The City of Gonzales has a new mayor, only the third elected since 1984. The five-member city council, another body not known for its turnover, includes three new members. A certain amount of turmoil was probably unavoidable, especially considering Tim Riley emerged from a four-candidate field in which every old-time political hack lined up against him.
Riley’s administration scored an early coup, exposing a level of graft heretofore unforeseen in the city (at least nothing like it emerged publicly): $1,338,875 paid to a single unlicensed fence company in 2024.
“A system failure” led to “the City of Gonzales getting ripped off” by an unlicensed fence company contracted to provide various services in 2024. That was the assessment of Mayor Tim Riley’s administration at Monday’s discussion of vendor report regarding Liberty Fence & Supply, LLC. Representing the administration, longtime Riley advisor Wade Petite opined that Liberty Fence overcharged the city by “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and…
“None of this, I believe, could have happened without somebody on the inside. There’s no way,” Petite argued. “If not, it is the most egregious lapse in fiscal responsibility in the history of this city.”
Gonzales’ former Chief Administrative Assistant Scot Byrd took to social media Monday night to point a few fingers at certain personnel who were positioned to curtail Liberty Fence’s purported excess, going on to commend “Mayor Riley for looking into this.” He absolved former Mayor Barney Arceneaux who resigned his post at the end of April, implicitly blaming the interim mayor and Councilman Kirk Boudreaux who both “signed all these checks.”
Two council members, including Kirk Boudreaux, could not even be bothered to inquire about the Liberty Fence & Supply debacle during last week’s discussion. The other, Councilwoman Terri Lambert, is too busy trying to curtail mayoral authority to wonder about wasting what amounts to 7% of every sales tax dollar collected by the City of Gonzales last year. Neither of them posed a question to Petite who had been named “Chief of Staff” by Mayor Riley in January.
Riley had created the position after consultation with the City Attorney and Finance Director.
For several weeks Councilwoman Lambert has lobbied to request an opinion from Louisiana’s Attorney General related to the mayor’s authority to create and staff a new position. Such an opinion cannot be requested by a single councilperson, only by resolution of the entire body.
In fact, Riley added at least two new positions “in keeping with advice received from our legal counsel.” It seems that no one was aware of a decades old ordinance that requires council approval.
Ordinance 2-159(3) Action ratification.
Action to create, abolish or reallocate a filled or vacant position shall be subject to ratification by the mayor and city council at its next regular meeting.
Mayor Riley requested an AG’s Opinion dated March 27, announcing the request to the City Council last Monday. It reads:
BACKGROUND
The Mayor of the City of Gonzales has recently taken office and has created and filled the position of Chief of Staff, which had not previously existed in City administration and is not an elected official or public officer, but merely a city employee under the direction of the Mayor.
In 2005, the Gonzales City Council passed Ordinance “Sec. 2-159”. In the subject Ordinance, the Council granted itself authority to approve by majority vote, the creation, abolishment, or re-allocation of any city employee position.
However, the Lawrason Act grants a mayor of a Louisiana municipality, the power to supervise and direct the administration of all departments, offices, and agencies, other than a police department with an elected chief of police; however, no ordinance may limit the authority granted to the mayor (La. R.S. 33:404). Further, the Lawrason Act establishes that all administrative staff members are subordinate to the mayor and the mayor has the power to delegate performance of administrative duties to the municipal officers or employees as he deems necessary and advisable.
Attorney General Opinion 07-0122 states in pertinent part: “A position not specifically mentioned in La. R.S. 33:386 as an office nor specifically created by an office is not an office, but employment within the mayor’s power to appoint and remove.”
The only positions mentioned in La. R.S. 386 are: clerk, tax collector, city attorney, and all other necessary officers.
The Attorney General has previously opined, that while the mayor can appoint an administrative assistant as an employee, without the approval of the Board of Aldermen, the salary must be budgeted by the Board of Aldermen.
Additionally, Attorney General Opinions 02-276 and 97-492, provide in pertinent part that only the mayor “…may determine if a pay raise is to be awarded to any non-elected municipal employees who are under his supervision, if funds for the increase must be properly budgeted, and determine if non-officer employees are to be given raises.
Finally, in what seems to be an analogous situation, the Attorney General has opined that an ordinance giving authority to appointed department heads to hire and fire municipal employees is invalid as an infringement on the powers and functions of the mayor. As the Attorney General has previously opined, a city council has no authority to remove the head of a city department without a recommendation from the mayor. Further, pursuant to R.S. 33:404(A)(3), before a department head may be removed in a Lawrason Act municipality, the board of aldermen must approve such removal. Consistent with R.S. 33:404(A)(3), the board of aldermen is without the authority to hire a department head without the recommendation of the mayor.
REQUEST FO OPINION
The City of Gonzales now submits the following questions to the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office for guidance:
- Does the Mayor of Gonzales have the authority, under the powers enumerated to him by the Lawrason Act, to both create the non-officer employment position of “Chief of Staff” and appoint/hire an individual to fill that role without City Council approval?
- Is Gonzales City Code Ordinance, “Sec. 2-159” an infringement on the Mayor’s power to delegate performance of administrative duties to non-elected/non-public officer employees as he deems necessary and advisable?
City Attorney Matthew Percy drafted the request, which did little to appease the Division E representative even as Councilwoman Lambert conceded, “I did want an AG’s opinion…Are we questioning the constitutionality of our Gonzales Municipal Code?”
It was a glaring example of why council members should leave the law to the lawyers. The Constitution and the Lawrason Act are not the same thing.
And it should come as no surprise that a municipal code which nominally prohibits anyone who is not black from seeking a particular council seat has its constitutionality questioned in any event.
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