The gist: A suit was filed against Lafayette Consolidated Government in district court asking that an ordinance passed to fix discrepancies in the new city council district map be overturned. Observers have long expected the dispute over the council split would land in court.
Get caught up, quickly: Errors in the legal descriptions of the map for the new city council districts — literally, words describing a map, wording that did not appear on the ballot — have thrown the transition to separate councils into turmoil. In a lengthy report, LCG attorneys confidently argued an ordinance can fix the errors. The attorney general and others disagree, saying an election is the only way to make changes.
A council candidate named Keith Kishbaugh is serving as lead plaintiff for a group of charter split opponents, including KPEL radio personality Carol Ross. Kishbaugh, who runs Kishbaugh Construction, has declared his candidacy for consolidated District 1, the seat presently held by Kevin Naquin. Should the split councils remain, he would pursue a District 1 seat on the newly formed Parish Council; Naquin is running for the District 2 parish seat.
Kishbaugh tells me he believes the charter amendments, passed in December, were pushed by an “interest group” and remain deeply unpopular among voters. A key grievance of Kishbaugh’s is what he characterizes as the “arrogance” shown by some City-Parish Council members in defying Attorney General Jeff Landry, who issued an opinion last week saying only an election could fix the errors in legal descriptions of the city council districts.
“I think it needs to be re-voted on,” Kishbaugh says. “I firmly believe the people behind it — [council members] Castille, Naquin, Conque, Hebert and, unfortunately, Nanette Cook — they have a fear of this being revoted because, if it’s a landslide in the opposite direction, it could hurt their political aspirations.”
The suit will be heard soon. Attorney Lane Roy says civil procedure requires that suits concerning election matters be expedited and heard between two and 10 days of filing. Roy says the issue is “pretty doggone clear,” arguing the attorney general’s opinion, which forms the basis of the suit, dispenses of the lengthy argument offered by City-Parish Attorney Paul Escott that an ordinance is the most appropriate way to readjust the boundaries. The suit was assigned to Judge John Trahan.
Roy says the errors make the whole election illegal, arguing the charter amendment proposition is one issue. The group also retained Roy to file an inquiry with LCG questioning the legality of replacing the Lafayette Public Utilities Authority with the City Council, an effect of the charter amendments. The end game is to throw out the December election result.
“There’s only one proposal that went up for the vote,” Roy tells me. “[The public] has to be able to say ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to the entire package.”
The secretary of state previously said only the errors should be the subject a vote. The argument that the errors invalidate the entire charter amendment election is a new one and contradicts, to some extent, comments made by Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin after a meeting with state and City-Parish attorneys in February.
To be clear, overturning the ordinance would not necessarily overturn the election. What’s not clear is how opponents could accomplish it, and that question is not in the petition itself.
Charter amendment supporters have worried that a legal challenge would not materialize until much later in the campaign cycle, potentially postponing the elections for new city and parish councils.
“We’re grateful that we’re gonna go ahead and hear this now and not three months from now,” says Kevin Blanchard, an organizer with Fix the Charter PAC.
This is a developing story.
2 Comments
I'm pretty much in the dark about the city boundaries dispute. Could you clarify what the possible motives are here behind the disagreement? Thx
Last year, parish citizens voted in charter amendments that, among other things, created separate city and parish councils. After the election was certified, meaning the secretary of state formally recognized the election result, errors were discovered in the legal descriptions of the city council map. The errors are little more than typos but their inadvertent effect is several hundred voters are without representation in the eyes of election law. The dispute here is how to fix the discrepancies. One side says an ordinance correcting the districts is sufficient. The other says only an amendment passed by public vote can. The latter camp is suing here, with the end game of arguing the charter amendments themselves are illegal as passed and ought to be re-presented to the voters in their entirety.