Lawsuit challenges newspaper notice for bond sale in Louisiana

Louisiana advocacy groups are challenging a plan to sell port revenue bonds, saying the planned bonds were improperly advertised.

The lawsuit against the bond sale is one of three suits the groups have filed to challenge nearly $10 billion in planned industrial investments at a site adjoining the Mississippi River.

The litigants say they are trying to bring more transparency to the process of bringing investments to the Ascension Parish RiverPlex MegaPark, which is between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. They filed two suits in state courts and one suit in a federal court last week.

Advocacy groups Rural Roots Louisiana and Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Pastor Harry Joseph Sr. filed suit against the Port of South Louisiana, a state agency, in the 40th Judicial District Court for the Parish of St. John the Baptist, Louisiana. 

In the suit the plaintiffs said, "the port did not publish public notice of its decision to do so in the official journal of the state as required by Article VII, Section 8(C) of the Louisiana Constitution." The notice gives interested parties a 30 day notice in which to challenge the bonds' validity, they said. 

The proceeds of the $400 million of bonds would be used to construct major dock and ancillary facilities in the industrial park RiverPlex to serve planned industrial projects. 

While the port did advertise the bond sale, it advertised in L'Observateur, a weekly local newspaper the litigants say is not the official journal of the state, the lawsuit says.

The litigants asked the court to declare the port must publish notice of the resolutions authorizing the bonds in the "official journal of the state," which they say is The Advocate, based in Baton Rouge. They said the court should require the bonds and security to be described in the advertisement. Finally, they asked the court to bar the port from proceeding with the bond sale before following the constitutionally required advertising procedures. 

"Three lawsuits filed today constitute landmark legal action taken by local Louisianians showing that state and federal government agencies — up to and including President Trump — are rushing to incentivize large-scale industrial development by companies such as Hyundai, Exxon and CF Industries at RiverPlex MegaPark, a 17,000-acre site in the heart of Ascension Parish, Louisiana," said a communications advisor for the litigants, who declined to be named.

"The State of Louisiana has offered hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives through a process that has been shrouded in secrecy, and … violated very clear public notice and accountability provisions," the advisor said.

"The port has fully complied with all applicable laws and long-standing public notice requirements governing its actions," said Micah Cormier, chief commercial officer for Port of South Louisiana. "The plaintiffs' legal arguments rely on statutes that simply do not apply to the Port of South Louisiana, underscoring that this filing is not about transparency or process but about delay." 

"Public notice was provided in accordance with the law through the port's official journal, a trusted local newspaper that has served this community for generations," Cormier said. "That process exists to inform the people who live and work here."

Another suit said the state and state agency Louisiana Economic Development, in promising grants and state and local tax reductions for the project, took on liabilities that should have been reviewed by the State Bond Commission before the state made the promises. The third suit said the planned construction work would damage the grave sites of enslaved people and, following state and federal laws, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should stop its work on the site, locate the cemetery and preserve it.

Hyundai Steel Company is planning to build a $5.8 billion steel manufacturing plant on the site. CF Industries plans to build a $4 billion low-carbon ammonia production facility. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on the suit. The state of Louisiana, through its Division of Administration named in one of the suits, said it hadn't yet been served with the suit and couldn't comment.