Parish council members agree to disagree on travel expenses

The long-fought issue of the Parish Council travel reimbursements came a bit closer to resolution at the regular meeting of Tuesday, May, 5.
Last year, after one councilman complained that others were spending too much of their common travel allowance, the council passed an ordinance dividing the travel budget, currently $20,000, equally among the nine members and the clerk of the council.
Members who serve in outside organizations where membership requires travel to meetings and symposia wanted to find a way to increase their budgets. One way suggested was to allow members with unused funds to voluntarily transfer them to other members. Another suggestion was for unused travel funds to “roll over” to subsequent years. Most members, however, have favored sticking to the limit of $2,000 as stated in the ordinance.
Parish legal adviser Chester Cedars explained his position that either of these changes would carry ethical risks. Ceders said that either approach could create a “vested right” to the funds, in which case a member could, for instance, serve 12 years on the council without traveling then demand his $24,000.
In the case of roll-overs, Ceders’ interpretation is that the travel budget was not intended to be a perquisite of office or a part of a member’s compensation. It was conceived to allow reimbursement for travel “to aid the discharge of their duties as a public official” for the benefit of the parish.
As a compromise solution, District 2 councilman Jason Willis inquired about the possibility of a member “borrowing” against his own travel budget for the following year. The problem with that, according to Cedars, is that events could change and the travel budget is not guaranteed to stay the same, or even exist, in the following year. The “vested right” problem is in play there as well.
An objection to the question of members assigning their travel fund to others was clarified by District 9 Councilman Dean Doré. He suggested that it could create the appearance that the exchange of things of value between members could influence votes. District 5 Councilman Clay Courville agreed, stating that the council needs to stay far away from anything that could have the appearance of influencing the votes of members.
On this point, Cedars said that, since it is not a vested right, the funds are not a member’s to give away.
The only change in the policy that met with general approval was one to allow increases in reimbursement to cover unforeseen factors that increase costs to members, such as flight cancellations due to weather.
In other business, Parish President Guy Cormier reported that he has been spending considerable time and effort fighting against abolishment of the state’s Business Inventory Tax. The tax is collected by the parish and then refunded to businesses by the state. A proposal before the legislature would eliminate the tax altogether as a part of efforts to close the states budget shortfall.