Bond Commission defers Bossier City Charter vote over term limit dispute

(The Center Square) — The Louisiana Bond Commission voted this week to defer the Bossier City charter vote due to the city council’s refusal to accept retroactive term limits.

After years of legal battle, petitions, and resolution votes, the city council decided to put together a new city charter proposing term limits. Their vote on the resolution of the charter was on Oct. 10, sending it to the state Bond Commission to be decided on Monday.

Bossier City voters could’ve cast ballots on a new charter, the first update since 2004.

However, the Bond Commission decided to defer the charter to a later date, preferably after the courts made their decision.

While the city has decided to allow term limits, the legal question is whether they will be applied either retroactively or to future office holders.

The circuit court must determine if retroactive term limits are constitutional, which the Bond Commission can not decide. It is clear that the decision won’t come until after the election, which means a retroactive version couldn’t be in the charter.

The Bossier City Term Limits Coalition argues for retroactive term limits, meaning they apply to people already in office, some who have served for years. However, the proposed charter from the City Council is prospective term limits, meaning the members’ current terms wouldn’t affect their possibility for reelection.

The coalition also pointed out that both petitions they filed to the council were about specifically retroactive term limits. The group also complained that the other provisions in the proposed charter were not made publicly available 60 days prior to the election, as required by law.

With the council already violating many requirements in the charter and forcing the petitions to go to courts in order to get legal approval, the coalition asked the commission to defer it.

The city’s legal team disputed this claim that the charter changes were not made available. They also challenged the idea that the council has been putting off the term limit initiative in hopes it would not make the December ballot.

The council contends the reason they rejected resolutions with term limits in the past is because they wanted to make sure everything was done legally correct.

In the end, the commission sided with the coalition because they felt the city council was indeed ignoring the will of the people and only putting forward this somewhat of a compromise on term limits in order to distract them from retroactive measures.

“I have a sense that the city council was very reluctant to move forward on this and had to be dragged kicking and screaming,” said John Fleming, the state treasurer and commission chair. “If this goes forward as it is and it passes I think it could block any further action because the people of Bossier City will feel like they made their decision through their vote and that would mean that there would only be prospective term limits.”