Shreveport City Council Chair James Green Answers For Unauthorized Pay Raises
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In a public statement punctuated with self-admonishment and prayer, Shreveport City Council Chair James Green offered a public apology for the unauthorized pay raises given to City Council Clerk’s Office staffers and publicly rescinded them with plans for the city to recoup the unauthorized payments from the employees.
Between his assertions that the error was due to an assumption on his part, Green gave some glimpses behind the scenes in what could be described as an almost passive/aggressive fashion.
He began, “this afternoon, I'd first like to start off by saying that I take full responsibility as to the actions that happen. First of all, I'd like to apologize to the entire Shreveport City Council. Um, I'd also like to apologize, uh, to, uh, Shanerika Flemings, LaTonya Bogan, Jacqueline White, Terry Sanders and Ralph Johnson. Back in June. I, uh, looked at our budget as to what was left in there. We have a very important staff and they are great workers. And so my actions was not arbitrary, nor was it capricious. Capricious. I was not trying to do something bad. I was trying to do something good for our staff because they work very hard.”
“And so on June 29th, I signed for them to get a raise. This is the copy. They worked very hard and I thought that the raise was justifiable on the other hands. The responsibility that I take is because I assume that it was in my power to give them a raise because previous chairs have done the same. I've never asked, is it, was it okay?” Green explained. “So I assume that it was okay, let that be. As it may I take full responsibility and I apologize for it,.”
The City Council Chairman told reporters, “All those raises that I gave, I'm signing a copy to rescind those raises. I feel sorry that I have to do that, but my grandmamma taught me when you know, right, you do, right when you know wrong, wrong two wrongs, doesn't make a right. So today I wanted to say to my colleagues, I didn't know that this was going on. I didn't know that they were displeased.”
He claimed, “I found out about it in the wind, and when I found out about it, then I prayed about it to ask, what is it that I could do to get this rectified? And the only thing that I can do is take responsibility, stand before you all apologize, and do my best to get everything balanced. If there are anybody that got hurt from this, I apologize to them because I meant no harm. Sometimes when you are in positions and you just want to help people, you just want to bless people when you're in that position. And that's all I was trying to do is bless them. Because for an instance, Tanya Bogan, she was acting, uh, clerk for some time. She never got paid. They worked day and night. It doesn't matter how long the meetings, they just work.
Anything that the council asked them for, they do it. So I felt in my heart that they deserved what was left. We didn't have to do an amendment. It was just there. I assume, and I know what a lot of people say, when you assume, you find yourself assuming again, I say I was not trying to do something bad. I was trying to do something good for our employees.”
Responding to a question from Alia Allen with KSLA News 12, Green claimed that there is no “written rules” pertaining to giving raises to the City Council Clerk’s Office.
“Well ma’am in the record. Well basically, you know that as far as 15% we got the raise well everybody got one, we vote on it. But as far as the council then, there are no clear rules as to say that this or the that. So what I’ve been able to do is watch other chairs and I just watch their actions. Say for an instance, one chair was here. We had an employee in the city attorney’s office. He was chairman. He just uh, brought her over to the council office. We didn’t vote on it. We didn’t talk about it. He was chair so we just respected that.”
This statement was refuted by John Settle of Focus SB/The Inquisitor News who referred to the Shreveport City Charter, section 14.09 which states “When a pay plan has been adopted the council shall not increase or decrease the salaries of individual members of the classified service but shall act in fixing the salaries of members of the classified service only by amendment of the pay plan.”
Settle alleged in a recent report that Fleming was responsible for implementing the raises but wrote, “If Fleming was instructed by one or more council members that she had a pay raise, then such action(s) by those persons is also malfeasance and possibly criminal in nature.”
In a statement issued late Monday, Councilwoman Ursula Bowman told reporters according to SettleTalk,
“I was totally unaware of the recent salary increases unilaterally given to members of the city council staff. After reading Section 4.12 of the city charter, it appears the council, as opposed to an individual council member, has the sole authority to fix or increase the salaries of the city council staff. Since the council, as a whole, never authorized the salary increases, I feel strongly the salary increases are improper and violate Section 4.12 of the city charter. Therefore, I feel compelled to vote to rescind the improper salary increases and seek reimbursement of any salary increases received by members of the council staff.”
Despite Green’s “assumption” a simple call or email to the City Attorney may have disabused him of this notion of unilateral power. Tuesday, Marcus Edwards issued an opinion in response to an inquiry from Councilman Alan Jackson in which he states clearly, “No, the authority to set the salaries of City Council employees is vested in the full City Council.” SettleTalk, published the full opinion.
According to KTAL, the City Council is scheduled to hold a special meeting on Wednesday at 9 a.m. the outlet reported that the launch of a city investigation into the pay raises is on the agenda.
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