As expected, DA Warren Montgomery, who lost his attempt to regain some funding for his office through his own tax proposition, is suing parish government.
In the opening Montgomery said he regretted, but was compelled, to file against St Tammany Parish Government, the Parish Council and Mike Cooper as Parish President. His document said he was seeking a judgement against the defendants to fund the DA’s Office to the legitimate and reasonably proposed budget of $8.7 million to fund what he called state mandated expenses.
Montgomery outlines in his document how his office covered funding shortfalls from previous years but has now run out of any ability to continue to make up for the lost money. He also said his trial docket for 2022 is nearly twice what would be normally expected due to courts being closed during the pandemic.
Montgomery stipulates that St Tammany Parish Government failed to budget for mandatory expenditures like his office before allowing money for non-statutory expenses.
This year Montgomery sought to go out and fund his own office through a smaller tax after the public rejected numerous attempts by this administration and the previous one to renew larger tax bills that would have normally funded the DA’s office and other arms of the local government body.
Montgomery said multiple times that if his proposed tax bill failed, he would be forced to sue. He filed the 34-page document on the Monday after the voting results on Saturday.
