Three-quarters illegal is still illegal, a fact the Bossier Parish Police Jury can’t avoid even as it takes a small step towards transparency.
At its meeting this week, the Jury took inched towards addressing its continued unlawful behavior regarding the parish’s Library Board of Control. Statute requires that a parish seat five to seven citizens of the parish for five-year terms staggered each year, appoint officers annually, every year submit a budget request to the Jury, and meet at least once a year.
None of this happened in 2025. The last time the Jury “appointed” members, in direct violation of the law it tried to place all 12 members onto the Board for 2024, which held one meeting that year. In the interim, one term expired at the end of September in 2024, and another again in 2025.
So, at its latest meeting the Jury made a show of fulfilling at least some its legal duty. It again “appointed” all 12 jurors to the Board and gave the present Jury officers the same positions on the Board. Significantly, Republican Juror Keith Sutton voted against it that hopefully signifies he saw something wrong about this arrangement, unlike the other 11.
This move solves the problem of officers, but not really anything else. Theoretically, the two open appointments were filled, but there still are too many members named so it’s indeterminate who exactly has taken the empty slots, except that they cannot be filled by Republicans Glenn Benton (who has a legal appointment until the end of September, 2027) and Doug Rimmer (2028) (And, technically, the slot through this September is filled by former juror Charles Gray, so until then, assuming an expansion to seven which the ordinance said nothing about, this leaves six excess jurors). Plus, in terms of legally-empty slots, there was no designation about who fills what staggered term; of course not, since that would acknowledge the illegal excess.
And if all 12 do meet this year and decide collectively, such as presentation of a budget request, that would be illegal since all 12 cannot be members and vote on it. This is just begging for a lawsuit the Jury has no chance of winning, wasting tax dollars as its case goes down in flames.
Naturally, the easiest resolution would be to reenact statute by adding a line to R.S. 25:214(B): “None of a parish’s sheriff, assessor, clerk of court, coroner, elected chief executive if any, or member serving on its governing authority may be appointed to and serve on the board,” which would prevent any elected official in parish government from serving and underscores the original intent that unelected citizens comprise board members. But if the loophole remains in law, then the Jury simply could pick at present two to four of its own to fill the legally-available slots, which is nothing new as this is exactly what it did for several years up until a few years ago. Why it insists upon all 12 jurors is a mystery.
If Bossierites are discouraged by this flimsy whitewash attempt, they can draw encouragement from another development related to this meeting. After years of hectoring from this space as well as from others (including persistent requests from the Shreveport-Bossier Advocate), the Jury finally decided to get with the 21st century and all other area governments with large constituencies and posted partially its agenda package online, if a bit tardy. It’s incomplete, by way of example not having the documentation attached for the agenda item concerning the Board, but it’s progress if these can be posted online at the same time of the agenda so that citizens don’t have to trek to the courthouse in a narrow time frame to see the information.
This small step for transparency still leaves a bigger one to take. Its committee meetings through Zoom aren’t archived online, and the Jury meetings on Facebook appear only for 30 days and then disappear online. Every other area major government archives both their committee and regular meetings in perpetuity on the web. But this is better than nothing; be thankful for small miracles.
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