EXTRA: What 'outside' media is getting wrong about Bossier term limits
Inaccurate reporting is working against a citizens-driven effort.
What 'outside' media is getting wrong about Bossier term limits
Coverage of Bossier City news by 'outside' media has always been hit-and-run. Shreveport owned and operated television, radio, and newspapers rush across the bridge, gather a couple of notes, and then run back home to file their reports.
Facts are optional. Just grab some hot takes, get some video, and get back to Ratchet City.
The Bossier term limits issue is the latest example.
New reports from the 'outside' media say that the latest legal action ensures that term limits will be on the ballot in March.
Wrong. The appellate court decision has nothing to do with the ordinance to be voted on in two months.
Yes, term limits will be on the ballot — but it's not representative of the initiative worked on by a fervent group of Bossier City citizens who led a grassroots effort to redefine local politics.
It is the result of political gamemanship of the highest order led by five city council members who illegally blocked the citizen-led term limits petition.
Let's forego a complicated discussion of the legal shenanigans and just boil down the issue to what has resulted.
The Bossier Term Limits Coalition, the group of citizens who initiated the term limits petition, favored a fresh start in local leadership. Their petition demanded a public vote on term limits with retroactivity.
The Coalition's petition sought to limit the Mayor and City Council to three-term limits with retroactivity. In other words, the time in office for anyone elected before January 1, 2024, would be counted. This would mean that four currently-seated council members could not run for reelection: Jeffery Darby, Jeff Free, David Montgomery, and Don Williams.
Joined by Vince Maggio, the five council members repeatedly — and illegally — voted down moving the petition to a public vote.
In the meantime, a watered-down version of term limits moved through the political machine and was approved by the council to go up for a vote.
That version proposes term limits without retroactivity and with reelection possible after breaks in service: It has the same three-term limit but doesn't impact those currently seated. The clock on term limits would begin on January 1, 2025, allowing a former elected official to run again after "a break in service."
It's an important distinction.
Perhaps voters who support the currently seated council members would argue that the "break in service" term limits ordinance is favored.
But that would be overlooking the most important consideration:
Sitting council members are sworn to abide by and uphold the law. They illegally blocked a citizen-led petition from being put on the ballot for voters to decide. And then approved a weaker version that better met their own interests.
It was a self-serving, unlawful gambit to protect their long-held political turf. Three judges of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals have said that the ploy likely rises to the felony crime of malfeasance in office.
But the outside media doesn't get it. They report it wrong.
And go about their business of ginning up clicks and rating points for their out-of-town conglomerates.
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