Abbeville’s Reckoning: When Broken Promises Finally Come Due

For nearly five years, Abbeville’s leaders have tried to pretend this fight was about accounting or paperwork. It isn’t. It’s about whether a city that took tax money from its citizens and labor from its police officers can now escape the promises it made to both.

We’ve covered Abbeville’s broken promise to its police officers before. What’s different now is that the courts have ruled the City’s pay plan illegal, the trial has concluded, and Abbeville is awaiting a judgment on damages.

Now it is February — the month when all parties expect a final court ruling on the exact amount Abbeville owes its police officers in back pay. What was once a warning, and perhaps the court’s hope for a negotiated settlement, has become an ever-louder ticking clock as the bill finally comes due.

Raising Taxes, Y’all!

In 2019, Abbeville voters were asked to approve a dedicated sales tax to ‘support police pay.’ More than 70 percent said yes. Officers were told that money would bring stability and long-overdue raises. What followed was something very different.

Officers were given documents requesting that they waive their rights, including the right to be paid according to rank and longevity, as required by La. R.S. 33:2212(F). In exchange, they were promised an “across-the-board” raise funded by the new tax.

It sounded generous. It was anything but.

Broken Pay Plan

Those flat-dollar raises — first $6,500.00 in 2020, then $13,340.00 in 2023 — quietly destroyed the statutory pay ladder. A lieutenant is supposed to make 50 percent more than a starting officer. A sergeant is supposed to make 25 percent more. Longevity is supposed to compound on top of that.

But when everyone gets the same dollar increase, rank and experience are erased. A rookie and a veteran climb the same rung. The law is broken, but the paychecks keep coming — they just have the wrong amounts on them. That deception is now coming to an end.

Suit Filed

In 2023, several officers of the Abbeville Police Department filed suit against the City of Abbeville. In February of 2025, a district judge had already ruled that Abbeville’s pay plan violates state law. The Third Circuit declined to intervene, and the matter went to trial in December of 2025.  After the trial, the court ordered both sides to submit briefs outlining their arguments. The trial was not about whether the City broke the law; that was already decided. The parties are still awaiting a ruling on the sole question of how much Abbeville owes its police officers for violating the law.

And the numbers are not small.

How Much $$?

Based on the City’s own payroll data and the statutory formula, Abbeville’s liability for back wages, benefits, and retirement contributions is well into six figures — and climbing with every passing pay period. The plaintiff clearly indicates that the city owes $333,463.69 in back wages and other associated payroll-related costs to the officers. All of this is outlined in a concise chart that is easy to interpret.

The defendant, the City, doesn’t provide a clear bottom-line figure. Their numbers are jumbled and scattered throughout their eleven-page brief. They then reiterate that the court must determine which statutes apply. How could the court rule in February of 2025 that the City violated the law if it had not also ruled on the applicable statute?

Throughout this process, legal interest continues to accrue. Attorney fees will almost certainly be added. What once looked like a clever way to save money now threatens to become a very expensive lesson in statutory non-compliance.

No Corrective Action Taken

City Hall’s response has not been contrition or correction. Instead, Abbeville has argued that it can pick and choose which parts of state law apply, that population shifts somehow erase special legislation, and that officers “waived” rights that public officials have no authority to bargain away.

Those arguments are not about fairness. They are about delaying and buying a little more time. And they are hoping the court will ignore what the Legislature and the Third Circuit have already made clear: you cannot fund police salaries with a sales tax while quietly dismantling the pay structure the law requires.

Yet, while all of this has been occurring, yet another suit has been filed. In May of 2025, Abbeville Police Officer Carl Calder also filed suit against the City of Abbeville over pay-related issues. There has been little progress in that suit, likely because the parties are awaiting a ruling in the 2023 case.

It Isn’t Just In Abbeville

Abbeville’s case matters far beyond one city. Across Acadiana, other municipalities have flirted with the same temptation—using creative pay plans, flat-dollar raises, and bureaucratic shortcuts to evade statutory obligations. This case and this legislative carve-out may be unique to Abbeville, but police pay discrepancies are occurring across the country. Abbeville may be where this principle is decided, but it won’t be where the final battle is fought.

If the court enforces the law here, it should send a message to every city in Louisiana: police pay statutes are not optional, and voter-approved taxes are not blank checks. But will it have that impact? Will anything ever change if there is never ANY PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for poor decisions and unwise deliberate acts?

Abbeville’s Leadership Failed

Abbeville’s leaders had a choice. They could have used the sales tax to raise everyone’s pay while preserving rank, experience, and the integrity of the law. Instead, they chose the easier political path — flat raises that looked good in press releases and quietly broke the pay ladder behind the scenes.

Now the bill has come due. And, as always when government cuts corners, it will not be the officials who made these decisions who pay the price — it will be the citizens of Abbeville.

The only question remaining is, how much?

###