With its strategy blown up earlier this week, the Bossier political establishment finds itself on the back foot as perhaps the most consequential set of elections in Bossier City’s history looms next spring.
It’s hard to know what has delivered more whiplash – contradictory pronouncements of what is the law made by Bossier City’s Legal Department or the saga of term limits – but for sure is that events at the State Bond Commission upended again the tussle over term limits on city councilors and the mayor. That’s as a result on Oct. 14 of the SBC taking the rare step of deferring to send to the Secretary of State (with a deadline to receive that day) the city’s request for voters to vet on Dec. 7 three items.
What first began as a forced march, which turned into a death march, but which finally became a quick march, Bossier City’s politically-motivated Charter Review Commission spat out three “amendments” for review which the SBC must perform by law for administrative rectitude, two of which unambiguously met the definition of a discrete and specific change in the city’s Charter: one placing a relaxed three-term non-lifetime prospective limit on the mayor, and another on city councilors. The political establishment behind the Commission with its members and allies on the panel pulled out all the stops to try to make the Dec. 7 ballot in an effort to derail a citizen petition that presented to voters strict three-term lifetime and retroactive limits on the mayor and councilors.
The two-pronged strategy involved the five establishment councilors – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby, all of whom except Maggio would be unable to run in Mar. 29 city elections were the petition language to appear on the Dec. 7 ballot and pass – was to delay the petition amendments from appearing on the Dec. 7 ballot and cram through their own version instead. That way, when inevitably the petition language appeared on the ballot – caught up in the judicial system when the establishment councilors violated their oaths of office and refused to send that language to the SBC, forcing a citizen to file for a writ to force them to follow the Charter’s dictate to forward the petition language to the SBC that was affirmed in district court but then appealed by the Oathbreakers – as long as on Dec. 7 the relaxed term limits measures grudgingly accepted by the establishment received majority voter approval its members could campaign against passage of the stricter version in the spring by saying term limits already were in place, thereby discouraging chances of voter approval of the stricter version.
Part of that strategy as well was to have the other “amendment” on the ballot and hopefully succeed. This omnibus item swallowed about 160 specific changes to the Charter and for months it and its progenitors City Attorney Charles Jacobs but more often Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray referred to as part of a process to “replace” the Charter, as had been attempted in 2004 and succeeded in 2005. Months ago, this space pointed out that the enabling ordinance made this replacement strategy illegal, which Ray publicly dismissed not long after – only at the last minute for him to make dramatic changes in the proposition language creating dramatic contrast to the 2004-05 language presented to voters and he began to refer to that amendment using Orwellian language that instead the item “amended and restated” the Charter.
In doing so, the establishment seemed to jettison the benefits of its replacement strategy – if gaining approval of that kind of item before or simultaneously with the strict version, it then could claim a new charter was in effect and thus mooted the petitioned amendments. Supplementing that, in the special City Council meeting that sent the resolution with the Commission items to the SBC Ray argued repeatedly that voter approval of that item would not create a “new” charter.
At the same time, however, the other two items forwarded contained the phrasing “the existing City Charter for Bossier City or the amended and restated City Charter set forth in Proposition No. 1, if approved,” implying that there was an “old” and “new” charter involved. As such, it added yet another example to the Legal Department talking out of both sides of its mouth.
Citizens didn’t take this power play lying down, and availed themselves of their right to send comments to and address the SBC at its subcommittee meeting, made up of representatives of a couple of its members plus Chairman Republican Treasurer John Fleming, who once represented Bossier City as a U.S. Member of Congress. Another citizen that day filed for a temporary restraining order that the Oct. 10 special meeting approval violated the enabling ordinance in that this occurred fewer than 60 days prior to the election.
Speaking to the SBC, leaders of the Bossier Term Limits coalition David Crockett and Duke Lowrie reiterated two points: the city’s request was part of a politicized process designed to squelch the strict version by trying to preempt, grudgingly, with the relaxed version and suspicion that the surrender on the “replacement” tactic wasn’t genuine, and that myriad legal defects existed to the entire process that made sending the submission to the Dec. 7 ballot risky – although many of these would be mooted, including the issue brought up in the TRO request, if the matters appeared on the Mar. 29 ballot.
Regardless, several legal defects Ray tried to rebut to the SBC. Regrettably, in attempting this he seemed bound to a tactic of repeating the same distortion – “amended and restated” – and falsehood – that this language was the same as the 2004-05 language – as well implying that as the 2004-05 efforts had the effect of charter replacements this therefore arrogated the power to do that despite the Charter indicating otherwise, as if repeating these things enough times cured all defects.
But what really sunk his case is that he had no adequate answer, or even any answer, to the fact that the Charter dictates that “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). Clearly the “amended and restated” item failed to adhere to that.
This inability to demonstrate on this matter that there didn’t exist credible scenarios that courts would postpone or invalidate results of elections the SBC sniffed out, which Fleming explained at the time and would later restate but not amend through public media as there being too many unresolved legal questions and no emergency at hand necessitating immediate ballot placement, so the request could be deferred presumably to make the deadline for the Mar. 29 ballot. In doing this, the panel specifically rejected the nonsensical city argument that there would be greater clarity by having the establishment’s items go first, especially as it has admitted if the stricter language gained approval it would amend whatever form the Charter may take and the Charter itself addresses what happens when contradictory items – the relaxed and strict versions – appear simultaneously, which is the one with the most votes takes precedence if each pass, a collision that now appears almost certain to happen on Mar. 29.
That’s what the establishment fears and made its members immediately reach for Fleming voodoo dolls into which to stick pins as soon as the rejection occurred. What will happen on that date is the wide support for retroactive lifetime term limits (as captured in polling data some weeks ago) will translate into high support for the strict version, but the more politically-aware and -active term limits supporters who outnumber the establishment will vote against the relaxed version, giving the actuarial win to the strict version. And to play it safe, they probably would vote against the omnibus “amendment” as well and perhaps defeat that.
Not to be lost in all of this is that the graybeards among the Oathbreakers – all but Maggio, although Williams says he doesn’t plan to run for reelection – did achieve their paramount objective in being able to run yet again, as long as the courts don’t find their failure to follow the Charter was so egregious that this should delay city elections to the May 3 ballot to let the Mar. 29 ballot resolve the term limits question, which in practicality might well be their desired term in office anyway since they’d be pushing at least their late sixties in 2029. But strict term limit amendment success would impair, if not prevent, the dynastic and decades-long hold on power that political figures have had typically in Bossier City’s past that has empowered the establishment.
That’s what makes this SBC decision potentially monumental in a game-change of the city’s political dynamics, and elevates the Mar. 29 elections, already to decide Council seats and the mayor’s office, to such a level of importance.
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