Just how low could certain members of the Bossier City Council go – and just how hypocritically they may act – now that there’s a very real chance city voters will have a term limits proposal before them in December not to the liking of a majority of councilors with no way to counter it?
This week, a citizen petition for two of four items to appear on the Dec. 7 ballot was certified, that would establish a retroactive three-term limit for mayor and city councilors. By city charter, as certified now it must be presented to the City Council, where at that point the Council must approve it within 90 days or the next scheduled election, which would be Oct. 23 but no scheduled election is before then and the deadline for the next, Nov. 5 has passed, so that would be Dec. 7. If it does not, it is required within 30 days, or Aug. 24, to add the items as an ordinance automatically amending the charter, meaning that if for whatever reason the Council fails to forward it at any regular meeting or any special meeting before Aug. 24 it must by then vote to amend the charter with the item. Failure to do either puts it in violation of the charter and sets up a slam dunk declaratory judicial judgment that essentially goes over its head.
Expect there to be resistance by the five councilors who have voted against efforts to put a previous similar term limits amendment on the ballot which was ruled out judicially by a technicality – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio; Democrat Bubba Williams; and no party Jeff Darby, of whom all but Maggio would be disqualified from running for office this spring or ever again – that will take two forms. The first will be to refuse to follow the charter in passing any enabling ordinance, instruments which any of GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler or Republican Councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons who have advocated for term limits since their elections, can introduce.
That would trigger going to court which the majority bloc knows it will lose, but hopes it buys enough delay to prevent the matter from appearing in front of the State Bond Commission at its Sep. 19 meeting. Aug. 20 is the deadline for submissions, just before the last legal date the Council can act. But the SBC can waive that deadline, and with its chairman Republican Treasurer John Fleming having been a long-time backer of term limits and certain to instruct consideration of the petition item onto the December ballot (which it will have until Oct. 14 to do so, the due date for propositions for the Secretary of State), it seems unlikely even a sympathetic 26th Judicial District judge could find ways to delay inclusion of the item onto the last ballot of the year.
Knowing almost certainly they will fail with this prong of the attack, the anti-term limits old guard of Bossier politics has another. This depends upon reviving the moribund Charter Review Commission put into place by the majority bloc of councilors for the express purpose, one way or the other, of keeping the strict version of term limits in the petition from becoming amended into the charter.
Ideally, this would be accomplished by placing for voter consideration a supposedly “revised” charter into place that had no term limits or a weaker version, such as grandfathering in existing councilors. Then, according to the charter, whichever version received more votes, if both passed, would take effect. Also, an ancillary argument made by the catspaw of majority bloc Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray purports that because this was allegedly a “new” charter that the petitioned items didn’t apply to it, whether a court eventually would buy this.
All of this presupposes that the charter “revision” makes to the ballot – and that’s where the anti-term limits forces have a big problem. The Commission had a 5-4 anti-term limits majority given each councilor appointed a member and the mayor two, views which have become obvious throughout several meetings. Indeed, at the last attempted meeting Jul. 22 at which only term limits opponents attended, multiple commissioners, particularly Montgomery appointee GOP Police Juror Julianna Parks, made clear they saw the product of the Commission as a means of stopping the end result of the petition.
That failed as a tool to discourage petitioners when they successfully acquired enough verified signatures, so now the Commission as a tool of the anti-term limits forces has to deliver and, as its members present made clear in the recent gathering, no later than the ballot on which the petitioned amendments would appear. But it couldn’t up until now, most recently because the “gathering” was only a “gathering” and not a meeting because it legally lacked a quorum to do business. Having adopted Robert’s Rules of Order, that guide clearly states to do business a body had to have a majority of regular/voting members present which is five, and only four showed up.
The fifth appointee, of Darby, who could have provided the crucial warm body, Panderina Soumas, had attended almost no meetings and resigned at the end of the previous month. She joined the former chairman of the Commission, Smith appointee Preston Friedley, whose resignation came after an acrimonious gathering on Jun. 18 at which none of the anti-term limits forces showed up thereby denying a quorum that featured a dustup between him and Ray over agenda-setting. Because neither resignation had been accepted, which must happen in a meeting in order for more members under statute to be appointed by the remaining members in their places, membership remained at nine and a quorum at five.
This means that if the appointees of Hammons and Chandler, one of whom is the vice chairman Shane Cheatham, stay away from future meetings, the Commission can’t convene legally. Worse for the beleaguered quartet – all political insiders by family of elected officials or by business connections in Bossier Parish – in the last meeting taking advantage of the absence of Soumas and another of the quartet the Commission passed a strict term limits proposal, so if left alone this becomes part of the final product if the panel ever again meets and eventually forwards changes.
Facing a potential impasse where the Commission can’t meet legally until after the deadline for ballot inclusion as long as the Chandler and Hammons appointees fail to attend meetings scheduled – and this brings up another question of legality, as under Robert’s Rules as the Commission has exhausted its approved schedule of meetings meaning any additional meetings are special and thus unless it otherwise has procedures for calling special meetings, and does not, it can meet only when authorized by the panel itself, as part of formal disciplinary procedures, or for purposes of conducting a trial and determining a punishment – it cannot complete its mission in time to make the last 2024 ballot. In fact, both Ray and City Attorney Charles Jacobs warned the quartet at the last gathering that if they tried to claim that with only four commissioners in attendance they could have a valid meeting that this would be illegal and any actions taken null and void.
That advice didn’t deter Parks, who claimed counting ex-oficio members Ray and Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham would constitute a majority for purpose of a quorum – even though Robert’s Rules expressly contradict this. She also said she was ready to go ahead with what would be an illegal meeting under these conditions.
Whether that had anything to do with it, it now appears a Jul. 29 meeting has been scheduled despite no authority, as mediated by Robert’s Rules, available to permit this. According to Internet news and entertainment site SOBO.live in an e-mail message it distributed, the purpose of this meeting is to accept the resignations, appoint as commissioners Keith Bush and Walter Bigby, Jr. (a close political ally of Montgomery), remove the vice chairman Cheatham, appoint a new chairman, unwind all of the previously approved amendments (including the strict term limits measure), vote on a previously unseen version of the charter, and approve the new charter to send to voters on the December ballot.
If so, that creates at least two legal objections that would invalidate whatever product emerges, which likely would be stripped down to either a diluted term limits provision if any and possibly making it more difficult for future petitions to succeed: the meeting was not legally called, which at the very least should have come from the prompting of its new chief officer, Cheatham, and if only the same quartet shows up, nothing done during it will be legal. And there’s actually potentially a third legal impairment to such a scenario, dating back to the very inception of the Commission: it didn’t become enabled legally in a way that it could replace rather than amend the charter, so unless it passes along (as an illegitimate product) only a handful of amendments, whatever else emerges for this reason will sink in court. Even if the Council majority bloc tries to whip it through in time to make the ballot – which would be highly hypocritical since, contrary to the charter’s instructions for a certified petition, it refused to approve of the previous attempt, citing questions of legality – it seems highly unlikely that a court at some judicial level wouldn’t kick it off the ballot under this scenario, or the SBC simply could reject its ballot placement, citing unresolved legal questions.
In other words, while it will be almost impossible to keep the petitioned item from appearing on Bossier Citians’ ballots Dec. 7, it also will be almost impossible to have any Commission product appear on the same. The only questions now are whether the likes of Montgomery, Free, Maggio, Williams, and Darby will make fools of themselves and how many taxpayer dollars they will waste in trying to stall the inevitable.
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