BC term limits still delayed, but likely coming

While the battle still rages over term limits hitting the ballot in Bossier City this fall, momentum appears headed in the direction that some form, if delayed and diluted, of these will come into being sooner rather than later.

Last month, the turmoil kicked off when a group of citizens had certified a petition, as authorized under the city charter, that invoked one of the two methods to amend the charter to include term limits. The petition process allows for the City Council to amend the charter directly through ordinance, using the exact language of the ballot propositions, within 30 days of receipt; if not done, then the Council is required to call an election within the next 90 days after with the exact proposition language put upon the ballot. The other process has the Council form a charter review commission whose members it and the mayor appoint, which then formulates amendments that the Council must put on the ballot.

Prior to the Aug. 8 deadline, at the last Council meeting prior to that Aug. 1 Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler tried to have the enabling ordinance introduced, but he missed the deadline which required unanimous Council approval for the addition. Instead, councilors Republicans David Montgomery, Jeff Free, and Vince Maggio, plus Democrat Bubba Williams and no party Jeff Darby, vetoed that – an atypical move, as the Council historically hardly ever has denied putting tardy submissions on the agenda.

Undeterred, Chandler tried again at the next regular meeting, Aug. 15. He also submitted a resolution to call the election, apparently as a backup plan in case the same bloc that prevented consideration of the ordinance to amend voted it down. These reflected the petition: that anyone serving as mayor or councilor could serve only three terms in their lifetimes. Darby, Free, Montgomery, and Williams would be unable to run for reelection under this language.

Throughout all of this, apparently that bloc had utilized mayoral appointee City Attorney Charles Jacobs – who works for both the mayor and Council – to find outside counsel to review an alleged problem with the petition. That counsel, Katie Bell who doesn’t hold out having expertise in the area of local charters, was misrepresented by Jacobs as not having worked on city legal matters in any capacity, when in fact she had.

Jacobs also prior to the most recent Council meeting had refused to release the contents of the rendered opinion, which originally was said to have an indeterminate release date but subsequently was said to have come out just after the Aug. 1 meeting. Instead of making it public immediately thereafter, he waited until this meeting to do so and revealed a possible point of contention exploiting the charter’s technical demand that the petition be in the form of ordinance for the Council to consider amendment by ordinance, but also that the charter asked for the petition’s language to be exportable to a ballot proposition called by resolution in the form of a question, as by state statute. The petition opted for the latter approach.

Yet if the bloc against had a legal out on passing an ordinance to amend, it had no clear option to use legal niceties as an excuse to vote against a resolution to call an election to amend. The charter language does not yield as it maintains the Council “shall” call that. Opponents therefore could use the excuse of legal infirmity only if you bought the argument that potential invalidity of one option of the petition method spilled over to make the other option also invalid even as it seemed in adherence with the charter and state law. Only invoking his microscopically thin reed convincingly would prevent exposure of those casting a vote against not only as opposing term limits, but also as violating the charter.

So, another ploy became necessary to prevent a vote on term limits regardless of outcome that could be politically damaging to the bloc, which, as the opinion mentioned, was in statute stating that any petition delivered to a registrar of voters must contain, among other things, the year of birth of a signatory that the petition didn’t have. Some doubt exists about whether absence of this truly invalidated the petition, as other identifying information seemed more than adequate, so in response the Council resolved to have the Attorney General’s office render a decision. In turn, they also deleted the agenda items involving the ordinance – which had a problem anyway in that the 30-day window had expired – and resolution, with only Republican Councilor Chris Smith in opposition.

This series of events prompted Republican Councilor Brian Hammons to complain he previously had suggested obtaining an AG opinion, and that there had been no need to waste taxpayer dollars and time on a the matter that, if these were the problems allegedly with the petition, the city’s legal department could not have discovered. Jacobs, backed by Montgomery, in response provided stream-of-consciousness verbiage that said issue clarification was required first, whiffing entirely on the fact that clarification comes before opinion rendering and that just as easily occurs in house as in now asking the AG to reinvent the wheel.

Hammons’ more subtle point is that this all was a delaying tactic. With great uncertainty in the opposition bloc’s mind that it could find a way to invalidate the petition and election, the goal of the opposition bloc is to delay that election as long as possible, certainly past the Nov. 18 general election runoff this fall, which has an effective Sep. 25 deadline for Council action to have commenced.

Further, regardless of what reason the bloc may use to forgo any resolution prior to that date, citizens could sue on the basis of the charter’s election insistence, because by the charter’s wording it received a certified petition and it in that instance the Council didn’t have the choice not to call the election. Perhaps this is why rumors, bolstered by some of the rhetoric surrounding the issue at the Council meeting, have gained currency that some kind of compromise will be brokered involving a charter review commission summoned later this fall.

With this, the bloc may try to cut off at the pass momentum behind the petition wording by promising to call a commission whose members they chose would approve of another form of term limits, along the lines of a three-term limit starting with the 2025 term. Since all bloc members are in their sixties, they unlikely would want to serve beyond well into their seventies. In exchange, if they refuse to call the election, by ponying up a commission they say will have term limits supporters throughout it (their appointees would represent five of the nine votes), they would count on this defusing term limits supporters from challenging that in court failure to call the election and from not reorganizing anytime soon to petition again with the same language in the form of an ordinance and including birth years of signatories.

The longer the controversy drags on, the more attention the bloc brings to its anti-term limits position that would prove to be a political liability. Its members continue a rearguard action that ultimately may win the battle legally, but they’re still losing the war politically.