BC rottenness becoming harder to hide

As the Bossier City political insider world continues to crumble, what once could be sidestepped in darkness and silence increasing becomes blatant revealing the rottenness of the entire structure.

The legal ramifications of this worldview and attitude were on full display at the City Council meeting this week. The first hint came with an agenda item telling the world the Council would head into executive session to discuss what was called potential litigation. This is permissible under state public meetings law that shields content about a limited range of topics including legal and personnel actions.

The matters included city money spent on rehabilitation of parking lots supposedly damaged by construction on the nearby Walter O. Bigby Carriageway, but under questionable circumstances that reek of favoritism and cutting corners. More specifically, Republican Councilor David Montgomery had advocated publicly and vociferously for expensive roads work that could increase access to a single business – one owned by a longstanding friend of his who also has a close friendship with an employee in the city’s Public Works Department. Refurbishing and connecting the parking lot of that business, Scot’s Audio, to another, Bossier Power Equipment’s also rehabilitated, would accomplish that objective. Whether related, City Attorney Charles Jacobs, his assistant Richard Ray, and with the approval of Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler but without proper due diligence, authorized the work and in a way that may have violated public bid law.

What happened at the meeting provided a mixture of clarification and obscuration on who was involved in the matter. The matter came to public attention when GOP Councilor Brian Hammons queried Jacobs in open session, whereupon Jacobs gave some scant details later contradicted by others involved. At the subsequent meeting this week, Hammons publicly recited more details. He said community members had contacted him unsolicited about the matter, which led him to asking a few questions. Further, he said that other councilors had no prior knowledge that any of this was going on, implying that the cabal of Chandler, Jacobs, and Ray had engineered the whole thing unbeknownst to any councilor.

To Hammons’ knowledge, that likely is true. But that’s unlikely the actual truth, for two reasons. First, it seems inconceivable that Montgomery was that in the dark. Not only for years has he had his finger in every pie about how the city has operated (who run Bartertown?) and has allied himself closely with Jacobs, but it’s inconceivable that he didn’t know about something happening within spitting distance of his place of business that he had been championing for months involving his lifelong friend.

Second, attendance at the executive session wasn’t compulsory. In fact, it presented risk, as a couple of citizen speakers pointed out, being as if legal repercussions would come from potentially illegal actions previously taken a councilor – even after leaving the Council – could become liable for them by having knowledge of the incident as well as narrow their degree of latitude for actions relevant to any potential court case.

Perhaps for that reason, both Hammons and Republican Councilor Chris Smith recused themselves. But the other five, including all four graybeards who will not be returning to the body in July either because they chose not to run for reelection or, in the case of independent Jeff Darby, lost reelection, participated. If the potential suits didn’t concern them as officials who made decisions acting on behalf of the city, there would be no reason for them to have a briefing on legal strategy. That they did – and especially riskily in the case of GOP Councilor Vince Maggio, the one returning member (barely winning reelection) and the councilor representing the affected real estate – indicates some kind, if as yet publicly unknown, connection to the incident.

That may have been the old Bossier way of doing business – things get done with a wink-wink-nod-nod from the right people and the public never finds out, much less secures accountability for its tax dollars. And it was just a different side of the same coin when largely the same councilors tried to add a last-minute item to that agenda.

The item would have changed the operating rules of the Council, last established at its Jan. 2, 2024 meeting. As a late addition, no published copy of the text needed dissemination to the citizenry, so nobody but councilors even saw that – if even they had had the chance to see it, as it appeared to have been broached less than an hour before the meeting and councilors had held a brief Administrative Council meeting prior to the regular meeting.

This led to complaints by Hammons in particular that he had had no time to review it. The mystery, of course, was why the Council not only felt it had to change its rules but also right then and there in such an expedited fashion. But, because it was an add-on statute requires unanimous consent, Hammons vetoed it by bucking every other councilor to vote against.

Part of the reason for such unbridled haste SOBO.live web site operator Wes Merriott provided as public comment. Long ago Merriott sued the city over its regulations on public expression and how it treated his attempted speech during public comment periods. The policy has constitutionality problems, and Merriott has contended the way it has been applied to him was in violation of his rights to free expression.

The case has dragged on but on the day of the Council meeting a meeting between Merriott’s and the city’s counsel was canceled, the day after councilors were hit with subpoenas for depositions for the trial. Then the rules change attempt suddenly came out of nowhere that Merriott’s counsel believed as a reaction to try to moot the case and erase getting councilors testifying on the record.

That was confirmed less than an hour after the meeting ended, when a special Council meeting was called for three days later in the morning with the rules changes now in print publicly available, as the item of business. The content of the new rules confirmed Merriott’s suspicions. Besides cleaning up unclear verbiage, only two substantive changes were made – deleting the ability of the Council essentially to ban for life a speaker and doubling the number of speakers potentially on a topic – both issues of which at present are the sole issues at the heart of Merriott’s suit.

Trying to ram through as quickly as possible these changes signals at least some councilors fear consequences from testifying, if not believing likely that they would lose. Until the end of this Council’s term in June a majority of graybeards plus Maggio control the Council, so no matter what objections citizens like Merriott may raise in public comment later this week it looks like the majority will pass this to avoid scrutiny and blame for actions of one or more of its members

As in the case of the burgeoning free parking lots, the scrambling going on by those presently in power speaks volumes as to their culpability in providing poor, even illegal or unconstitutional, governance. Surrounding it all, the opaqueness of America’s biggest small town strikes again … hopefully, for the last time as the sands ebb from the formal power the Bossier political establishment insiders have over the city.