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.

But now the city is squawking about the validity of the request. It points to Ch. 5’s wording (section 5.01) that indicates that it is an ordinance to be proposed. This, it’s argued, creates ambiguity with the first parts of Chapter 3 (City Council, sec. 3.01) and Chapter 4 (mayor, sec. 4.01) which indicate that these elected officials “shall” be eligible for reelection. Hierarchically, an ordinance can’t supersede the charter. To sort things out, the Mayor Tommy Chandler Administration put on the Council agenda a request to have outside counsel review the matter and didn’t cue up a Council vote on the enabling ordinance.

At first glance, this might look like prudence. Republican Chandler – among the very first signatories of the petition – might be trying to ensure before any actions take place that everything is solid legally, rather than taking votes in one form or another or even implementation happening and then have everything upended by a successful legal challenge. Yet a closer look reveals there’s really nothing there except a potential waste of taxpayer dollars on needless advice that could become significant if the city, despite Chandler’s professed desire for term limits even on himself, wants to dig in against it.

Ch. 21 addresses charter changes, which refers clearly to the petition process in 5.01 as a means of proposing amendments (sec. 21.01(b)). Further, it reinforces that idea in its discussion of submission of amendments as a byproduct of a petitioning process (sec. 21-04). Even to those without legal training, it seems crystal clear that, in this particular process, the charter permits ordinance to trigger charter amending – much like it allows the Council to approve job searches within the executive branch by way of ordinance.

That calls into question why the city not only would spend resources trying to cast doubt on the legality of the two proposals, one affecting the mayor’s job and the other city councilor posts, but also employ additionally costly outside counsel to do it. After all, it has City Attorney Charles Jacobs and his assistant Richard Ray on the payroll.

If one wanted to defeat the proposals, one way to maximize the chances of succeeding would be to drag out the process as much as possible. Going to outside counsel advances this agenda by ensuring the Council doesn’t have to address the matter until towards the end of the 30-day window, or even longer by setting the stage to try to avoid that by going to court, favorable opinion in hand. Of course, proponents in response simply could, using the courts if necessary, have it put on the Nov. 18 (deadline Sep. 25) ballot by noting the Council failed to pass the ordinance within 30 days.

But the end game may be to try to force the measure off that ballot by gambling on getting a 26^th District judge to agree with the invalidity argument. The thing about legal opinions, both of lawyers and judges, is that the law often is flexible enough where a preferred argument can be shoehorned into existence. Even though a mountain of other parts of the law, past opinions, and the like may counter that interpretation, shunting those away and concentrating on the desired end state often finds a path to it. Jacobs himself provides a classic example when a district judge with his ruling that Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District Executive Director Robert Berry did not violate dual officeholding law by simultaneously being on the District’s Board of Commissioners, which later the Louisiana Supreme Court in no uncertain terms overruled him, instructing lower courts to rule exactly the opposite.

Of course, usually (but not always) the day of reckoning comes when a flawed ruling gets fixed. However, its presence can delay that comeuppance to a more politically opportune time, and in this instance it’s when the proposals hit the ballot. A straightforward following of the law places that at a bad date for opponents: where the general election runoff for parish and state offices guarantees a relatively high turnout. The instinct of the greater proportion of casual voters who turn out for these defaults to favoring term limits, so the higher the turnout, the more support for term limits.

The real end game is to try to push it to a special election as a single ballot item, which in Bossier Parish voting under these conditions often fails even crack single digits in turnout. Certainly, motivated pro-limits voters will show up, but those with vested interests in allowing unlimited terms and their allies would have their best chance of enough turnout to draw level or better under a low-stimulus scenario as this.

The goal could be to push it back to the Apr. 27, 2024 municipal general election, trying to pass by the Nov. 15 deadline that would put the propositions onto another high-stimulus ballot, the presidential preference primaries on Mar. 23, 2024. For Bossier City residents, it would be the only item on the ballot on that date.

Given it’s such a stretch to conclude the entire petitioning process was legally infirm, the city trying to undermine it only makes sense as a rearguard action to push the inevitable voting on the propositions into a window less favorable for passage. Not only is this an abject waste of taxpayer dollars, it also is a subversive use of the people’s money to try to thwart them from exercising their popular will.