Ordinances dealing with public records and pay raises are set to be introduced at Tuesday's Lafayette council meetings.
Our media partners at The Advocate are reporting that Lafayette Parish Council Finance Chairman Kevin Naquin said Thursday it was his idea to increase the salary of the mayor-president in 2024, not Josh Guillory's idea.
The city and parish councils are expected to introduce a joint ordinance Tuesday that would increase the mayor-president's salary by $48,000 per year effective in January 2024. If Guillory is re-elected in 2023, he would receive the pay raise in 2024. If he loses, his successor would benefit from the raise. To read the story, click here.
The Parish Council meets at 4:30 p.m. and the City Council meets at 5:30 p.m. To see the agendas, click here and select December 6 from the drop-down menu of meeting dates.
On the agendas are joint ordinances set for introduction that address the fees charges citizens to get copies of public records, and the salaries of certain executives, including the Mayor-President.
The public records ordinance was prepared after several local media outlets sued the Guillory administration over what they say are unreasonable costs for electronic copies. The issue was two-fold; the administration was charging $1 per page for electronic copies, and also was requiring their review to take place in a building where cell phones weren't allowed.
State law requires records custodians to make the records available for review by the public at no charge. Often, members of the media and the public will bring a cell phone or hand-held scanner to make their own copies of the records - which is allowed by case law. By requiring the review to take place in the parish courthouse, the administration was preventing that, which in part led to the lawsuit.
The policy, which is being jointly introduced by City Council Member Nanette Cook and Parish Council Member Josh Carlson, specifically states that no charge will be made for the transmission of electronic records.
If a record exists only on paper, and has to be scanned to transmit, the charge is 50 cents per page. To get a paper copy of a record, the charge is 50 cents per page for the first 50 pages and $1 per page thereafter. If a file is too large to be emailed or uploaded to a file-sharing site, the charge is $20. If the requester wants a color copy, that's $1 per page.
The policy specifically forbids the charging of fees for overhead - including redaction and/or legal fees - in a response. To read the full ordinance, scroll down.
Also on the agenda are several ordinances, up for introduction, that would implement pay raises Guillory has been asking for.
One would increase the pay of the Chief of Police by about $35,000 annually, a 25 percent increase.
Another would increase the pay of the Chief Financial Officer by about $35,000 annually, a 22 percent increase.
A third would increase the pay of the Fire Chief by $10,000, a 7 percent increase, and the Chief Administrative Officer's pay by about $32,000, a 24 percent increase. That ordinance also would increase the Mayor-President salary from the current $121,000 to $170,000. Legally, the mayor's salary can't be increased during a term, so that increase wouldn't take effect until 2024, when the next term begins.
That ordinance paperwork says it was submitted by the administration, but The Advocate story says it should have said the pay increase for the mayor's position should have been attributed to the councils.
This isn't the first time Guillory has tried to increase the salaries of some top executives, but it is the first time there's been an attempt to increase the Mayor salary. The Current - which is one of the newspapers that sued Guillory over the public records charges - has done several stories about Guillory's employment since he's been mayor. You can read them here.
Here's the ordinance about the public records charges:
