Organizers of the years-long city of St. George incorporation effort announced this morning that they will not file a legal challenge to a recent ruling by a Baton Rouge judge that effectively killed the effort—but they say the fight is far from over.
“Pay close attention to those who cheer this as a victory,” says Lionel Rainey III, spokesman for the Committee for the Incorporation of the City of St. George, in a prepared statement. “Nothing has been won. All they succeeded in doing is temporarily delaying the democratic process. … Our opponents claim to have a desire to bring people together. By fighting to deny people the right to vote, these groups have driven a permanent wedge. They have not poured water on this fire. They poured gasoline on it.”
The decision comes after 19th Judicial District Court Judge Wilson Fields ruled earlier this month against the St. George supporters, who had filed suit against Registrar of Voters Steve Raborn, claiming he erred in declaring that their petition was 71 signatures shy of the nearly 18,000 needed to get the incorporation measure on a ballot.
Rainey says the estimated timeline and cost of a legal challenge to Fields’ ruling ultimately led the group not to proceed down that road. He estimates the case could be drawn out for as long as two years and cost more than $250,000.
“Because Judge Fields dismissed our case on a technicality and did not hear the merits of our position, we would have to appeal to the First Circuit Court. If we won there, our opponents would appeal that decision to the State Supreme Court,” Rainey says in the statement. “If we won there, the case would go back to Judge Fields’ court, where we do not believe we would receive a fair hearing. Then the case would again go back to the First Circuit Court and then to the Supreme Court for a second time.”
A total of 17,859 signatures from voters within the proposed boundaries of the new city—or 25% of all registered voters—were needed to get the issue on a ballot. In late May, St. George supporters submitted more than 4,600 additional signatures after roughly 2,000 signatures on an original petition filed in April were invalidated by the registrar’s office. On June 13, the registrar’s office announced it had validated 17,788 signatures on the petition, just 71 short of those required to put the measure on the ballot.
—Steve Sanoski
