District attorney says Road District 2 board is ‘advisory’

It may or may not settle jurors’ minds as to whether Road District 2’s Road Commission is advisory or supervisory in nature, but the Police Jury’s legal advisor has come down on the side of “advisory.”

Police Juror Henry Moreau has argued the road district’s board should have more independence to take care of routine business and small financial matters. He used a state law (R.S. 48:584) on “supervisory boards” to support his argument.

Jury President Charles Jones said the state law did not apply to the road district and that all financial matters -- including advertising for bids on contracts -- had to be approved by the full jury first.

District Attorney Charles Riddle promised the two men he would study the matter and provide a legal opinion based on a review of all applicable statutes.

Based on that review, Riddle found that the Road District 2 commission “is not a supervisory board, as it was established under separate provisions” of state law.

Riddle said sections 572-576 of statute 48 deal with the process of establishing road districts. These were all carefully followed when the Police Jury was discussing, creating and advertising the boundaries of the proposed four road districts prior to the 2016 property tax elections.

Section 581 states the officers of the Police Jury are also officers of the district commission. Section 582 defines the board’s powers -- including the ability to incur debt and contract obligations, sue and be sued and perform necessary acts in support of constructing, maintaining and improving public roads, streets, bridges and drainage within the district, including acquiring machinery and equipment essential to those achieve those purposes.

KEY PROVISION

A key provision to that law is Section 583, which states that for a road district that is wholly within one parish, the parish governing authority is also the governing authority of the road district.

Riddle said Section 584 is an “alternative means of governing a road district.” However, for that method to be used would require at least 50 percent of property tax payers living in the district to request the Police Jury to appoint a three-member supervisory board to oversee the operations of the road district.

“This was not done in Avoyelles Parish,” Riddle noted. The sub-district was formed under Section 572. “ Section 585 states the powers of the supervisory board, which is what Moreau had wanted to apply to the Road District 2 commission.

“Section 585 would apply only if a supervisory board was established under Section 584,” Riddle added.

Although there were two distinct camps on the issue, the chasm between the two was not as wide as the jurors themselves sometimes indicated.

All jurors agree that the jury will virtually “rubber stamp” any recommendation presented by the Road District board -- contingent on all policies requiring adequate permits, licenses and insurance being in place.

Jones has said the Police Jury does not want to tell the jurors and citizen members of the road district board how to spend the district’s voter-approved tax money.

Jurors Moreau and Trent Clark and Road District 2 board members agree the full jury must approve an expenditure before any payments on a project can be made.

‘WORKING MEETING’

Jones said a recent “working meeting” of several individuals involved in the issue “helped to calm things down a bit.” He said he prepared a draft proposal of procedures to streamline the process and improve the relationship between the jury and the road district board.

“We will have a follow-up meeting in November and come up with an agreement before we present anything to the jury for adoption,” he said.

Jones said it will be important for both sides to be on the same page before putting it before the jury.

“As I said before, it is important that Road District 2 succeeds,” Jones said. “It will affect all of us on the jury, especially if we present a tax in any of the other three road districts.”