The irony is that by the State Bond Commission reluctantly following the law it rewarded a majority of members of the Bossier City Council for breaking it and their oaths of office.
Last week, the SBC met in its regular meeting to review, among other things, the dozens of local government requests to put items on the Mar. 29 election ballot. Included was Bossier City’s controversial requests regarding the end products of its Charter Review Commission.
A subcommittee in October denied fast-tracking the request to make it onto the Dec. 7 ballot. At the time, the subcommittee, headed by Republican Treas. John Fleming, decided that would be premature to eschew the normal schedule as the items were related to matters under litigation. To be precise, one of the three items would impose a consecutive three-term limit on the mayor and city council offices, while a citizen-led initiative would impose that but make it lifetime and retroactive.
The citizen-backed measure also should have gone forward, except that Republican Councilors David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby, violated their oaths of office by refusing to follow the city charter’s directive that the Council must resolve to send to the SBC for ballot approval any petitioned initiative certified by the registrar of voters, as this one was. That led to a citizen suing the city to follow its charter, which a 26th Judicial District Court so ordered just prior to the subcommittee meeting, muddying the legal waters.
Those five oathbreaker councilors then pressed the matter to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which upon its receipt has engaged in head-scratching behavior. First, it didn’t hear the matter in expedited fashion, and when in did in its regular mid-November window it has yet, a month later, to issue a ruling in this open-and-shut matter. Thus, by the time of the full SBC meeting the citizen initiative still had not been forwarded by the Council, meaning it could not be out onto the Mar. 29 ballot at that time.
This made the matter one of some controversy, one that the legislators on the panel – none from the region – nor any of the representatives of the elected executives save Fleming really understood. Leading backers of the initiative testified in front of the SBC that it should delay sending along the CRC products until the courts had acted fully on the initiative.
That would give their version the advantage. Bossier City’s Charter states that in two items appear on the same ballot on the same subject that the one with greater electoral support would take precedence. Both measures under ordinary circumstances would pass easily, but in competition with each side trying to discourage voting for the other’s version, the small group of elites backing the CRC version who wouldn’t vote for the citizens’ would lose out to the greater numbers in the public incensed at the illegal behavior of the Oathbreakers trying to use the CRC process – which only was activated precisely for this purpose – to subvert the citizens’ version who would vote for that version and against the CRC’s.
Some SBC members clearly didn’t have adequate knowledge of the controversy, as their questioning showed. GOP state Rep. Jack McFarland, for example, indicated comfort at the fact that the CRC version had been passed along nearly unanimously, apparently not absorbing that the charter also required Council passage of that yet excusing abrogation of its duty to pass the initiative along and that the Oathbreakers’ frivolous suit sustained the controversy – something that Fleming had to drag out of Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray in questioning and also the fact that the entire controversy would go away instantly if the Oathbreakers simply dropped their appeal, as Fleming finally got Ray to admit.
All of this, lamented the Secretary of State representative Angelique Freel, regrettably thrust a political decision onto a ministerial task. Or, as backer David Crockett testified, by passing along the CRC items compelled by the fact that a city governing authority had sent along a duly authorized resolution but not unable to pass along simultaneously the citizens’ version because a governing authority refused to follow the law in also resolving that to the SBC as a tactic to subvert the citizen’s version rewarded bad behavior by the Oathbreaker Council majority.
This reality put panel members in a tough spot, which some tried to put a good face upon. Republican state Sen. Rick Edmonds, for example, seemed to take comfort in that the two local senators, the GOP’s Adam Bass and Alan Seabaugh, had indicated to him they supported the CRC’s term limit request. Later after the meeting asked to expand on that, Seabaugh said the SBC fulfilled its ministerial duties and so had to approve of that request, and that putting some version of term limits on the ballot was desirable, in case the circuit court ruled against the petitioner.
Others called it what it was. Republican Dixon McMakin aptly observed, with disgust, that the manufactured controversy, after getting Ray to admit a minimum of $40,000 in taxpayer dollars had gone out the door for concocted legal fees, was all a “waste.”
In the end, all but Fleming, probably more than a few unenthusiastically, voted the send along the CRC measures to the Department of State. This doesn’t mean that the competing items won’t appear on the same ballot, as the court could rule that if decided soon enough, but, if not, this creates more headaches for the citizens.
A political problem may occur through a later vote in that the campaign against the citizens’ version becomes stronger if term limits already exist, for opponents could argue the issue is off the table with a form of term limits imposed so there’s no reason to vote for the change. If the CRC version didn’t pass that wouldn’t apply but it probably will, given the popularity of the concept, even if supporters of the citizens’ version voted against it.
A legal problem may happen if the charter changes pass and then opponents later claim the citizens’ term limits version doesn’t count even if passed because it was designed to amend an “old” charter that not longer exists. It’s a long shot to say the least not only because the whole process to change the charter is full of legal holes just waiting to have the final product invalidated that drew it away from being a replacement but also voters could reject the item, which makes no important changes. But, if not, then another harassing, drawn-out legal battle would ensue as the Oathbreakers and their allies would try another sitzkreig.
Things will become clearer once the judicial process is exhausted – bet the farm the circuit court upholds the plaintiff, the Oathbreakers try to take it to the Supreme Court, the Court either rejects that or hears the case and upholds the plaintiffs – and the citizens’ version hits the ballot. Reaching the Mar. 29 ballot with the likely possibility the weaker CRC term limits version passes conveys advantage to the agenda of the Oathbreakers and their insider allies, but there’s a long way to go before the ultimate winners are determined.
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