Abbeville: Another Broken Promise

In 2019, Abbeville’s leaders came to their citizens with a promise. If voters approve a new sales tax, the revenue would benefit the men and women who wear the badge. Police officers, they said, deserved a raise — a fair salary to keep good officers in uniform and protect the city from the revolving door that weak pay tends to bring.

Voters believed them. They passed the tax, with 71% of voters casting ballots in favor of the measure. Officers believed them too, signing papers that tied the promise directly to the new money: across-the-board raises for every member of the Abbeville Police Department. But buried inside those same documents was something no one outside City Hall knew — a clause requiring each officer to waive their rights under state law. In exchange for the new tax-funded raises, the officers were told to surrender the very pay protections the Legislature had already guaranteed them.

It was a bait-and-switch. The City had told voters one story — we’ll use your tax money to give the police a raise— while quietly attempting to force officers to sign away the legal standard that defined what those raises should be.

You Have Been Betrayed!

For a time, no one outside the department noticed. Then, in 2023, the City Council adopted a new budget that raised the starting salary for patrol officers to $40,000 per year. But the pay of the senior officers — the sergeants and lieutenants who had built their careers and invested much time in the City of Abbeville — stayed the same.

State law is unambiguous. Once a city raises the base pay for patrol officers, it must increase the rest accordingly — fifteen percent more for first-class officers, twenty-five percent for sergeants, fifty percent for lieutenants, plus two percent each year for longevity. That’s not a suggestion. It’s the law.

Louisiana Revised Statute 33:2212 establishes pay differentials for police officers in municipalities with populations of 12,000 to 250,000. But Abbeville is special! They received a carveout to the statute, which provides:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of Subsections A and B of this Section, in the city of Abbeville the minimum salaries of full-time employees of the police department shall be in accordance with the following schedule:

(a) A police officer shall receive a minimum monthly salary of seven hundred sixty-six dollars and eighty cents per month.

(b) A police officer first class shall receive a minimum monthly salary of not less than fifteen percent above that of a police officer.

(c) A sergeant shall receive a minimum monthly salary of not less than twenty-five percent above that of a police officer.

(d) A lieutenant shall receive a minimum monthly salary of not less than fifty percent above that of a police officer.

(2) On and after August 1, 1982, each member of the police department of the city of Abbeville who has had three years continuous service shall receive an increase in salary of two percent and shall thereafter receive an increase in salary of two percent for each additional year of service. Both the base pay and accrued longevity shall be used in computing such longevity pay.

(3) Notwithstanding any other provisions of law to the contrary, the city of Abbeville is hereby authorized to grant equal raises to all full-time officers of the Abbeville Police Department, without consideration of rank or longevity. The raises shall be funded by an additional sales tax, if approved by the registered voters of the city.”

This carve-out is irrespective of the population in the City of Abbeville. That legislation was adopted and tied to the sales tax ballot language sold to the people.

The officers asked City Hall to fix the problem. The City refused. They filed suit. As the litigation has progressed, the officers have attempted to resolve the pay dispute with the City, but each formal demand has been rejected. Recently, the Council even went into an illegal closed-door executive session and voted to reject yet another attempt by the officers to simply resolve the suit and receive the monies they are rightfully due.

Throughout this process, every promise made to both the public and the police collapsed. The same government that had campaigned for a tax to fund raises was now hiding behind technicalities to deny them. Abbeville’s officers — the very people the City said it wanted to reward — were forced to sue their own employer to enforce the law that guaranteed them a minimum level of pay.

The Day of Reckoning

The case, Bourque et al v. City of Abbeville, is now two years old. It is scheduled to go to trial next week as a first fixing, so it will move forward. And regardless of the outcome the taxpayers of the City of Abbeville will be left with the bill. The plaintiffs include eleven current and former officers. They aren’t asking for anything new; they’re only seeking the pay differentials and back wages that Louisiana law already guaranteed.

In February of this year, a judge agreed that Abbeville’s current pay plan violates state law. But the ruling didn’t address setting damages, leaving that question for trial. Regardless, the court ruled plainly that the City’s pay schedule is illegal. The City appealed the decision. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied their writ.

The City’s defense borders on the absurd. Its lawyers argue that Abbeville’s population has fallen below 12,000, so a different statute (LARS 33:2212.1) now applies. They easily overlook the carve-out in state statute they received, which was tied to the voter tax referendum funding he paid raises. They ignore legislative intent. Ignore the will of the people expressed during the tax election. And ignore the plain language of the law, which reads “Notwithstanding the provisions of Subsections A and B of this Section,” or in other words, the carve out for the City of Abbeville is controlling, takes precedence, and supersedes the other provisions regarding population.

