Hwy. 3132 completion battle continues, documents deadline today - KSLA News 12 Shreveport, Louisiana News Weather & Sports

Shreveport Mayor Glover and the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments have complied with a court order to hand over emails and other documents pertaining to delays in completing the south Shreveport extension of Hwy. 3132 by Noon Wednesday.

John Settle, attorney for the Finish 3132 Coalition leading the lawsuit against the city and government leaders, says they received more than 1,000 pages of emails and documents at 11:18 a.m. and 11:58 a.m. Wednesday. Settle tells KSLA he's unhappy with the "document dump," because they were promised they would get the documents requested as they were found, and not all at once.

"The city promised they would bring them to me as they found them."

Now, Settle says they'll be pouring over those documents in preparation for a hearing before District Judge Leon Emmanuel on Thursday at 2:00 p.m., where Settle has vowed to "raise a fuss."

Settle told KSLA News 12 he believed Mayor Cedric Glover did not provide all the critical documents that were asked for by the courts. Glover said that was not true. He and his staff sifted through 3,500 emails narrowing those down because he said most of those were copies.

"We made sure that we went back and checked all the files," said Glover. "We did find some paper letters that were missing. We also went back and found things that we thought were more specific to what was being requested."

It's the latest in the legal battle between the City of Shreveport and the Finish 3132 Coalition, which claims the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments (NLCOG), which Mayor Glover is a member of, has been intentionally withholding emails, text and other documents that would show mismanagement and poor planning on the city's part is what led to the failure to complete the highway.

Click here to view the transcript of the April 18 hearing, in which the City of Shreveport asks for more time to produce the documents (PDF)

Settle filed a public information request in February on behalf of the coalition requesting the City of Shreveport provide the documents, asking the judge in the case to hold Mayor Glover in contempt of court if the paperwork was not submitted by the deadline.

Click here to view the public records request filed by the Finish 3132 Coalition (PDF)

Not all of the Mayor's text messages and tweets were turned over as requested. In a letter accompanying the documents (PDF), Shreveport City Attorney Terri Anderson-Scott explained that their submission includes a letter from Verizon Wireless stating that the company is only able to retrieve information approximately 3-5 days back from the current date. Anderson-Scott goes on to explain that neither the City of Shreveport and Verizon are custodians of the records that would contain the Mayor's tweets.

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