Flawed BC charter review invites litigation

The freak show finally concluded that was the Bossier City political establishment’s drive to stave off strict term limits on its mayor and city councilors, but it appears that by no means has this story reached its end

The Council emitted a last-minute gasp to keep alive the chance of deflecting a citizen petition that places on the ballot three-term retroactive and lifetime limits when at a hastily-called Oct. 10 special meeting it passed a resolution to attempt to put on the Dec. 7 ballot votes on three amendments to the charter from its politically-connected Charter Review Commission: a relaxed three-term limit, not lifetime nor retroactive, for councilors, a similar one for the mayor, and an omnibus amendment trying to roll about 160 changes into one. Its tardiness in not having this ready for the regular Oct. 8 meeting agenda meant it had to have unanimous Council approval for consideration, which was not forthcoming then.

If successfully placed on that ballot, the term limits measures would exist alongside the ones in the petition due to be placed on a future ballot, which is subject at present to a spurious appeal by Republican Councilors David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby to an order forcing them to resolve to put it on the ballot. They have used lawfare to evade their oath-bound Charter duty that makes it unlikely the petition measures would be on the Dec. 7 ballot. That means voters could vote into existence the relaxed term limits measure, then months later up the ante with the stricter version.

That would be regardless of whether the omnibus amendment passes, according to city attorneys. After months of describing the Commission’s task as one of replacing the Charter, at this meeting and in the language used – differing from any previous phrasing and apparently different from that actually forwarded by the Commission prior to being rephrased despite a Charter prohibition of that – both in the “amendment” and in articulations about it, as being “amended and restated.” This was a ploy to evade the Charter’s empowerment of the Commission as only to amend the document as reflected in the enabling ordinance (#154 of 2023). Thus, city attorneys backed off a previous assertion that were the petition amendments to pass after the charter “changes” went into effect, they actually would be moot because these were amending an “old” charter no longer in existence.

This trying to make a replacement look like one big amendment is just one of many probable legal defects to the process and product that are certain to draw litigation over the next few months, starting almost certainly almost immediately, that could keep the Commission’s handiwork off the Dec. 7 ballot or invalidate any passage should these stay on it and receive majority approval. And besides this language tightrope, two other defects emerged as a result of the meeting.

For one thing, no ordinance as yet backs the resolution, a legal gray area. The backing ordinance won’t be considered until the Council’s Oct. 22 meeting, and it may be illegal to forward the resolution until the ordinance passes. Yet to wait on that means to miss deadlines, set by the State Bond Commission and the Secretary of State, for the item to appear on the Dec. 7 ballot which the Bossier establishment desperately needs so that the vote on its relaxed term limits measures comes prior to the petition’s strict versions. If its versions pass, the establishment then can argue for voting against the strict versions in la later election in that a form of limits already exists.

So, the cart was put before the horse – but that’s not the only timing problem. The enabling ordinance stated that the Council “shall call for an election for the citizens to adopt or reject the recommended revisions at the next election allowed by Louisiana law, but no earlier than sixty (60) days following publication of the recommendations” (emphasis mine).

Oct. 8 was exactly 60 days out for the election, but at the time no recommendations were forwarded. The language didn’t appear in published form until Oct. 10, or only 58 days prior to the election. That makes the city in violation of its ordinance and if challenged could scuttle the entire Dec. 7 effort. (And there’s a question over whether the published agenda actually was in place the required 24 hours prior to the special meeting.)

Other than the second reading of the ordinance approving the (tardily-)published product of the Commission, which the Charter says must happen (even though the above-mentioned councilors violated that in regard to their sworn duties by failing to do so for the petition language in the Jul. 30 meeting, either explicitly there or implicitly through absence), that ends the formal city involvement on the matter as laid out in the Charter. But whether any of the product ever makes it to the voters is a story just beginning.