State AG meets here with Louisiana mayors

ots, Callais and legal ads were among the topics when state Attorney General Liz Murrill was in Morgan City to speak to a group of Louisiana mayors.
The city hosted the Mid-Sized Mayors Conference at Municipal Auditorium.
The concern about bots, or automated online message systems, came from Wade Evans of Central, the former East Baton Rouge suburb that incorporated in 2005 to operate its own school system.
The city is bombarded by bots making public records requests that tie up city employees, Evans said, and he wanted to know if there’s a legal remedy.
Murrill suggested that public record requests can be limited to those who can prove they’re human beings.
The Supreme Court’s Callais decision struck down a Louisiana U.S. House map that included a second Black-majority district in the state. The decision said race was too large a factor in the drawing of the second Black-majority district.
The mayors wanted to know whether the Callais logic might also be applied to local districts.
“Right now, the decision is about congressional redistrict,” Murrill said. But she noted that local districts are also drawn with an eye on minority representation.
The mayors also complained about being required to publish legal ads in an official print journal when the ads could be published online without the expense.
Murrill and the mayors agreed that newspaper lobbyists are responsible for keeping the print requirements in place.