The Bossier City Council Oathbreakers are a persistent bunch when it comes to thwarting citizen rule, but even that won’t pay off with their latest ploy.
The Oathbreakers – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – earned that sobriquet as they on multiple occasions violated their oaths of office by refusing to uphold the city charter’s mandate that they must forward to voters a charter amendment that creates lifetime retroactive three-term limits for city councilors and the mayor, as by a successful citizen petition. As this would disqualify all but Maggio from among them for reelection next year, they have fought tooth and nail to sabotage in any way the amendment, which came about when the registrar of voters duly certified the document in July,
It began when the petition began circulating again last year at this time, after the Oathbreakers initially had rendered another inoperative for a technicality in the courts. The strategy involved invoking a charter review commission a majority of its members they appointed, mostly political insiders and allies. Initially, it was supposed that it would take the wind out of the sails of the citizen petitioners.
It didn’t, so the fallback tactic went into effect. City legal officials alleged that the panel could “replace” the Charter, meaning if they could put the replacement language on a ballot no later than simultaneously with the petition language, then they could pursue the novel legal theory that if both passed voter muster the petition language was mooted because it was to amend the “old” Charter. And as backup, the panel could propose a weak term limits measure – taking the form of a non-retroactive non-lifetime three-term limit – to compete and hope it received more votes that the other where by the Charter that version would become operative.
To attempt to appear simultaneously or even before the citizen version on a ballot, the Oathbreakers acted to earn their nickname, which landed them in court by a citizen suing them to order the judiciary to order them do their job where a district court promptly complied in telling them to follow the Charter in this regard. Instead, they launched a nuisance meritless appeal, but which bought them enough time for the citizen version to miss inclusion on the Dec. 7 ballot, where the only way now for it to come into force would be the judiciary feeling the stalling tactics so egregious that it would push back city elections to allow a vote first by the people on the citizen version.
To counter that possibility, if unlikely, as well as to keep the door open for insiders and allies to serve long tenures (in the past 30 years several councilors and both mayor prior to the present occupant served at least four terms), the Commission (which had lots of up and downs as its utility as an anti-strict term limits weapon waxed and waned) sprinted to come up with its diluted version – too hard, in fact, because it ended up at the last minute last week having to undo four meetings worth of work because it illegally added new members in August.
Hastily, because the clock was ticking to make the Dec. 7 ballot. Technically, the date had passed to get the matter to the State Bond Commission that must approve of these matters, but theoretically it could hold a special meeting prior to the Oct. 14 Secretary of State ballot as its next scheduled meeting was Oct. 17, although even the submission date for that had passed a couple of days prior to the suddenly called meeting.
That dash was to get the matter in front of the City Council for its regular Oct. 8 meeting to supply the necessary resolution (that the majority Oathbreakers had hypocritically at least twice before refused for the petition), but because it was so last minute – in particular, Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray had downplayed the membership issue for weeks before an apparent sudden reversal in opinion came about regarding the legality of the Commission’s actions – the matter couldn’t make the Council’s regular agenda.
This meant to ram it through it required a unanimous vote for agenda addition, which failed when one of the reformer councilors, Republican Brian Hammons, voted against. Hammons objected to the 52-page document being foisted onto him at the last minute. The other reformer, GOP Councilor Chris Smith also complained he hadn’t had time to review the document.
Smith, however, voted for inclusion, later responding to an inquiry about his vote that he felt he needed to be consistent and principled in voting for such items because of the charter mandate. Yet that conflates an agenda item addition vote, a separate issue, with the substance of that agenda item. Hammons was not inconsistent nor unprincipled in voting against something sprung on him an hour before the council meeting on an item nowhere did the Charter say he had to approve.
But the Oathbreakers had one last trick up their sleeves. The had the numbers (and Williams as presiding officer) to call a special meeting for Oct. 10, with one of the agenda items (issued barely 24 hours in advance, which avoided the problem from the regular meeting) being a resolution calling for a vote on the Commission’s term limit versions, plus another that called itself an amendment whose language is here repeated:
Shall the City Charter of the City of Bossier City, Louisiana, be amended and restated, in its entirety, pursuant to Article VI, Section 5 of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana as set forth in the revisions prepared and submitted by the Citizens Charter Review Commission as advertised in the Bossier Press Tribune on October 16, 23, and 30, 2024?
Note how this differs from the language attached to the Apr. 17, 2004 (which failed) and the Oct. 15, 2005 (which succeeded) charter change propositions, which is:
Shall the City Charter of the City of Bossier City, Louisiana, be amended as set forth in the revisions prepared and submitted by the Citizens Charter Review Commission as advertised in the Bossier Press Tribune on ….
The difference is legal legerdemain to attempt a workaround from the language in Ordinance 154 of 2023 which authorized the Commission. The problem, which was reviewed in this space months ago is the ordinance allows only for amendment, not replacement, of the Charter – another issue that Ray at the time dismissed, only now to have addressed at the very last moment.
In short, the ordinance contains a landmine that blew up the ability of the Commission to replace the Charter:
WHEREAS, the Mayor and City Council concur that the Charter should be reviewed for possible changes pursuant to the amendment provisions in the Charter. Additionally, the Louisiana Constitution of 1974 as well as statutory provisions including Louisiana Revised Statute 33:1395 et seq. provide guidance regarding charter revisions by way of a Charter Review Commission (emphasis mine)
Art. VI Sec. 5 of the Constitution lays out the possibility of a charter revision and R.S. 33:1395 gives a bit more of a roadmap to do it, but neither were made operative, only invoked for guidance, by the ordinance – the Charter was, which allows only for amending, not replacing, or a mix and match of the two things. Hence the strange language of the agenda item, which tried to backload the Constitution into the task and claims the replacement of the entirety of the charter as an amendment, something a court might find very suspiciously akin to trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
Yet there’s another problem as well. The Charter, as part of its amendment-only approach, bothers to define what form an amendment should take:
Each amendment, however proposed, may include more than one section of the Charter, provided that it relates to a single subject that must be clearly expressed in the title (emphasis mine).
In no shape, way, fashion, or form does the “amendment” language fit this requirement. It clearly spans multiple subjects across multiple sections that also should raise the hackles of the judiciary.
There are a number of other potential pitfalls such as possible conflicts of interest as well pertaining to the span of meetings and actions taken by the prematurely new members starting with the Aug. 26 through the latest one that courts easily could find violated the law and thereby invalidate whatever happened in those. And at the last meeting the package forwarded by the Commission seemed to continue to recognize its product in part replaced the Charter, which means the resolution itself is defective because it violates the Charter’s requirement that the Council put forth exactly what the Commission proposed.
Altogether, these questionable actions provide more than enough reason for a court to take seriously a suit to stop forwarding any approval to the SBC – seriously enough to miss assuredly the Dec. 7 deadline. And thusly the Oathbreakers, who in shirking their duty are trying to use the courts, would find themselves hoisted on their own petards.
Note this doesn’t even factor in that the SBC at such an exceptionally late date and in light of the questionable legal status of the entire process might refuse to make an exception to cater to this request. And notice how the novel workaround language surrenders on the mootness issue by no longer contending replacement with a “new” charter.
While the Oathbreakers are more certain to keep the citizens’ amendment out of the Charter prior to the next city elections and thereby give them a shot at another term, their chances of executing the rest of their strategy to retain power and privilege are much dimmer.
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