Bills challenge local govts, especially Bossier

A number of local governmental bodies and elected officials, especially from Bossier Parish, won’t be happy if a few bills addressing local government organization and actions pass into law this spring.

As always, the Legislature takes up matters that affect local governance, but this year such general bills would have greater impact on entities and politicians in Bossier than comparatively elsewhere. Of minor importance is HB 103 by Republican state Rep. Mike Johnson, which would mandate live broadcasting of meetings by bodies with jurisdictions of at least 25,000 people, but for municipalities just 10,000. It retains the requirement of archived audio or video or live transmission of meetings by any authority that can tax.

Bossier affected entities – the Bossier City Council, the Bossier Parish Police Jury, and the Bossier Parish School Board – already transmit live. But if the bill were to be amended to demand archived meetings available on the Internet, that could put entities into difficulty that do recordings but don’t currently make these available on a web site, such as the Bossier Levee District.

Hitting a bit too close to home for Bossier City, and perhaps others, is HB 794 by GOP state Rep. Foy Gadberry. This would mandate for architectural and engineering services that a government have a selection process for these services that implies a process for soliciting requests and rank ordering these, even as price can’t be a consideration as part of that.

Such a law would put a stop to the practice Bossier City has had in awarding single source contracting – against its own rules – most recently and notoriously without competition to Manchac Consulting. A majority bloc of councilors, aided by Republican Mayor Tommy Chandler, haven’t allowed any competition for a job that in its latest iteration pays $195,000 monthly for four years. Most audaciously, Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray ridiculously has alleged this law prevents requests for qualifications for competitive bidding – despite the fact other local governments do this and other legal officials specifically disavow that interpretation – in order to contrive an excuse for gifting Manchac the business, but this bill unreservedly would kick the prop out of that argument and force Bossier City to look for competition in the future.

The Bossier Parish Police Jury specifically could have to face the music if HB 640 by Republican state Rep. Jay Galle makes it into law. This bill clarifies that parish governing authorities can remove at any time library board of control members.

That would have made it easier for jurors in a campaign begun in 2016 that ended last year to eviscerate the board’s past membership to allow it to appoint jurors’ own selves, a practice not only unheard of in every other parish for which there is web-based information about library boards of control but also according to the state attorney general is illegal and at present subject to an official opinion request regarding its legality still in the works. To make matters worse, the Bossier board now claims all twelve jurors as members whereas state law limits board size to seven at most.

Breaking the law on size indisputably as well as likely doing the same over juror membership, if Galle’s bill were to be amended expressly to exclude jurors, this final nail in the coffin would make it absolutely clear jurors can’t usurp the Board, whether in numbers over the limit. Unlike the other two bills, this one hasn’t yet passed out of its original committee.

Yet perhaps the most feared bill by these entities is HB 273 by GOP state Rep. Rodney Schamerhorn. This would amend the Constitution to slap term limits on local elected officials, three terms with retroactivity kicking in for elections after 2024. None of the Council, Jury, or Board have limits nor Bossier City mayor, and many members of these collectively have expressed hostility at the idea – with a majority of Bossier City councilors going way out of their ways with legal machinations to prevent citizens from voting to ratify limits – although Chandler has given the idea support. The bill, which hasn’t had a hearing yet, would take that choice out of the hands of these elected officials and give it to voters this fall.

But at least they don’t have Democrat state Rep. Steven Jackson meddling in their affairs. Jackson represents portions of both Caddo and Bossier Parishes, although he can be forgiven if he holds a grudge against Bossier because it was there he was arrested and last year convicted of false personation, of a police officer.

Yet he has introduced a bill that should have excited Bossier jurors and had them petition to include the police jury in it. His HB 848 would take fiscal matters out of the hands of library boards in parishes of a certain population size – designed so only Caddo qualifies – that would transfer to it exactly the power the Jury has wanted over library affairs without having to pull its current shenanigans. Maybe Jackson is mad at the parish (although it was a Bossier City officer who cited him), or maybe it’s too clumsy to make the bill wording include only Bossier with Caddo.

His other bill, HB 886, would redirect money from sports wagering that currently goes to Caddo that the parish can spend on any purpose to infrastructure activities only within a census tract within his district. That might lend Bossier Parish to breathe a sigh of relief, although Bossier City might have wished it be a part of such a bill since Jackson’s district encompasses Old Bossier and south to the Jimmie Davis Bridge on the west side of the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway. Only introduced last week, neither bill is on tap to be heard.

Although political establishments often disconnected from constituents’ concerns particularly hold power in Bossier, their versions in local governments across the state will fight – all of Bossier City, Bossier Parish, and the Bossier Parish School District pay several tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars annually to lobbyists – against these transparency and good government measures, Jackson’s obviously excluded. The public can hope legislators see the wisdom of these bills, especially with select modifications, and follow through with their intentions.