Don’t be fooled: the Monroe City Council majority Democrats folded on obstructing results of last year’s tax vote because they had received a reminder they had a legal obligation to certify the tax’s passage.
At the Council’s last meeting, it finally approved the one percent sales tax renewed at voters’ behest. Originally set several months ago, after subsequently joining the Council Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad with retuning Democrat Juanita Woods tried unsuccessfully to rescind the authorization. Then, also without unsuccessful, they beseeched voters not to vote for it, claiming it would be a “slush fund” – translated, that they wanted it defeated so they could pass a version in a form steering more money to southside Monroe.
Denied in this, at the Jan. 14 meeting they tried the last, most desperate tactic: refuse governing authority promulgation. State law mandates that before forwarding a tax vote to the Secretary of State for final disposition, but without comment the Democrats voted it down.
But they changed their tune by Jan. 28, with McFarland tight-lipped about what altered his viewpoint and Muhammad intimating he had questions over some precinct results before but now seemed satisfied. With Woods also flipping her vote, they made certification unanimous.
Unmentioned was what had happened the day after the previous meeting. Announced then by a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, comprised of all Monroe-area judges, was its disposition of Rogers v. City of Bossier City, which involved the refusal by a majority of the Bossier City Council to forward a resolution to the State Bond Commission to call an election to amend the city’s charter. That amendment sent a retroactive, lifetime three-term limit on city elected officials to voters, which had been petitioned successfully by city voters. The Charter in that instance said for proposed amendments certified as valid by the registrar of voters the Council “shall” forward the matter without hesitation to the Commission for ballot placement.
The ruling said that language obligated the Council to forward it – the majority had refused because it would have applied to all but one of the five and it’s a sure thing it will pass voter muster – and in fact failure to do so could be “construed as malfeasance” in office, a felony. The Bossier City Council without comment unanimously passed it at its next meeting, which was three hours before the Monroe City Council’s meeting.
As it turns out, approval of the election results was a similar circumstance. Not in Monroe’s charter but in statute, which states “The governing authority ordering the election shall preserve a proces verbal [written record] of the canvass…. The governing authority shall forward a copy of the proces verbal to the secretary of state, who shall record it” (emphasis added).
This echoes what the appellate court panel affirmed in Rogers, “shall” means “shall;” it’s mandatory, not optional. Had the Council Democrats continued with their obstinacy, they would have left the city wide open to a lawsuit similar to that which befell Bossier City. Also, it would had subverted the intent of another statute, which allows “any person in interest” to contest an election for 60 days after promulgation – an option open to the Democrats although without any clear reason for contesting it.
As such, this becomes another example of the Council’s majority Democrats grandstanding and trying to gum up the works of government to try to annoy or to score political points on the independent Mayor Friday Ellis Administration, which proposed the tax’s extension. Citizens deserve not to have time and energy wasted in this fashion.