The Louisiana Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on the legal battle between supporters and opponents of the proposed city of St. George, moving the debate over the future of the community in East Baton Rouge closer to a resolution.
The high court indicated in a Nov. 15 memorandum that the incorporation organizers’ request for review of the case would be granted, with oral arguments taking place on the court’s next available docket. Incorporation organizers Chris Rials and Norman Browning are appealing the First District Court of Appeal’s decision, which concluded that the incorporation plans were inadequate and raised concerns about the provision of public services.
The incorporation organizers now have until Dec. 11 to file their briefs with the court, and the respondent, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, must file arguments by Jan. 2 of next year.
“St. George is about the right of self-determination, the right to vote and self-representation, so a higher court hearing our case is always a positive,” the spokesman for the city of St. George, J. Andrew Murrell, told the Louisiana Record in an email.
Murrell added that the four-year legal battle over cityhood for the more than 80,000 residents in the St. George region involves only municipal issues, not a change in school district boundaries.
“Municipal incorporation is completely separate from a school district,” he said. “Two completely separate processes, budgets, leadership, etc. A school system requires legislation to create and separate legislation to grant rating authority.”
Incorporation supporters criticize the decision by Broome and two others to legally challenge the Oct. 12, 2019, incorporation election, in which 54% of the residents of the proposed city voted in favor of cityhood. The lawsuit is possibly an attempt to postpone the cityhood process or undermine a legitimate election, they say.
“The merits of incorporating the city of St. George were vetted by the public and in the press for many years prior to a single vote being cast,” Browning and Rials said in a post on the St. George website. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by opposition groups to send false and misleading information to registered voters in an attempt to dissuade them from voting in favor of incorporation. The opposition’s attempts were resoundingly rejected by the more than 17,000 registered voters who voted to incorporate St. George, resulting in a resounding eight-percentage-point victory in a high-voter-turnout election. …”
But a district judge in 2022 ruled against the incorporation plan, concluding that it would cost the taxpayers of Baton Rouge $48 million annually and lead to a revenue decline that would erode public safety services within Baton Rouge.
The residents of the proposed city are majority-white, but the appeals court rejected the contention that the boundaries of St. George were drawn up in a way to exclude minorities.
Plaintiffs did not provide compelling evidence that the boundaries were designed in a racially biased manner, according to that court.
Incorporation supporters point to the decline of the region’s public schools, rising crime rates, faltering infrastructure, an out-migration of residents from the parish and a general loss of confidence in the Baton Rouge city-parish leadership as reasons to set up a separate city.