Louisiana Voice

As a followup to the story about the prospects of a data center coming to the Walker area and the manner in which it was approved by the Livingston Parish Council, some additional information is in order.

At least one member of the council is now claiming he never signed a nondisclosure agreement in connection with the rezoning of 691 acres south of Walker ostensibly to the location of a data center controlled by Microsoft.

Significantly, this member, at the same time, never conceded to either being unaware of what the rezoning was for or being told what it was for and not informing constituents. We sent him two messages on Monday, one saying it was urgent that he contact LouisianaVoice but he never called back.

Likewise, Parish President Randy DeLatte posted a Facebook denial/confirmation of the data center while also denying he’d signed an NDA. In fact, he said, “To my knowledge, no elected official in Livingston Parish has signed one regarding a business coming here.”

Council member Ricky Goff said at a november 2025 meeting of the parish zoning commission that he had signed an NDA.

While not admitting that a data center was in the parish’s future, he did nevertheless eerily parrot Donald Trump’s pitch for data centers. Both called them matters of national security and both invoked China in citing the need for them. “President Trump has made AI a national priority,” he echoed. “This is about our economic security. I Believe Livingston Parish should have a seat at that table.”

What he did not say was on average, RESIDENTIAL ELECTRICITY COSTS nationwide have risen by 42 percent over the past five years and while data centers aren’t the only reason for that, they’ve been a major driver in some places where costs have risen the most.

That Meta Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, for example, will pull some 2 gigawatts of power—and it’s ONLY THE 29^th-LARGEST datacenter in the nation. There are a couple in Utah and Ohio that will have a capacity of 10 GW each. To put that in perspective, one megawatt is sufficient to meet the power demands of about 1,000 homes. A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts.

We don’t yet know the size of the one coming to Livingston Parish nor do we know the gigawatt demand for power.

But here’s the thing: There was a wall of silence that shielded this project from the public. Did any of the council members or DeLatte, know in advance what the proposed purpose of the tract was before agreeing (unanimously) to the zoning change for the property? For that matter, did any of the members of the parish zoning commission know what was in store for the property?

If so, there had to be some sort of agreement (formal or informal—it doesn’t matter) between parties to keep a tight lid on all details. That would mean some sort of arrangement was made in secret in advance of decisions to rezone the property from residential to heavy industrial use.

Under Louisiana’s OPEN MEETING LAW (LA. R.S. 42:14(A), every meeting of a public body “shall be open to the public” and public bodies cannot use proxy voting or secret ballots to avoid transparency.

There are exceptions for executive sessions, BUT there must be a two-thirds vote of members president during an open meeting before a public body may enter into closed session. Once in executive session, no action may be taken by the body; it must re-enter open session before taking any action.

Any discussion about a project such as this data center should never have been held by council members or zoning commission members without convening public sessions. To do so behind a veil of secrecy, whether an NDA is signed or not, is a violation of the law.

Oh, there were “public hearings” in both instances—on votes by the zoning commission and the parish council. But there was scant information available to the public for there to be any “public hearing” of real substance. It’s difficult to hold a public hearing when the public is kept in the dark. No disclosure meant no questions from pesky citizens wanting information.

Moreover, a request was made by LouisianaVoice of the Livingston Parish Council on Monday for a copy of any NDA signed by members or by DeLatte. We were told, incredulously, that any such document would not be in possession of the parish council but instead, would be held by the party with whom such NDA was agreed. Whether that was intentional or not, it appeared to be some type of admission that NDAs do exist somewhere.

This is incomprehensible and strains credulity, to say the least. An NDA is a contract and in the case of signing any contract, it would be unthinkable for all parties not to have a copy of the document.

Last March doesn’t seem like such a long time—unless you’re a Boston Red Sox fan or Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In those cases, it seems like an eternity ago.

In early March, Red Sox fans were looking forward to a possible division championship and possibly a World Series appearance. After a dismal start and after dropping 3 of 4 to the hated Yankees this past weekend, that division title appears an impossible dream, though Boston is still in position for a wild card playoff spot. But World Series? That’s about a remote as Donald Trump going a single day without requiring a diaper change.

Also, it was in early March when House Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently speaking through some other part of his anatomy proclaimed at a Repugnantcan retreat that the war with Iran was “nearly completed” and that “gas prices will readjust after that.”

We were reminded of those fateful words of Louisiana’s 4^th District Congressman by Daily Kos on Monday. But Johnson wasn’t through.

He added, confidently or not (you’re never sure with him), “The Strait of Hormuz has been closed by the regime down there, but it will be reopened, and it will take a couple of weeks, but gas prices will come back down.”

That “couple of weeks” has turned into six-plus months with no end in sight, striking a familiar refrain for the U.S. habit of engaging in never-ending wars with no victories to show for the efforts. (Remember, it was TACO Don who pledged “no more wars” during the 2024 campaign.)

And gas prices damned sure haven’t “come back down.”

The funny thing about the Repugnantcan mindset—John N. Kennedy, Bill Cassidy, Johnson, Clay Higgins, Julia Letlow, et al included—if POTUS (Pedophile of the U.S.) says it, the GOP (Gelatin Offensive Predators) sheep have no choice but to parrot whatever sewage spews from his mouth as if the message was delivered from Mount Sinai.

Case(s) in point, also according to Daily Kos:

“I liken it to a street repair. It’s always a pain when the street has to get repaired, especially your home street, there’s traffic congestion and whatnot,” Republican Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida told CNBC, also in March. “But there comes that day when they release the cones and whatnot, and it’s smooth and easy and widened and safer, and that’s what’s happening.”

What??!! But wait. There’s more:

“I am hopeful that we can bring this to a close in the next few weeks,” Rep. Tom Barrett, a Michigan Republican, told The New York Times in April. “Once there is stability in the region, oil prices and subsequently gas prices will come down, while Americans will be safer because we’ve neutralized one of our most determined enemies.”

Stability? Really? They’ve only been fighting “stability in the region” for a few thousand years and Cadet Bonespurs’ war is going to change things in “a few weeks”? Good to know.

Boy, these guys really are living in some alternate reality.

And these are our elected leaders? What must that say of the followers, the MagHats?

Perhaps The Wall Street Journal said it best when it recently asked the difference between Iran and Vietnam.

“Trump had a plan for getting out of Vietnam.”

Those concerned about transparency in government (and in all reality, that should be every one of us) have to be wondering about the necessity of the sudden explosion of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) being signed by elected and appointed officials throughout Louisiana.

After all, they were elected by the citizenry to represent the citizenry—not some faceless, soulless out-of-state corporate entity. We have seen that officials in every single parish in Louisiana, included in many cases, state legislators, have become parties to these agreements that prohibit them from discussing or even acknowledging a major event that will affect the lives and livelihoods of residents of their state, their parishes, their districts.

In scores of these cases, generous tax incentives have been approved for the corporations who may or may not provide jobs to the local folks. These incentives, taken together, have cost the state and local governments billions of dollars in needed revenue.

All this is to say that the worst-kept secret in Livingston Parish has been all but confirmed by official documents obtained by LouisianaVoice despite the parish president and every member of the parish council having signed one of those proliferating NDAs in an effort to keep a lid on the news:

Livingston Parish, more specifically, Walker, Louisiana, is getting one of those electricity-eating, water-guzzling data centers. (Parish President Randy DeLatte recently hinted to a constituent that he soon would have “a big announcement to make.” Hope this doesn’t let the air out of his balloon.)

Go to the 21-minute mark of this video of the Livingston Parish Livingston Zoning Commission 11 3 25 – YouTube meeting of Nov. 3, 2025 and you can hear parish council member Ricky Goff admit he signed an NDA for a major project along Buddy Ellis Road that he explains was originally planned for a 1700-family subdivision but which plans have “changed a little bit.”

