The race is on, as the Bossier City Council this week launched its Potemkin attempt to run down citizens who threaten to end the political careers of a majority of its members.
The Council unanimously voted to establish the second charter review committee in this city’s history. Mind you, a year ago this was the furthest thing from the minds of graybeards Republicans Jeff Free and David Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams, and no party Jeff Darby. But then a group of citizens loosely organized as the Bossier Term Limits Coalition, with the support of Republican rookie councilors Chris Smith and Brian Hammons and republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, came together to gather enough signatures to amend the city charter by slapping a lifetime three-term limit retroactively on city officials, with an affirmative vote by the electorate. None of the graybeards could run in the Mar. 29, 2025 city elections if this passed by the Dec. 7, 2024 election, as it almost certainly would.
By a series of legal maneuvers and open defiance four times of the charter, the graybeards plus Republican rookie Vince Maggio so far have kept the matter off the ballot, hoping to extend that for more than the upcoming year by tying up the matter in the courts. Undaunted, the Coalition has launched another as well as a separate petition amending the charter to drop the petitioning requirement from a third to a fifth of registered voters participating in the last city-wide election that would make even easier outflanking the Council.
These moves terrified the graybeards and their ally Maggio, thus the countermove to establish the commission. Make no mistake, its only reason for existence is to come up with a much laxer term limitation, which likely will take a three-term limit but applying only starting in 2025. Then the strategy is to get the commission’s recommendations on the ballot no later than either the judiciary ruling the first Coalition petition in order and/or the second making it on time for the Nov. 5 national election ballot (due Jun. 19), setting up dueling propositions.
That would mean having to convince enough voters their watered-down term limits version is better, when anecdotal evidence suggests the electorate prefers a stronger version, So, the commission will have to find some kind of sweeteners to vote for in their package, which is an up-or-down vote on all items, to discourage supporting the other. (A very interesting legal question is what happens if voters approved both.) At the same time, it will have to battle the proposition dropping the amendment cutoff from a third to a fifth, because that not only would make it easier for citizens to continue to go around entrenched interests backing councilors but it also would make it easier to undo commission recommendations if these passed. (The current judicial pace suggests the Mar. 4 deadline for the Apr. 27 municipal general election slot won’t be made for the contested petition, although the graybeards and Maggio might worry less about that if it did happen as this would be a low stimulus election that makes their chances of defeating it at the ballot box as a standalone item go from highly unlikely to just improbable.)
The use of the commission as a tool to preserve careers became obvious in the selection of members. Chandler as mayor has two, which he used to select outsiders to current city government: Republican Shane Cheatham, who actually won election to the Council in 2021 only to turn that down in the hopes of becoming city chief administrative officer who then couldn’t even have his nomination considered because of the graybeards; and Democrat Lee Jeter, who ran for an at-large Council spot in 2021 and then who the graybeards (minus Free) rebuffed to replace Cheatham (as well as rejecting Hammons). Both are on the record as supporting the petition under court review.
Councilors could appoint one member each, but regrettably supporting documentation for the ordinance didn’t identify who appointed whom. Still, a little detective work by frequent Council public commenter David Crockett uncovered that two councilors, Williams and Darby, didn’t appoint people from their districts, where Williams at the previous meeting claimed difficulty in finding people in his district willing to serve. He further embarrassed the pair when, during commentary at the last meeting, observed that with minimal effort he discovered someone from each of Williams’ and Darby’s districts willing to serve.
That it seemed Williams and Darby didn’t make an effort to pick district residents, implying they targeted known quantities that likely would toe their line on term limits, seemingly was echoed by other councilors’ selections of people connected to city political insiders. Among them were the sister-in-law of a contractor family business doing millions of dollars of work for the city, the wife of the city’s longtime contractor for its financial auditing, the wife of Republican City Marshal Jim Whitman, and Republican Julianna Parks, the wife of Republican City Judge Santi Parks and sitting police juror. (Also selected was Smith’s father-in-law, the former head of the area tourism agency, but who has been out of that job and city politics for many years.) These aren’t exactly the people that would defy the graybeards and Maggio on the term limits issue.
From the names and distribution of selections, the graybeards and Maggio have the five votes necessary for their bloc to control the commission. It’s their chosen sham device to cut their losses – the youngest of the bloc subject to a three-limit rule starting in 2025 by 2039 would be in his mid-seventies – and to try to combat far greater limitation. Let the race begin.
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