Waived Rights?

They also argue that the officers waived their rights in 2019 when they accepted the “sales-tax raise.” They even claim that those waivers — the very ones the City itself drafted and distributed — were “compromises” that should block the lawsuit altogether. The language crafted and shoved before the officers for signature reads:

“Appearer further acknowledges that it is in his/her best interest to enter into this agreement with the City of Abbeville, to wit:

In consideration for the Mayor and City Council of the City of Abbeville agreeing to an across the board raise for the members of the Abbeville Police Department, subject to the approval of the citizens of the said city by the passage of a new sales tax dedicated in accordance with the said tax proposal, Appearer does hereby agree and bind him/herself as follows:

Appearer irrevocably waives all rights granted under LSA R.S. 33:2212(F) including, but not limited to, the right to receive an enhanced salary in accordance with the salary structure based upon the salary of an entry level police officer:

Appearer irrevocably holds the City of Abbeville, its elected officials, officers, employees, agents, and insurers harmless from any and all claims, including, but not limited to, wages, penalties, other damages, attorney fees, and cost arising, or claiming to arise from actions taken in furtherance of this process;

The officers’ response is simple: you can’t sign away a law meant to protect the public interest, and you can’t rewrite a statute with a piece of paper passed around before payday and signed by officers under duress.

At its core, this is not a lawsuit about payroll spreadsheets. It’s about honesty in government. It’s about whether elected officials can promise one thing to their citizens, do another behind closed doors, and still call themselves “public servants” or “leaders” in the community.

Return to the Darkness

Plato said:

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

Those afraid of the light and the truth often crawl back to the rock they belong under, but only when their ill deeds are noticed. That instinct — to conceal rather than correct — came roaring back last month. On October 7, 2025, during a regular council meeting, the City again retreated behind closed doors. The agenda listed “discussion of pending litigation.” There was a public notice indicating what litigation was actually being discussed. Inside that executive session, officials debated whether to settle the police officers’ case.

When they came out, they immediately voted to reject the settlement offer. No public notice. No opportunity for citizens to comment. Not even a clear description of what lawsuit they were voting on. One resident tried to speak and was ignored and denied the opportunity for public comment.

Vague Notice

That sequence — vague notice, secret deliberation, public vote without comment — violated every principle of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law. A formal complaint was filed, citing the failures to the Mayor (who sets the agenda), the Council (the body that must vote to take action), and the City Attorney (who directed the whole charade).

Under the law, either the Attorney General or the District Attorney should have acted. Yet, they have not. No written explanation. No suit to enforce the rights of the public. Nothing. It is an all-too-common outcome, a failure by the elected officials tasked with enforcing open meetings laws to take any meaningful action. Only the typical bureaucratic reaction, which can be categorized as “lazy” and “derelict”.

When the City was notified of the violation, its attorney called it a “clerical error” and had the council re-vote weeks later to rescind its earlier action. But clerical errors don’t happen in executive session. What happened was an illegal meeting, a violation of the public trust, and a desperate attempt to rewrite what had occurred once the cameras stopped rolling. This happens all too often in public bodies across our state, with the lazy and derelict tacitly approving violations through inaction.

The Moment of Truth

Now the City of Abbeville is out of excuses. The trial is set for November 10, 2025. The only question left is how much the City owes the men and women it continues to shortchange. They continue to withhold hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the police officers, spending more and more money on attorneys’ fees fighting the very people they rely on every day for protection.

But the deeper question belongs to the citizens who believed in that 2019 promise. You were told your tax dollars would support law enforcement. Instead, the money became leverage — a tool to make officers sign away their rights. And when the deception finally came to light, the City hid behind closed doors to manage the fallout.

In the end, this case is about more than back pay. It’s about the character of a government that believes an inconvenient law is optional. It’s about what happens when a city, Mayor and Council alike, learns it can break promises in public and break laws in private — and still expect no one to notice.

Next week, Abbeville goes to trial. But the verdict that matters won’t come from a courtroom. It will come from the people who now know the truth – that clerical corrections or closed-door votes do not restore integrity in government. It is restored only when citizens stop accepting excuses and start demanding accountability. Until they do so, they should be prepared for life in the Land of Roz!

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