BC debt behind call for tax, fee increases

What Bossier City gave to taxpayers with one hand in 2024 the Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration lobbies to take with the other in 2025, creating an election-year problem for graybeard city councilors.

Lost in all the excitement last week over the eventually-thwarted term limits power play instigated by those graybeards – Republican David Montgomery and Jeff Free plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – with their rookie lackey Republican Vince Maggio was the budget workshop presented by the Council, hearing from city Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham about what the 2025 budget will look like that the Council will have to grapple with over the next two months, starting next week. It ended up as an object lesson as to the wages of the profligacy practiced by the graybeards over the past decade and more.

Nottingham painted a discouraging picture. Under current assumptions, she foresaw a $3 million deficit because expenses would increase faster than revenues. The main culprit she fingered was escalating insurance costs although the lingering problem of the state trying to shore up underfunded retirement systems, by passing costs onto local governments, also contributed.

Don't let up in reshaping LA higher education

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and legislative majorities must not let the Louisiana State University System, or any of the state’s higher education boards, off the hook because, for now, they appear to be kowtowing.

Last week at the LSU Board of Supervisors’ meeting the panel, fresh off putting on board some Landry appointments that included Chairman Jimmie Woods, Sr. who Landry named to lead it under a new law granting him that authority, passed a resolution to review all programs in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision that banned preferential treatment by race in higher education admissions. Even though the decision addressed only admissions, the Board used it as a justification, as well as the Legislature’s Act 641 of 2024 that requires reporting on the existence of programs based upon racial or other preferences, that to comply with the act and the decision it would shut down any such programs or bureaucracies. The same resolution implemented the Kalven Principle in the system (the LSU Faculty Senate recently advocated for that), or that institutions remain officially neutral in commenting upon political issues, something that system Pres. William Tate IV had pursued as a matter of policy previously after some years of silence on the subject.

With that, the Board also ratified something long advocated in the space: a ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion statement requirements for hiring faculty members, which serve no useful purpose in educating and requires (at least lip service to) a mindset antithetical to true scholarly inquiry. This echoed a bill that received a committee hearing in the last legislative regular session that was held in abeyance for Louisiana’s four higher education systems to address issues it raised, including this one.

Rejection sends BC to historic city elections

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.

Thumbs up on all LA amendments this cycle

In a state election cycle that looks to end up as a yawner, so do the constitutional amendments voters in Louisiana will be asked to decide on Nov. 5 and Dec. 7.

The earlier date has just an Amendment 1, which would sequester from federal government offshore areas funds from alternative energy royalties to the Coastal Restoration and Protection Fund and therefore used for reclamation and flood control purposes. That’s the arrangement dealing with these one-time dollars for fossil fuel extraction in that region, and it makes sense. YES

The other four appear on the Dec. 7 ballot, and are as equally undramatic, if not also as arcane:

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.