Union Parish Police Jury – bad decision

The Union Parish Police Jury has failed to live feed the last three of its’ public meetings.
The regular December meeting had a capacity crowd questioning why the jury voted to impose a $2,200,000 increased reassessment tax a year earlier than required. No live feed.
The December 30 “Special Meeting” to approve the audit before year end is normal; but ordinarily election of the president for the coming year is done each January; but, in this case, the president was voted on at the December special meeting, for some reason which is not clear from the public records. Again, no live feed.
Finally, the regular January meeting held just last week had no live feed.
Sources say this is the decision of President Glen Hutto and apparently no formal jury action has been taken to address it.
Louisiana law – LSA R. S. 42:23 – requires the governing authority of a parish to live broadcast its meetings if the population of the parish is 25,000 or more.
Union Parish has a population of 20,914, covers 877 square miles, has 8,247 households, has a high elderly population and a per capita income of $27,835 and a median household income of $45,743. Source: U. S. Census Reporter 2023. The roadways are old and dangerous.
Because of the population, the UPPJ is not required to live feed its meetings under the statute, as a general rule. However, once the UPPJ decided to live feed, bought the equipment and lighting with public funds to live feed, and actually broadcast live feeds to the public for months, the question becomes whether it is morally right, much less legal, to arbitrarily deprive the citizens to open access to governmental meetings through a live broadcast.
Union Parish is one of Louisiana’s poorest, largest and most heavily taxed parishes. It has very bad roads, has an older population with many elderly citizens who cannot safely attend a meeting in person and return safely home at night, when the regular UPPJ meetings are concluded. The parish as a whole is heavily dependent on live feeds to keep informed of actions of the UPPJ.
This is not a good optic for the politician(s) making the decision to deprive citizens of convenient access to the business of government through technology purchased for that purpose with their tax dollars. Many citizens, especially the elderly, have therefore lost their only practical means to observe actions of the governing body of this parish. Neither the sitting state senator nor representative have weighed in on this issue – but they have the ability to do something by lowering the 25,000-population broadcast threshold to 20,000 by amendment of the statute.
A good example of why this is important is that during the December 30, 2024 “Special Meeting” – something you would only know if you were there happened: the UPPJ, with Juror Abercrombie absent, voted to change auditors yet again without soliciting for bids. It voted to hire the same audit firm that had audit responsibilities to the UPPJ during the time it held over $9,000,000 in non-interest bearing accounts for years in connection with the land fill reserve account.