The Bossier City political establishment put Plan C into action to limit challenges to its power, first by resurrecting the moribund Charter Review Commission, then by violating the Charter potentially to make a newly-weaponized Commission relevant to its purposes.
The challenge, of course, is strict term limits, in the form of a lifetime limit of three terms retroactively for city councilors first applied to 2025 elections. Plan A was to keep the matter from consideration by the City Council. The establishment failed, but not because its Council majority of Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and no party Jeff Darby allowed any Council action to amend that into the Charter. That failed because engaged citizens successfully used the Charter’s petitioning process not only to force the matter onto their agenda but also followed the Charter’s stipulation that the Council mandatorily had to approve of the matter going onto the ballot.
This led to Plan B, which was to violate deliberately the Charter by refusing to follow that dictate, a disregarding of their oaths of office which all of Montgomery, Free, Maggio, Williams, and Darby performed not once, but twice. That will fail as well, because a citizen sued to force the Council majority to follow the Charter, and inevitably not only will the judiciary make it do so, but it also will do so on a timeline that permits the electorate to vote on the matter – where, barring something incredibly against the run of play, it will succeed – prior to 2025 city election qualification.
So, we’re now on to Plan C, which is to use a revived Commission either to present an alternative that weakens or dispenses with term limits as part of a charter overhaul, ideally on the same ballot as the amendment delayed by establishment stalling, but if not then at some later point where it potentially could undo the strict measure that almost assuredly will be voted into place as soon as Dec. 7. That might be a long shot, for any concerted campaign to alert voters of the poison pill in any revision package would result in its defeat, eve as the revision itself likely would be challenged legally prior to that so it may not even get that far, but desperate people do desperate things.
Thus, abruptly, from unknown sources a Commission meeting sprang up earlier this week, with an agenda setting out goals of assigning new officers and appointing new members, revising rules of procedure, and tackling news items and items for review. It was way too ambitious but in part necessary as now four members had resigned, for the most part over the panel majority’s obsession with using the body as a cudgel against term limits. Of the four exited, three had been appointees of reform councilors Republicans Chris Smith and Brian Hammons and GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler.
However, the Charter didn’t speak to vacancies in a commission, so state law that gives the body itself the power to appoint in these instances. Given that the remainder of commissioners – Sandra Morehart, Republican Police Juror Julianna Parks, Vicky Whitman, and Lisa Wilhite – save Lee Jeter were appointees of establishmentarian councilors and who by business or personal relationships are deeply embedded in the establishment, you could be sure they weren’t going to whiff on this chance to stack the deck that could make it easy to stifle dissent.
After voting in temporary officers and making a foray into rules approval – which concerning public comment at times veered down facially unconstitutional avenues such as Parks’ advocacy of the police state tactic that speakers be interrogated about their information sources but in the end largely followed commonly-used strictures seen with public bodies – it launched into replacing members and stumbled right off the bat in that the agenda didn’t include accepting two additional resignations since its previous meeting but did it anyway without formally adding that to the agenda. That created yet another potential legal challenge should anything ever come of this.
Five names were submitted for vetting for the four spots, two of whom were connected substantially to the establishment elite. Mike Lombardino was supported by its members to keep Hammons off the Council in their 2021 special election, with Lombardino drawing monetary support from several insiders including Darby. He also had donated to Vicky Whitman’s husband, Republican City Marshal Jim Whitman. Jeff Lee had given $750 to Parks’ initial campaign.
Somewhat less plugged into the power elite, Debbie Martin’s candidate donation history was fairly eclectic, befitting her leadership role in an area business association that included some Caddo Parish politicians and even some outside the area, but she had backed the establishment’s Republican former Mayor Lo Walker that Chandler had defeated, as well as present GOP District Atty. Schuyler Marvin. None of this trio had a visible history of supporting reform candidates.
Another nominee didn’t have a direct connection to the establishmentarian commissioners, but did have an interesting backstory. Paul Peek was part of the suit that disqualified Republican Jason Brown for the District 9 Police Jury race in 2019 leaving just Democrat Charles Gray in the contest to take the seat. Gray himself was displaced last year by Republican Pam Glorioso, Walker’s former chief administrative officer.
The remaining person was the one that the establishmentarian commissioners definitely would not let join them. Lisa Smith is the wife of Cliff Smith, who has declared an intention to run for the Council’s District 3 next year and would have opposed the incumbent Williams, but Williams has stated he doesn’t intend to run for reelection, whether that was a consequence of Smith’s stated challenge. Cliff Smith has voiced reformist sentiments on social media.
Therefore, and predictably, after an initial round that left Lisa Smith and Martin tied for the last spot, Smith was left out, and so the establishmentarian commissioners cloned their sentiments largely onto the Commission. Then for the plan to continue the establishment councilors (minus the absent Darby) the next day complied with rejecting, again, their duty under law.
If courts act with due care for the timeline involved – the district court hearing is Sep. 6 – term limits will be on the ballot Dec. 7 which would reduce substantially the reconstituted panel’s value as an insurance plan for the establishment. Regardless, discussion on changes to previously-passed items and dealing with new ones starts next month, where, perhaps hoping against hope, the panel will put aside its fixation on neutering the incoming amendment and actually proposes changes that benefit the citizenry as a whole, not just those on the inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment