There may be no better introduction to Eileen Bates-McCarroll than the license plate on the back of her Mustang. MSMAYOR. It is funny, confident and just a little unexpected, which, after spending an afternoon with the mayor of Albany, feels pretty fitting.
At 76, Bates-McCarroll is nearing the end of her second term leading the town she has called home for most of her life. She is a former district attorney’s office administrator, former state employee, painter, Leadership Livingston graduate and 2022 Livingston Parish Chamber Women’s Leadership Award recipient.
But before all of those titles, she was an Albany girl. Bates-McCarroll was born in New Orleans, but both of her parents were from Albany, and the family returned when she was about four years old. Her father was Hungarian, making her story part of the Hungarian heritage woven deeply into the Albany community.
Her family name, she discovered through records, was originally Batta, rather than Bates. Her grandfather came directly from Hungary, and even her father’s birth certificate carried the Batta name. “My Hungarian name is Batta,” she said.
Her father bought 10 acres after the family returned to Albany and tried his hand at strawberry farming, tying the family to another piece of the area’s agricultural history. Bates-McCarroll would later participate in the Hungarian Harvest Dance for years, even receiving the honor of serving as part of its lead couple.
She graduated from Albany High School in 1967 at just 17 years old and entered a workforce that looked considerably different for women than it does today. “I couldn’t get a car in my name,” she recalled. “I had my own job, my own money.”
After beginning at a finance company, she spent roughly a decade with General Adjustment Bureau, an insurance adjusting company. Eventually, after the birth of her child, an opportunity arrived much closer to home. The retiring Albany town clerk stopped by her house and asked if she would consider taking the job.
Bates-McCarroll initially planned to stay home with her child. But Town Hall was two blocks away, the schedule worked for her family and she knew practically everyone involved. So she said yes. She could not have known it then, but those few steps from home to Albany Town Hall would begin a public-service career spanning decades.
Not long afterward, she accepted a position with the district attorney’s office, where she remained for 18 years and eventually became the administrator of the Livingston Parish office. She coordinated with law enforcement, judges, the clerk’s office and local government, gaining an education in public administration that no classroom could have replicated.
“I had been in very high-level meetings,” she said. “I’ve been in meetings with three governors, executive staff, sheriffs, judges, clerks, local leaders.” There was one distinction, though. “I was always supporting a man boss,” she said. “I never had a voice.” She was watching, listening and learning anyway.
After leaving the DA’s office, Bates-McCarroll ran unsuccessfully for Livingston Parish Clerk of Court in 1999. The loss could have ended her interest in government altogether. Instead, days later, another opportunity appeared.
She agreed to help reorganize the Louisiana pardon board for six months. Six months became 15 years. The work took her throughout Louisiana, including into state prisons for pardon hearings, and her tenure stretched across the administrations of Governors Mike Foster, Kathleen Blanco and Bobby Jindal. Combined with her 18 years at the DA’s office, it eventually allowed her to retire from public service.
For a while, she pursued an entirely different side of herself. She studied photography. She painted. She became president of the New Orleans Art Association and won awards for her artwork. She traveled extensively. Eventually, however, Albany called her home.
And Bates-McCarroll decided she needed something to do. Initially, she considered running for town council. Then people around Albany began suggesting something bigger: mayor. She wasn’t immediately convinced.
After losing a parishwide election years earlier, she knew exactly what it felt like to put her name on a ballot and lose. So she did something simple. She went to the people of Albany and asked whether they believed she could do the job. They did.
Bates-McCarroll ran against two men and won the 2018 election outright, taking office in January 2019. State records and the town’s current website confirm her tenure as Albany’s mayor. She has now spent nearly eight years doing something she had spent much of her career watching other people do: making the decisions.
Her administration has dealt with infrastructure, sewer and water issues, equipment, ordinances, development and the lingering effects of the 2016 flood. She has worked with parish, state and federal officials while trying to position Albany for what she calls “good growth.”
The town itself now describes its location near Interstates 12 and 55 as an asset for both residential and commercial development. But perhaps the most telling thing about how Bates-McCarroll views leadership is what happens inside those meetings she once attended without a voice.
Now that she is the one with authority, she brings other people into the room. “If there was an opportunity, especially my clerk, she was always invited into the meeting,” she said. “I wanted her to see how you have difficult conversations with people. How you stand up for whatever you might be defending.”
To Bates-McCarroll, leadership includes preparing someone else to lead. “If I don’t invite her in, she never learns those lessons,” she said. That philosophy is also why she says this term will be her last. She believes strongly in turnover in government and in older leaders deliberately creating opportunities for younger generations. “It is not our job forever,” Bates-McCarroll said. “You are there to serve the people.”
She knew when she sought her second term that she would not seek another. “I believe in term limits,” she said. “There are plenty of young men and women in the town of Albany, in other local government, in state government, in federal government, that are capable of doing that. And it’s their future.”
It is a fitting conclusion for someone who spent years sitting quietly in rooms, learning from people who held the authority she did not yet have. She eventually got her seat at the table. Now she wants to make sure somebody else is ready for theirs.
When Bates-McCarroll first ran for mayor, she remembers describing Albany as “a gem waiting to be polished.” She saw a community that was proud of itself but ready for movement. Over the years, she said, progress began slowly. “It was just like a flower blooming, petal by petal.” Her hope was never to turn Albany into something it wasn’t. It was to give its residents another reason to proudly say they were from there. “What I hope that I leave them with is a sense of pride for the town of Albany,” she said. “Because I love Albany. It’s my hometown.”
When her time as mayor ends, Bates-McCarroll isn’t going anywhere. Albany is where her parents came from.
It is where her Hungarian roots took hold in Louisiana soil, where her father once planted strawberries, where she grew up, worked, returned, ran for office and eventually became Ms. Mayor. And after nearly eight years in the office, perhaps her legacy is best summed up by the philosophy she has carried into it:
Learn everything you can. Bring somebody else into the room. Leave your hometown a little better than you found it. Then know when it’s time to hand over the keys.
