The gist: Conflicting opinions between the attorney general and city-parish attorneys have come to verbal blows. In a press release issued Thursday, Landry doubles down on his office’s rapid-fire opinion and takes shots at the local legal team’s competence.
Get caught up, quickly: Errors in the legal descriptions of the map for the new city council districts — literally, words describing a map — have thrown the transition to separate councils into turmoil. In a lengthy report, LCG attorneys confidently argued an ordinance can fix the errors. Landry disagrees, saying an election is the only way to make changes.
“It is important to always note that this problem arose after taking the City Attorney’s original advice.” That’s how Landry concludes the terse release, purported to “clarify” the AG’s opinion on the charter errors. He calls LCG attorneys’ 11-page memo, which determines an ordinance is the “only appropriate” fix for the charter discrepancies, an attempt by the “City Attorney” to “correct his own mistake.”
City-Parish Attorney Paul Escott raised questions about the turnaround speed of the AG opinion. He noted at a council meeting Tuesday night that the opinion’s language looks similar to a letter from a state senator requesting it. The AG opinion was delivered within 24 hours of the request’s receipt, a lightning fast turnaround according to some legal observers. Landry credited quick service to his staff’s preparedness on the issue.
Landry views the issue as “cut and dried.” It’s not clear that it is. Issued hours before the City-Parish Council passed an ordinance correcting the discrepancies, the AG’s opinion does not address glaring problems with resolving the errors by election, the remedy that office recommends. Some charter language prohibits reapportionment “by referendum,” and rules out voting on the same amendment twice in the same year. Then there’s the practical concern that voters may vote “no” on the corrected legal descriptions and leave the parish without legal districts to qualify for voting.
Curiously, the opinion suggests that reapportionment, the process by which districts and precincts are redrawn in response to population changes, can never be performed by ordinance because the districts are enshrined the Home Rule Charter. Since consolidation, the city-parish council has adjusted its boundaries by ordinance several times, a practice that’s common around the state.
In a radio interview recorded Wednesday, Landry wondered whether a vote would be necessary for reapportionment after the next census. Both the current and amended forms of the Home Rule Charter specifically provide that the council can move boundaries by ordinance. The AG’s rigid legal view holds that every such change is an amendment, and would thus require a public vote.
How does this play out from here? There’s a tangle of outcomes, and most of them end up in court. Someone could sue LCG and claim the ordinance violates the law, and it appears that such threats are legitimate. Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin could refuse to qualify candidates from the amended districts; a spokesman for his office said Wednesday Ardoin and his legal team are weighing their options.
3 Comments
It would be interesting to know where the AG went to law school and his rank in the class. Paul Escort, I believe, went to LSU and was one of the top graduates in his class. I trust his interpretation over the AG.
Landry is first a politician looking for a higher office. He goes any way the financial contribution winds blow. I hope we just ignore him and move forward.
Why do Landry and Hensgens care about this? Surely it’s not just because of their concern for the rule of law. What do they gain by stymying the formation of a City council? Is this yet another example of the politics of spite or quest for raw power that drives the GOP at large? Or is there something else going on here. (I ask earnestly as a relative newbie to City and State politics.)