In the background of an important decision made by the Shreveport City Council today is whether it needs the extra layer of bureaucracy that put it in this spot in the first place.
At December’s beginning, the Shreveport Metropolitan Planning Commission registered a tie vote (because of one absence) on whether to grant a special land use permit for a data center in the city’s west. This effectively denied the application, to the consternation of some policy-makers and especially Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux.
Statute defines and empowers the MPC. Its nine members with six-year staggered terms the mayor appoints with Council approval, all Shreveport residents. It concocts a master plan of zoning and development and must approve changes outside of those parameters. Its budget the Council sets, from which it hires a staff that analyzes proposals and makes recommendations – a staff which had recommended center approval. However, dissenting members said visible public opposition at the meeting had swayed them to reject it.
After that decision, this was appealed to the Council and Arceneaux criticized the outcome. He said he thought the MPC should be folded into city governance – even though there’s almost no way in which it already isn’t.
In the larger scheme of things, Shreveport’s MPC is an outlier. In Louisiana, typically planning commissions combine municipal and parish policy in that an MPC has authority over the land area of the municipality and then up to five miles beyond that into any unincorporated areas of that parish, unless there’s another municipality with an MPC within ten miles where they split the difference. Bossier Parish is a good example, where it has a Bossier City and Haughton MPC that uses the five-mile rule, and a Benton MPC which by statute extends its jurisdiction beyond five miles in some directions. All members of these have one member appointed jointly by the parish and municipality and the of the remaining members half are appointed by each entity.
Because of that appointment regime and jurisdictions in both the parish and municipalities, it makes sense to have these as separate entities from their municipalities. But Shreveport’s isn’t like that. In 2020, the law was changed to remove the five-mile jurisdiction over parish residents’ complaints that they didn’t want a Shreveport-housed entity having power over parish lands. In 2022, the Caddo Parish Commission passed an ordinance creating a separate, parish-based entity to have that authority.
In essence, Shreveport has almost total control over it anyway. All its members the mayor and Council put there, the city controls the budget (although perhaps not as specifically it could), and the Council can overturn any MPC decision it doesn’t like. About the only real power the MPC has independently of the city is to select an executive director – coincidentally, that position will become vacant in a matter of days without a full-time successor yet chosen. That shouldn’t be a big deal as the job exists to support policy-maker decision-making, and elected officials ultimately have the final say over anything.
So, it’s not readily apparent that a move under the city’s aegis would change much of anything. Possibly the difference would be cost savings through some efficiencies. Yet as long as the statute would have to change, greater efficiency would be created by getting rid of the MPC (as well as the Zoning Board of Appeals, which adds yet another intermediary to the process on some matters) and just to create a city planning office to recommend to the Council. One branch vetting the other should be enough to ensure checks and balances.
If nothing is done along the lines desired by Arceneaux, it will change next-to-nothing. A more expansive approach would be worth it. That the Council decided to pass unanimously the overturn and special use permit shows in terms of policy substance how little any change would really matter.
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