That “change” is now a 691-acre tract on which the data center will be built. Unofficial word is the big tech company building this one is Microsoft. Like the data center being constructed in Richland Parish and the one to be built in St. Francisville, hundreds, if not thousands of construction jobs will be created. But after the facility is up and running, we just don’t know how many permanent jobs will be made available—especially to the local folk.

Tony Achord is owner of Southern Heirs Auctions on Buddy Ellis Road. His shop is on land owned by Our Lady Of the Lake Medical Center and because OLOL originally had no plans for the Buddy Ellis frontage property, he was assured he was welcome to operate his antique auction business for as long as he wanted. That is, until last Friday when he received a registered letter from OLOL’s attorneys giving him 90 days to vacate.

“They (the data center operator) must’ve bought the hospital property,” Achord said.

Actually, 691 acres of property were quietly and with no explanation by the parish council, rezoned last Nov. 20 from R-2 (residential) to I-2 (heavy industrial) at the request of Juban Land Holdings which appears to hold the deed to all 691 acres. Louisiana Secretary of State records list Reeder & Hawes Investments of Dallas, Texas, as the only officer of Juban Land Holding, LLC. William Christopher Reeder of Dallas is listed as manager and sole officer of Reeder & Hawes and Baton Rouge attorney Michael R. Hubbell is the registered agent for both Juban Land and Reeder & Hawes.

As with the parish zoning commission, the full parish council voted unanimously in favor of the rezoning, all, like Goff in testifying to the zoning commission, were apparently “very comfortable with what’s coming…whether it be medical or whatever.”

(Scroll down to Case # 25:53)

But other records would lend more credence to a data center. For instance, Dixie Electric Membership Cooperative (DEMCO) has made application to Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) for “expedited” authority to generate up to a gigawatt of electricity. That is supported in part by the confidential testimony before the Louisiana Public Service Commission of Jeffrey Andry, Jr., chief strategy and regulatory officer for DEMCO in November 2025.

And even though the testimony was removed from circulation in the interests of confidentiality, there were still several passages in the transcript of his testomony that were redacted as an extra precautionary measure to ensure their secrecy.

A gigawatt (GW) is equivalent to a billion watts, or 1,000 megawatts.

To give you some PERSPECTIVE, the total capacity of all U.S. electricity generating plants was about 1,100 GW in 2012.

The U.S. grid handles 700 GW on peak days.

One GW can power as many as 750,000 to 850,000 homes for one year.

So, bottom line, the Livingston Parish Council decided it knew what was best for the parish’s 150,000 residents and that only they had a need to know about a major event that will affect the lives of thousands of people.

Maybe George Orwell was correct. Maybe Big Brother is watching us and watching after us.

And what better way to sneak in any obscure regulation, tax exemption or “economic development” project than with the handy NDA?

If my feeble memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall an indignant Donald J. Trump and the sofa-loving J.D. Vance going a little beserk at the fraud discovered in the State of Minnesota and that they went after Gov. Tim Walz with their big guns by endorsing that pillow guy Mike Lindel, all to no avail, it turned out.

Ah, but now der Führer gets another shot at allow Fraud Czar Vance root out even more fraud–this time in Cadet Bone Spurs’s home state of Florida.

The new out of Florida today is that a grand jury has found that Gov. Rhonda Santis and his administration used a “sophisticated scheme” to MISAPPROPRIATE TAXPAYER MONEY for political purposes.

Gasp. I feel faint. But wait, there’s more.

It seems that the money, some $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds, was funneled into Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit arm of an organization launched by Casey DeSantis, the guv’s wife. And get this: White booted Rhonda Santis attempted to pressure The Orlando Sentinel into not reporting on the transfer to fund political activities.

Ol’ Agent Orange turned the full wrath of the U.S. Justice Department loose onto that bicyclist who stopped by the Reflecting Pool to check out the shoddy $14 million repair job and he has used the department as a weapon against other perceived enemies in his never-ending quest to administer justice fairly and equally (sarcasm fully intentional).

Nah. My guess is he’ll go after CBS News Miami which obtained and published the GRAND JURY REPORT which is supposed to be sealed.