A citizens group and three residents sued the Vermilion Parish police jury and a newly revived industrial development board Monday, alleging they repeatedly violated Louisiana’s open meetings law while advancing SpaceX’s planned $100 billion spaceport.
The suit says the police jury revived the Vermilion Parish Industrial Development Board, inactive since 1997, at a July 15 meeting. On Aug. 25, the board approved a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with SpaceX tied to a 25-year property tax exemption estimated at nearly $24 billion.
The agenda referred to the deal only as “Project Osprey,” a code name the suit says was used so that “even if a member of the public happened across the meeting notice, they wouldn’t know what the meeting was about.”
After the vote, according to the suit, an unnamed lawyer urged everyone to “take a second to savor the history that was literally just made,” in a room with no members of the public present. The attorney for the plaintiffs, William Most, said that he had obtained a recording of the meeting.
The petition filed in the 15th Judicial District Court asks a judge to void the actions the industrial development board took at that meeting. It also asks the court to award damages, court costs and attorney’s fees.
The plaintiffs are the Vermilion Citizens Coalition, a newly formed nonprofit corporation that describes itself as “dedicated to good government and public transparency,” and three Vermilion Parish residents: Robert Young III, Rebecca Young, and Cheryl Choate.
While the lawsuit criticizes the size of the tax break, which it says amounts to about $8 million for each of the 3,000 jobs SpaceX estimates it will create, its legal claims concern how local officials conducted public business, not the incentives themselves. Neither SpaceX nor the state is a defendant.
“This is not a lawsuit against SpaceX or the starbase — it is a lawsuit against public malfeasance and for good government,” the petition says. “If life in Vermilion Parish is going to be irrevocably changed, that decision must include the voice of the people. It cannot happen behind closed doors, without public input.”
Vermilion Parish Police Jury President Chad Vallo declined to comment on the litigation on Monday. Neither SpaceX nor the chair of the industrial development board, Corbett “Cobb” LeBoeuf III, immediately responded to a request for comment.
Beyond the allegations of open meetings law violations, the use of nondisclosure agreements by public officials in connection with the SpaceX deal has also raised transparency concerns.
‘Forget they work for the people’
The use of the code name is one of eight open meetings law violations the suit alleges. It accuses the police jury of adding the board’s revival to its July 15 agenda mid-meeting as a “subterfuge” to avoid public input, voting on two items that weren’t on its agendas, and twice failing to broadcast meetings live. The development board, the suit says, also failed to send notices of two meetings to the state commissioner of administration, who posts them online.
Because the board has no website, the lawsuit says, the state’s website was the only way its meeting notices could have appeared online. Instead, the board announced the Aug. 25 meeting with a one-page notice posted at the parish courthouse just 24 hours before the meeting took place.
Of the votes missing from the police jury’s agendas was an appointment to the development board, according to the lawsuit. Another approved the parish’s settlement with ExxonMobil Corp., whose Vermilion Parish marshland is now the site of the planned spaceport, it says.
The settlement resolved a lawsuit Vermilion Parish and the state brought against Exxon alleging the company damaged coastal marshes through oil and gas development. It was one of 42 similar suits, each led by Baton Rouge attorney John Carmouche, filed by south Louisiana parishes. Twenty-five of those named Exxon as a defendant.
As part of the settlement, the state acquired Exxon’s Vermilion Parish marshland and sold it to SpaceX for $100 million, money the state has said will go to coastal restoration. SpaceX plans to build a $100 billion spaceport there, and the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, said it could host as many as 30 launches a day.
SpaceX then transferred the land to the Vermilion Parish Industrial Development Board, which leased it back to the company as part of the tax deal.
The suit also alleges the parish no longer has a copy of the Exxon settlement. When the plaintiffs’ attorneys sought the agreement through a public records request, parish counsel said all potentially responsive records “were delivered to the possession and control of the governor’s office,” according to the petition.
Parish counsel said the documents had been presented to the police jury in person and then returned to the governor’s office by the governor’s executive counsel, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs characterize that as the governor’s office sending “a staff member to take away every single copy of the agreement — so that Vermilion citizens cannot even review what their elected officials agreed to.”
Kate Kelly, a spokesperson for Landry’s office, said that representatives from the governor’s office were present at the July 15 parish council meeting and that the action to approve the settlement was taken in an open meeting after the council convened in executive session. She noted that the 24th and 25th Judicial District Courts ordered the settlement documents to remain confidential, and said that Carmouche, the parish’s attorney in the lawsuits, has a copy of the settlement.
State law requires suits seeking to void a public body’s action to be filed within 60 days. Most, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said Monday was the last day the plaintiffs could file.
“Democracy fails when public officials forget they work for the people — not the other way around,” Most said in a statement.