In vetoing an ordinance that would have taken away the Baton Rouge Police Department’s exclusive right to escort oversized vehicles and loads on city-parish streets, Mayor Kip Holden says the policy has garnered “little if any complaints” in the 14 years it’s been in place.
Councilman Ulysses “Bones” Addison, however, says he introduced an ordinance to open up escort services to all law enforcement agencies after being informed one local company alone, Stupp Corporation, is paying roughly $1.3 million a year for the escort services.
“It’s all about the money,” says Addison, who will ask the council to override the mayor’s veto at its Dec. 14 meeting—which would require eight of 12 votes.
Addison says Stupp likely uses the escort service, which is required by state law for vehicles or loads that exceed a certain size limit, more than any other company in the parish.
“It’s probably as little as five companies and maybe as many as eight or 10, that are really affected by this,” Addison says, adding he has no tally on what escort services net off duty police officers each year.
Baton Rouge Police Sgt. Don Kelly says the department does not keep track of what its officers—who are paid directly from the companies requiring an escort—make each year from the off-duty work. Kelly says escorts are needed “very frequently; if not on a daily basis, pretty close to it.”
Addison says the current ordinance, on the books since 1997, amounts to a “quasi-monopoly” for the Baton Rouge Police Department. He notes the off-duty officers use department vehicles and gas when providing the escorts, but the department gets no share of the money paid for the service.
A Stupp representative did not return a call seeking comment on the ordinance or the mayor’s veto. Addison says company officials asked him several times not to press forward with the ordinance because they feared it could create a rift between it and the city-parish and the police department.
Holden vetoed the ordinance, as well as another that would have lowered the maximum dollar amount for which a contract for professional services could be approved without Metro Council consent, on Thursday. It marked the first time since taking office in 2005 that Holden has vetoed a Metro Council ordinance.
Addison says he was “a little bit shocked” to learn of the veto from Business Report this morning, because Police Chief Dewayne White and Assistant Chief Administrative Officer John Carpenter told him they had no problems with the ordinance.
However, a letter from White to Holden dated Dec. 1 asks the mayor to veto the ordinance because it would “create an environment conducive to additional serious injury and fatal crashes which will begin to occur between oversized loads and passenger vehicles.”
Addison says public safety is not the issue. He says the sheriff’s department, state police or any other law enforcement agency is just as qualified as the Baton Rouge Police Department to conduct the escorts.
“When we get down to it, it’s not about public safety,” he says. “My intent in this is not to hurt the police department in any way, but I would ask them, what part of the public safety is at risk if we change this?”
The council approved Addison’s ordinance by a 9-1 vote on Nov. 22, with Councilman Trae Welch casting the lone dissenting vote. C. Denise Marcelle, who drafted the other ordinance vetoed by Holden, did not return a call for comment on whether she’ll ask the council to override that veto, too.
