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The battle to incorporate the City of St. George is finally over.
The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday afternoon ruled that the lower courts made an error by denying incorporation of St. George and rendered judgment in favor of incorporation for the new city, which will be the fifth-largest in the state.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome first filed suit in 2019 against two organizers of the city of St. George incorporation effort, Norman Browning and Chris Rials, challenging their ability to provide services to voters in the proposed new city and claiming incorporation will “have a substantial adverse impact on the city of Baton Rouge as well as the remaining unincorporated areas of the parish.” Voters approved the proposed municipality in October 2019.
In a 37-page opinion, one of the justices writes that 54% of voters were satisfied with the proposed plan for city services and that none of the petitioners suing against incorporation live within the boundaries of the proposed community.
“No voter or elector residing or owning land in the proposed area of incorporation objected to the petition,” the opinion reads. “Thus, one can reasonably conclude they found the plan adequate. Only those persons have a real and actual interest in that claim. Only they can claim insufficient information in the petition to make an informed vote. (Lamont) Cole neither resides in nor owns property in St. George. He did not, and could not, vote in the election. Consequently, he has no real or actual interest in challenging the sufficiency of the petition. Because no one from within the incorporated area objected to it, the court of appeal erred in considering the sufficiency of the petition. Thus, we reverse.”
The state Supreme Court picked up the case in November after a state appeals court over the summer affirmed the trial court’s decision that the St. George incorporation effort did not fully comply with state law.
Efforts to incorporate St. George were born roughly a decade ago following two failed attempts by the community to form its own breakaway school district in southeast East Baton Rouge Parish but have been contentious over the years. In 2018, LSU Economist Jim Richardson and the city-parish Finance Department estimated Baton Rouge would lose between $45 million and $48 million in sales tax revenues if the roughly 60-mile city of St. George was allowed to incorporate. City-officials at the time said a loss of that size would be unsustainable.
The city-parish did not respond to requests for comment before this afternoon’s deadline.
