BC reformers shouldn't throw away winning hand

The next moves have been played in the Bossier City term limits drama, but don’t change the dynamics that put reformers in the driver’s seat.

Last week, Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s office replied to a City Council resolution of Aug. 15 seeking a legal opinion of the status of a petition certified Jul. 10 by the parish registrar of voters. The city, relying both on its city attorney Charles Jacobs and an outside opinion written by a lawyer who had worked with the city previously but who has no particular expertise in this area of law, questioned whether the petition followed state law and the charter.

The AG’s office declined to assess that, stating that it represents registrars of voters and therefore could not involve itself. Whereupon GOP Mayor Tommy Chandler placed back on the Council’s Aug. 29 agenda an item passed over two weeks earlier: calling an election to have the electorate consider the petition’s lifetime three-term limit, past and future, on elected officials.

But that also will share space with a resolution proposed by no party Councilor Jeff Darby – who along with Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, Vince Maggio, and Democrat Bubba Williams previously had voted down an attempt by Chandler to put tardily on the Aug. 1 agenda the other method to amend the charter by petition, by a Council vote within 30 days of petition certification – to call for a charter review commission. That would launch a months-long process that could add some form of term limits to the charter after voter approval, along with any other items the commission backs.

This signals, at the very least, the Council majority resisting term limits feels sufficiently threatened by the petition to feel it operates from a position of weakness. If the petition language successfully passed voter muster, four of those five would be out of a job come 2025. Proposing this alternative attempts to negotiate a settlement short of this outcome.

The likely deal behind closed doors is for petition backers, both on the Council and within the public, to abandon the effort to put the petition on the ballot in exchange for the commission recommending limits – even though limits backers Chandler and Republican Councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons could appoint only four of the nine commission members, short of the needed majority to make recommendations. Thus, the Council majority would pledge to appoint members in support of limits, but only if these apply starting with the 2025 term, or perhaps with the commission unlikely to have everything ready prior to 2025 elections the item could be a retroactive lifetime limit, but starting with the 2029 term, buying time for the graybeards, who by then all will have hit ages to draw Social Security full retirement benefits, to stay one more term if they win reelection.

That being the case, Smith, Hammons, and citizen backers should approve of Darby’s measure – and also Chandler’s, because they hold all the cards. The charter’s language on the matter is unyielding:

Where the petition contains a request that the ordinance be submitted to a vote of the people, if not passed without veto by the City Council, the City Council shall either pass without veto the ordinance without alteration within thirty (30) days after attachment of the certificate of the registrar of voters to the petition; or forthwith after the registrar of voters has attached his/her certificate to the petition, the City Council shall call an election to be held within ninety (90) days thereafter.

A certified petition was received Jul. 10 and stands before the Council. Since it didn’t pass into amendment an ordinance prior to Aug. 9, the Council now must resolve by Nov. 7 to have a referendum on the petition language – setting up a Mar. 23, 2024 election during presidential preference primaries, or if passed by the Sep. 19 regular Council meeting it could make the Nov. 18 statewide general election runoff ballot – to comply with the charter. The charter doesn’t make exceptions for petitions believed to have legal infirmities; it addresses only certified petitions. Failure to pass that resolution by Nov. 7 violates the Charter and opens the city to litigation. It has no option not to do this unless it deliberately chooses to violate the law.

Jacobs, perhaps delivering a message on behalf of the Council majority, repeatedly has said litigation will ensure if the election is approved, along the lines of years down the road a disqualified councilor under the petition language will sue to get on the ballot. Well, guess what? That litigation will come sooner if the Council doesn’t put that language on the ballot.

And if Jacobs, et. al. worry about potential future legal challenges to a petition that voters put into the Charter, the commission could take care of that by addressing term limits. Of course, what term limits backers should do is load up recommendations popular with voters – ordinarily term limits themselves in any form undoubtedly will pass any citizen vote – but anathema to the Council graybeards, such as ethics reform that curtails the chance to make a fortune off of taxpayers as has Montgomery – and dare the Council majority commission representatives, who will have a 5-4 majority, to vote these down to leave only watered down term limits that would amend stronger limits voted in previously, and if that happens then lobby the electorate to deep six the commission’s recommendations at the polls. Better, they could get a tradeoff of weaker term limits (at least for a few years) in exchange for a whole bunch of structural reforms making Bossier City government far more prudent, less insider, and more transparent and accountable to the people.

Even if the Council majority wants to play hardball and votes down the resolution calling the election, this doesn’t forestall litigation and the very act puts them on the record not only opposing term limits but also acting illegally. Neither would look good for attempted reelection bids, if eligible, in 2025.

The combination of Smith and Hammons must bring up and second the agenda item calling the election – which temporally follows the Darby commission item on the agenda – and put the Council majority on the record, if not on the hook. They and other term limits backers shouldn’t let blandishments by a power-hungry, untrustworthy Council majority tempt them to throw away a winning hand that could pay off far beyond the issue at hand.