Don’t look now, Bossier Parish Police Jury, but term limits may be headed your way, if momentum takes hold from actions of one of its own parish’s state senators on behalf of other parishes.
This week, SB 103 and SB 113 both advanced onto the Senate floor. Both bills, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh, would call for votes to impose term limits on the police juries in Sabine and De Soto Parishes, respectively. No parish governed under state statutes as yet has term limits, although Lincoln Parish may do so under statute but that depends upon its jury calling for an election, which it has not yet.
Something to that effect happened in De Soto, where in February of last year the five Republican and one no party jurors voted in favor to authorize the jury president to request the legislation, against the five Democrats. SB 113 would establish a three-term limit prospectively presumably if approved for 2028 and beyond. It represents a switch from a 7-4 defeat only months earlier, where in the meantime elections occurred and while a couple of holdover jurors swapped votes, two long-time (32 and 20 years) incumbents who had voted against in 2023 were defeated by newcomers who voted for in 2024.
SB 103 is more controversial and perhaps mirrors the political environment more like Bossier Parish’s, the southern end of which Seabaugh represents. That also would be a three-term limit, but, like the coming situation in all likelihood in Bossier City, would apply retrospectively and was at the behest of only two of the nine Sabine jurors, with the other seven recently having sent a note opposing the bill. However, Seabaugh brought it, he told the Senate Local and Municipal Affairs Committee, at the urging of dozens or even hundreds of citizens who had contacted him in written and vocal forms, with him saying that on a radio talk show regularly he was petitioned by callers for this kind of bill.
Legislators often hesitate to approve bills that local governing authorities oppose, but as Seabaugh pointed out the bill merely would schedule a vote that could occur at minimal local expense during the 2026 election window. And a few years ago, Bossier Parish provided an example of legislators overriding local elected officials’ wishes when they passed into law legislation by GOP state Rep. Dodie Horton creating a bit more accountability on the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District, over the objections of the BPPJ.
Success particularly of SB 103 is not a precedent the Jury, a number of whose members have spoken against term limits during and outside of its meetings over the years, would like to see, for it would embolden the term limits movement in the parish that already muscled into force limits for Bossier City. The emergent formula seems to be enough public pressure and support of at least some members of a governing authority will convince enough lawmakers at least to bring the matter to a plebiscite.
Already a demonstration of public support has a ready-made vehicle in Bossier, as a result of an online petition the Bossier Term Limits Coalition has set up. Whether at least a couple of the dozen jurors would express support is another matter, but there appears to be at least one among them who publicly has said he would: Republican rookie Keith Sutton proclaimed his support for term limits on at least one campaign flier. And another wrinkle is that while Seabaugh, who is an ally of reformists in Bossier City who put term limits front and center, is the state senator for the entirety of Sabine Parish, he splits Bossier with the majority of it the province of the GOP’s Adam Bass, who if he were to express a negative opinion of a bill bringing about a term limits vote could sink it. (Seabaugh also shares De Soto with Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, who has expressed no opinion publicly on SB 113.)
Yet with Seabaugh’s prodding a precedent is forming among lawmakers to accept the ability of parish voters to have a chance at imposing term limits on their parish governing authorities delineated under state law (other parishes with home rule charters have term limits placed in their charters). If the legal code evolves in this direction with the passage of either Seabaugh bill, many citizens in Bossier will become more hopeful, while making a few of its jurors more nervous.
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