Bossier City elected officials may change, but their stupid policy-making remains the same, reminding citizens that it will take awhile to reorient city policy in a better direction.
This week, a smooth-talking and highly-paid bureaucrat, in cahoots with a private contractor, and bullied by clueless chief executive and a councilor who benefits monetarily from the bureaucrat’s agency, conned the rubes that populate the Bossier City Council into putting city ratepayers, and maybe taxpayers, on the hook for tens of millions of dollars over the next 40 years in a highly speculative venture out of which it will own nothing, for reasons which have nothing to do with the city’s basic obligations to its residents.
The bureaucrat, Caddo-Bossier Port Commission Executive Director Eric England, finally closed the highly-advantageous deal for the Port by a 5-2 vote of the Council. This deal commits the city to pay an estimated $62 million to the Port so the Port can finance building of a water distribution and treatment facility that the city will run but the Port will own, within the next 40 years as long as the city authorizes even one drop of water to run through the system.
Several times England appeared to the Council over the past six weeks and every time improved in emphasizing certain language of the one-sided cooperative endeavor agreement favorable to his cause and deflecting from the remainder. He stumped for the idea that the city would “make” money beyond the long-term liability to which it committed – as long as the Port could attract new sufficiently-large business and keep it, which hardly is a given. He avoided drawing attention to the language that said “the total payments by Bossier City to the Commission shall not be less than the principal and interest payments made or to be made by the Commission on [its] Bonds [that pay for the facilities]” – putting the city on the hook for the entire amount regardless how long the water flows.
City Engineer Ben Rauschenbach, who has that title in name only because he actually is an employee of the private operator of the city’s water and sewerage services Manchac Consulting, aided England in the hucksterism. His and England’s comments, plus public documents showed Manchac worked hand-in-glove with the Port at least a month prior to the issue coming before the Council and stands to benefit greatly from the deal going through – putting the firm’s interests ahead of those of Bossier Citians.
Inexplicably, Rauschenbach’s boss on paper Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler kept cheerleading for the deal. The city doesn’t need to be in the business of soliciting outside users for its utilities but should concentrate on providing services for residents and whatever adjacent unincorporated areas, definitely not shilling out to another government agency who service area leaps the Red River. And there’s no need to take the risk that it won’t meet the $62 million obligation from revenues generated under the deal as a hedge against increased future residential/business demands; average usage at present is a fifth of capacity and the highest-use day ever was only three times that. To “make” enough off the deal to meet the $62 million, the Port business would have to be almost as large as the total amount of revenue generated by the city at present – from day one.
These facts moot entirely the arguments made by the councilor in question, Republican David Montgomery, as a reply to GOP Councilor Chris Smith’s motion to hold the matter over another couple of weeks due to reservations councilors had. Montgomery, whose private sector insurance dealings with the Port have netted him over $600,000 since 2008, berated those who wanted a delay and had doubts about the deal, advancing the same agenda he has articulated for the past 22 years that the city should spend tax dollars as an economic growth engine on deals that presumably bring in city revenues.
Of course, with other city politicians following that lead this has led to building and operating a money-losing arena, a garage for a outdoor mall that fell into receivership, and a high-tech office building (in conjunction with the parish and state) that has fallen far short of its desired economic impact by its presence isolated form other factors – all activities that should have been left to the private sector but instead, along with a road to nowhere that Montgomery wants to crown with a $300,000 statue, has pushed city debt nearly to the half-billion dollar mark, highest per capita in Louisiana among its cities. Cutting that non-enterprise debt by half would have freed up annually eight figures in interest payments that instead could have gone to boosting city employee salaries, more public safety hiring, lower taxes, greater ability for residents to use recreational facilities they paid for, and the like.
Montgomery called the question, and here Smith’s reaction becomes unfathomable. If his choice was between a deal unsuitable in its current form that needed work or defeating any chance of improving the deal, like it or not the logical choice was to defeat a flawed deal. Instead, almost as if he responded to Montgomery’s bullying by folding up like cheap tent, he voted for it, along with every other Republican on the Council.
That illuminated the greatest irony of the whole saga. Republicans often pitch themselves as fiscal conservatives looking for right-sized government that don’t imprudently spend the people’s money, of ratepayers and taxpayers. Yet all five on the Council – including Jeff Free, Brian Hammons (who brought the motion), and Vince Maggio – approved this reckless deal and Chandler gave every indication he will add his assent. The only two sensible dissenters were the only two non-Republicans, no party Jeff Darby and Democrat Bubba Williams.
This episode demonstrates that, despite noises from the likes of Council rookies Hammons and Smith who held themselves out on the campaign trail as wanting to take a more critical view of city spending, the new boss seems the same as the old boss. Inside two years of their elections these newcomers either have become captured by the ethos Montgomery has championed for so long or else on this issue their lack of experience caused a significant misjudgment. Had they been wiser, their votes against would have ensured that this imprudent contract would have fallen by the wayside.
It was a mistake and potentially a very costly one, but one hopefully once understanding their error will allow those councilors genuinely committed to better governance to rebound on future issues. And Bossier Citians can hope it all works out; maybe it never becomes activated, or maybe the stars align and it’s triggered in a way that ends up fulfilling the unlikely scenario that it doesn’t lose money.
In the final analysis, the outcome shows just how much progress conservatives need to make to turn a Bossier City that has squandered opportunity after opportunity into a provider of efficient and effective government while letting its residents keep more of what they earn that improves their quality of life. Accomplishing this, we are reminded, will take years and likely replacement of more than one councilor and mayor.
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