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.

Lawmakers turn up tort reform heat on Landry

In perhaps the only major rift that has developed between legislative Republicans and GOP Gov. Jeff Landry in their first year in this term of office, party lawmakers have turned up the heat on Landry over tort reform that influences vehicle insurance rates.

Backed by a good deal of trial lawyer money, Landry has appeared lukewarm on the issue of reform away from a legal structure weighed in favor of plaintiffs and the legal community that backs them. His most defiant move came in vetoing HB 423 by Republican state Rep. Mike Melerine this past session. That bill would have limited payouts by defendants to the actual amount of costs, plus up to 30 percent of the difference between the amount billed and the amount paid to plaintiff’s medical providers calculated from actual billing for insurance premiums and attorney fees, unless the defendant proves it to be unreasonable. Present law authorizes a flat 40 percent.

That bill actually represented a compromise. GOP state Sen. Alan Seabaugh had one which wasn’t heard that did away with paying out any difference at all, something neighboring Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas do, which is termed the collateral source rule. In his veto message of HB 423, Landry defended its presence on what he called its fairness in reimbursing foresight and advocacy, although the note didn’t address whether the current law created a fair framework for determining that amount possibly improved by the bill.

Police HQ controversy eroding Arceneaux image

It’s taken a couple of years, but Shreveport Republican Mayor Tom Arceneaux finally has started encountering some drama that served as a hallmark of his predecessor that impedes his low margin for error in reelection.

Even before he took office and throughout his term, Democrat former Mayor Adrian Perkins embarked upon a string of controversies involving questionable deals, questionable personnel moves, personal behavior that conveyed a disinterest in the job, and neglect of pressing city needs in favor of quixotic policy pursuits. Often this meandering brought him to clashes with the City Council, even though his party held a majority on it throughout his term.

In part, the electorate’s counterreaction to Perkins’ accidental mayoral reign thrust Arceneaux into the job, a white Republican in a majority black city, most of whom register as and vote for Democrats. This has the city’s Democrats in power, all black, licking their chops for 2026 hoping to ride these voter demographics to make Arceneaux a one-term mayor, and from time to time the Council, now with a 5-2 black Democrat majority, has played these electoral politics to cast aspersions on Arceneaux’s governance.

BC oath violators' hypocrisy reaches new heights

The Bossier City Council Oathbreakers are a persistent bunch when it comes to thwarting citizen rule, but even that won’t pay off with their latest ploy.

The Oathbreakers – Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio plus Democrat Bubba Williams and independent Jeff Darby – earned that sobriquet as they on multiple occasions violated their oaths of office by refusing to uphold the city charter’s mandate that they must forward to voters a charter amendment that creates lifetime retroactive three-term limits for city councilors and the mayor, as by a successful citizen petition. As this would disqualify all but Maggio from among them for reelection next year, they have fought tooth and nail to sabotage in any way the amendment, which came about when the registrar of voters duly certified the document in July,

It began when the petition began circulating again last year at this time, after the Oathbreakers initially had rendered another inoperative for a technicality in the courts. The strategy involved invoking a charter review commission a majority of its members they appointed, mostly political insiders and allies. Initially, it was supposed that it would take the wind out of the sails of the citizen petitioners.

Bold rate policy can determine LPSC winner

While it’s a foregone conclusion that a climate realist will join the Louisiana Public Service Commission in 2025, why not start with some wind behind the sails?

The realists are Republican state Sen. Jean-Paul Coussan and GOP former state Sen. Julie Quinn. Both have described themselves as advocates of an all-of-the-above, let-the-lowest-priced-reliable-energy-source-win model for rate determination. By contrast, political newcomer Democrat Nick Laborde takes a climate alarmist approach favoring renewable sources.

Disturbingly, he vouches for returning to a net metering framework that essentially has almost every ratepayer subsidize the lifestyle choice of a few as a method to increase the proportion of renewable energy in the produced portfolio. This would lead to much higher costs for consumers because then the utility forced to buy renewable power from a customer at retail has to build reliable redundancy into the system, such as adding a peak combined-cycle natural gas plant, and charge consumers for it (or, impossibly both physically and financially, building out battery capacity).

Bossier Jury asks victim taxpayers to thank it

The Bossier Parish Police Jury blinked as well, but did so as part of what appears to be a plan to boost its image while deflecting from the fact for years it overtaxed parish property owners.

Bossier Parish property owners were looking at some hefty tax increases this year. Republican Sheriff Julian Whittington as well as a fire district foisted some onto their constituent by refusing to roll back entirely tax rates as instigated in the Constitution. Every four years after reassessment, the total amount collected by a government on properties not improved and held by the same owners is not in the aggregate to change if assessments went higher unless a taxing authority by a supermajority (in the case of a single executive like the sheriff, by his decision) refuses to allow a roll back in tax rates to compensate, which then means it can boost tax rates from that level all the way up to the one authorized by law.

Even with a roll back, unless assessed and sale values have decreased, with the property improvements and higher uses that have occurred in the previous four years within their boundaries entities will see more money coming into their coffers than previously. The intent behind the automatic roll back unless overridden is to prevent the vast majority of property owners who don’t use their property in and of itself for income generation through its lease or rental from having to pay more on a long-term asset for which they receive at present no capital gain, if any.