-parish to take over.

Rep. Dixon McMakin, R-Baton Rouge, says BREC and Capital Area Transit System (CATS) are not operating at the level they should be, and he wants to restructure how the programs operate to serve the city-parish better. He also says if the city-parish controlled the parks, there would be more oversight and accountability in taking care of them.

"Our taxpayers are paying for a service and they're not getting their bang for their buck that they deserve," McMakin said.

BREC oversees 180 parks in East Baton Rouge Parish. McMakin wants to give control of the parks system to the city-parish and reduce unnecessary spending.

“If you do that, then we hopefully can get more people out there working on the parks, actually doing the programs, not sitting at an office, not making our parks better,” he said.

Reverend Dale Flowers, Pastor at Redwood Baptist Church says the changes would not benefit people living in Baton Rouge.

"Get rid of this bill. There's no reason for this bill," Flowers said. “Why now do you have to take control of this?”

Another bill could replace the board that controls BREC. Currently, the BREC board consists of nine members. Six are appointed by the metro council. The other three are appointed by the mayor president, school board members, and members of the planning commission. If the bill passes, the five mayors of East Baton Rouge will run the board instead.

Mcmakin has a similar proposal for the CATS bus system where just last week bus drivers got off of strike.

"This would put their entity under the city-parish budget. then the metro council could go and do what they'd like," he said.

The legislative session starts on April 14.