Opaquely, Bossier govts defuse, issue threats

Operating squarely within their histories of lack of transparency, Bossier Parish and Bossier City’s legislative organs recently tackled controversial legal issues differently, one to the benefit and one to the detriment of the citizenry.

The Police Jury appoints a member to the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, and that current term expires at the end of the month. Held at present by Robert Berry, controversy arose when, two terms back, Berry and his fellow commissioners appointed him also as executive director. This eventually caught the attention of the state’s attorney general as a violation of dual officeholding, and after a protracted legal battle this spring the Louisiana Supreme Court instructed lower courts to rule along those lines.

Even so, the district’s Board of Commissioners petitioned for Berry’s reappointment. Perhaps one reason was, according to public comments made at their meetings, it had become dependent on Berry to make and execute decisions on its behalf, and another maybe being that state law would force Berry if leaving the Board to resign as executive director, as a former member generally of a state board can’t be employed by it until two years pass after end of service, so commissioners wanted to keep him in that job.

But that wish simply didn’t comport to legal reality. At the meeting, a parade of Berry’s and the District’s lawyers (it’s uncertain to this point how many taxpayer dollars they have burned on trying to fight the state’s case, but it’s certainly into six figures and probably a tenth or more of all District expenses annually over the last two or three years), other commissioners, his friends, and family spoke about how great of a guy he was and how great of a job he had done and how the decision hadn’t actually kicked him out of office, all arguing for reappointment.

RINOs, strategic Democrats dilute history-making

The Louisiana Legislature made history in the 2023 Veto Session, in the process giving some Republicans a chance to display their middle fingers to Louisianans and some Democrats to gamble on fooling enough voter to gain successful reelection.

Louisiana's most remarkable legislative passage ever occurred when HB 648 by Republican state Rep. Gabe Firment crossed the finish line. This was a bill rogue GOP state Sen. Fred Mills (aided by some stupid planning by Sen. Pres. Page Cortez) killed in committee, only to have it resurrected through rarely-used parliamentary procedures, killed again by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, only to have the veto session reanimate it into law, representing the first time ever a regular session bill had its veto successfully overridden.

The bill prohibits medical interventions, whether chemical or surgical, to alter a minor’s sex. It simply became a litmus test that even the most shallow Republicans and Democrats endangered for reelection had to support because it so self-evidently was needed. In their remarks carrying the bill in their respective chambers, Firment and Republican state Sen. Jay Morris demolished the evidence-free and weak argumentation of opponents to establish that children didn’t have the maturity to make such an irreversible decision, that many who in their haste did later regretted it, that such procedures often addressed a symptom of an underlying disorder and wasn’t the disorder, that these didn’t stop suicidal ideation for many, and that worldwide (within the last year country after country has placed similar bans on these actions) medical opinion supported such bans while further research occurred.

Bossier jurors display reelection vulnerability

This week, Bossier Parish police jurors can choose whether to dig their political gravesites a little deeper when they decide who to represent them on the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District.

The agency has been mired in controversy for years with the ongoing dispute over whether the Jury’s two-time appointee to five-year terms, Robert Berry, also can serve as the district’s executive director. This spring, the Louisiana Supreme Court answered that question definitively by ordering lower courts to rule that Berry’s continued service in both positions violated the state’s dual officeholding statute.

Nonetheless, with Berry’s term ending in a couple of weeks, the agency’s Board of Commissioners (with his recusal) inexplicably asked for his reappointment despite no evidence that he intended to resign as executive director, which is the only legal way he could continue. Unless the Jury wants its slot on the Board, its composition filled with area parish government agency representatives, to go vacant, it must decide in this week’s meeting either to reappoint Berry to a third term, appoint somebody else which would allow Berry legally to stay on as executive director, or leave the spot unfilled.

Many worthy bills begging for veto override

Several obvious reversals are on tap for Louisiana’s upcoming veto session, but the balloting that affirmed this regathering of the Legislature provides clues as to what other worthy legislation should be resurrected, and why these bills might be, after their attempted murders by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

 

This marks the third year in a row a veto session will have convened – previously for the 2021 Regular Session and for the First Extraordinary Session of 2022 – but the first with better-than two-thirds supermajorities attached. Only 31 of 105 representatives and 12 of 39 senators sent in ballots requesting cancellation.

 

That distribution didn’t quite fall along partisan lines. With no party state Rep. Joe Marino sending in a ballot, Democrat state Sens. Katrina Jackson and Greg Tarver essentially switched places with Republican state Sens. Fred Mills and Rogers Pope. Among other representatives, Democrat state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams, Chad Brown, and Robby Carter all withheld ballots.

BC offers wasting money to thwart popular will

Perhaps coming as no surprise, Bossier City doesn’t appear ready to want to make history and desires to waste more taxpayer dollars in the process.

