Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler, from left, Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray and Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham attends a special meeting of the Bossier City Council on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, at Bossier City Municipal Complex in Bossier City, La.
Bossier City Councilman Brian Hammons speaks during a meeting of the council Tuesday, July 1, 2025, at the Bossier City Municipal Complex in Bossier City, La.
Bossier Government Reporter
Bossier City Mayor Tommy Chandler, from left, Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray and Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham attends a special meeting of the Bossier City Council on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, at Bossier City Municipal Complex in Bossier City, La.
After being accused of failing to properly mark the city-owned vehicles of several top officials in Mayor Tommy Chandler’s administration, Bossier City has adopted a formal vehicle-use policy.
It comes after an Aug. 7 blog post was published by Wes Merriott, the owner of sobo.live who is also engaged in a lawsuit with the city, alleging that the cars driven by a number of the administration’s top officials weren’t properly marked with decals in accordance with state law. It also alleged that Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray shouldn’t have a public car since he is a part-time employee of the city.
That post has since been made private, something Merriott said he’s started doing with his political coverage during the football season to avoid detracting from his coverage of the Parkway High School panthers.
City Council President Chris Smith said the allegations got the ball rolling.
“When that reporting came out, it obviously put the vehicles on our radar,” he told The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate. “I reached out to the mayor’s office to find out, ‘Hey, what does our vehicle policy actually say about this?'”
And he said that’s when he found out that the city really didn’t have a policy beyond some boilerplate forms employees had to sign about not texting and driving and whatnot.
The new policy, which was adopted unanimously by the City Council on Oct. 21, includes more fleshed-out rules forbidding the use of city-owned vehicles for unofficial business or personal use, along with guidelines for conduct while operating those vehicles. It also includes details on how accidents and injuries should be reported to the city.
“Councilman [Brian] Hammons made some amendments to it, but it was largely written by the city attorney’s office in the mayor’s office, and then we adopted it,” Smith said. “So, that’s more to protect the city and make sure that, ‘Hey, if something happens, we told you you couldn’t do this.’ And instead of being a document that we sign, it’s codifying it into the code of ordinances so it holds a little bit more teeth.”
Bossier City Councilman Brian Hammons speaks during a meeting of the council Tuesday, July 1, 2025, at the Bossier City Municipal Complex in Bossier City, La.
One of the amendments Hammons added on Oct. 7 was to limit take-home vehicles to full-time employees, a policy aimed specifically at revoking Ray’s vehicle. It is not the first time Hammons has taken aim at the attorney, who drew criticism from the public alongside City Attorney Charles Jacobs and other officials during the city’s back-and-forth over term limits and, more recently, over the administration’s parking lot spending scandal.
“He’s part time,” Hammons said to Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham on Oct. 21 as Ray was away trying a case in south Louisiana. “I want the city vehicle parked here before the end of the day. There’s no part-time employees that get a take-home city vehicle, so that is to be parked here.”
Ray chose not to comment on the situation for this article.
The adoption of the policy foreshadows a closer look at the city’s vehicle fleet. Smith said it’s going to be a big part of the council’s so-called “tax reduction audit” that’s currently getting underway.
“We were already looking at it as we go through the budget process, because obviously vehicles are a big expense where we could probably see some savings,” Smith said.
“We’re working with the mayor’s office, asking more questions on our end, but we’re really going to wait on that audit to get some numbers, kinda to put behind it,” he added.
Smith said they’re expecting a preliminary report on the audit by late January or February. From there, they may ask the auditing firm to do some additional probing, which means a final report may not be done until the second quarter of 2026, he added.
Merriott applauded the council for getting the policy adopted, saying the new council members seem “pretty quick to improve the way things have always been done.”
“I think the article accomplished my mission of cleaning up that mess,” he told The SBC Advocate.
Justin O’Connor is a Report for America corps member covering Bossier government. Email him at Justin.OConnor@TheAdvocate.com.
Bossier Government Reporter
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