BC term limits still delayed, but likely coming

Blog: Between The Lines

Abstract

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.