Earlier this month, organizers of a charter change that would place term limits on city elected officials, three for all past and present mayors and councilors, successfully completed the petition drive. The city charter says a third of the amount of votes cast from the previous mayoral election, of valid registered city voters at the time of petition submission to the parish registrar of voters, may ask for this, which was verified by her – a first in the city’s history.

The city charter in Chapter 5 outlines the process. After successful submission, the Council must pass an ordinance in favor of each of the propositions within 30 days of reception – practically speaking, during this week’s or the Aug. 1 meeting. If not, it must call an election for the public to weigh in within 90 days. That would force the election on Nov. 18 (the Oct. 14 ballot having closed out earlier this week), along with other parish and state runoff elections.

BC won't stop frittering away taxpayer bucks

A lot can happen in 22 minutes with the Bossier City Council – at its most recent meeting, too much of it not good for taxpayers in America’s biggest small town.

The Council faced a short agenda last week, having just met the week before with a holiday thrown in. Nonetheless, it managed to revisit two contentious items from the past and managed to botch both.

One readdressed the convoluted scheme to pay extra for crossing guards at city roads around two schools. Each institution lies just outside of city limits, but city roads access these. Until last year, the Bossier Parish School Board – with a budget substantially larger than the city’s – had school resource officers, who are sheriff’s deputies contracted to schools, direct traffic prior to and just after the school day but decided to have SROs stay in schools during these times. Instead of absorbing the costs, the Board cheekily billed both the city and parish for these, both of whom knuckled under – even though in the city’s case it didn’t pay up until three months after the school year started with the Board eating several thousand dollars of cost until the city forked over.

Succeeding Prator to act as political barometer

The Caddo Parish sheriff’s contest looms as the highest-profile this election cycle among the chief law enforcement officers and tax collectors of Louisiana, while also serving as a barometer of political change.

All but Orleans Parish will vote on these offices this fall, although the new terms won’t begin until the middle of 2024. The most populous, East Baton Rouge, finds Democrat long-tine Sheriff Sid Gautreaux at this point without competition, as occurred last time. But the next highest-populated, Caddo will welcome a newcomer with the deferral of Republican even longer-time Sheriff Steve Prator to attempt a seventh term.

At the beginning of June, Prator was all ready to go for that, but by the end of the month opted out after he evaluated his health as more tenuous than he had realized and decided to retire. Not long after he had announced he would run for reelection, Democrat Henry Whitehorn said he would entering the race, although claiming it wasn’t as a mission to oppose Prator. Republican Eric Hatfield, a perennial candidate with an extremely checkered past of legal problems and controversy over a stint as a constable that led to his defeat also has said he will run.

Bossier Jury must answer for unlawful behavior

The Bossier Parish Police Jury, and particularly Parish Administrator Joe E. “Butch” Ford, are back in hot water because an elected parish official, normally an establishment ally of theirs, carried out his sworn duties.

Ford has been mired in controversy ever since, without a formal search, he was named administrator at the start of 2022. State law mandates that such officials register to vote in the parish that they helm, but since the mid-1980s Ford had maintained a residence in Caddo Parish, had a homestead exemption attached to it, and had registered to vote there.

In fact, Ford didn’t change his registration to a Bossier Parish address until ten months into his contract, violating the law throughout. And when he did, he ran into another problem: his registration didn’t match his exemption, which state law said had to happen if a registrant declared a homestead. That took another three months to occur.

Inevitable veto session seeks double history

Perhaps the Louisiana Legislature will blaze yet another new trail this month, in two ways dealing with gubernatorial vetoes.

This branch of state government, with each chamber now controlled by Republican supermajorities, began making history in 2021 when for the first time it cued up a veto session in response to Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoing high-profile popular bills passed by large majorities. With the House GOP then a bit below supermajority status required to meet override vote goals, it failed to repair the damage.

But it succeeded in 2022 when it had another veto session, although attached to a special session that led to the former occurring during the period allotted to the regular session. There, it went one-for-one in restoring congressional maps Edwards had vetoed.

Bossier establishment seeks to take down Mills

Even a less-demonstrative legislator can’t return to office without putting up a fight if he isn’t part of the good-old-boy network in the Bossier Parish.

Last month, Republican state Sen. Robert Mills received a challenge from GOP School Board Member Adam Bass for his Senate District 36 spot. Mills joins Republican state Rep. Dodie Horton in drawing opposition, in her case from GOP businessman Chris Turner, while Republican state Rep. Alan Seabaugh is looking to make the jump to the state Senate seat shared by Caddo and Bossier Parishes, conceptually the same as that held by term-limited GOP state Sen. Barrow Peacock, and who faces opposition from retired basketball coach Mike McConathy from the GOP.

Horton drew the ire of the parish’s political establishment when she spearheaded efforts to bring accountability to the Cypress Black Bayou Water Conservation and Recreation District, while Seabaugh’s sin was to back insurgent candidates in Bossier City elections. Yet Mills, by contrast, has kept a low profile in parish politics, whose majority-Bossier district after reapportionment will shift more decisively into the parish for the next eight years.