Louisiana Voice

Please don’t take this as badgering or begging, because the last thing I want is to appear like some despicable televangelist trying to convince viewers that he/she will receive a blessing for sending their last dime to him. That’s just morally wrong.

But what I will do is simply remind you that our Spring fundraiser is in process and IF YOU CAN DO SO, your contribution to dedicated journalism would be appreciated. I’m fully aware there are other concerns far more deserving of your assistance than I. (Your local food pantry comes to mind. So do other charities.) But if it’s feasible and practicable in the wake of skyrocketing prices on everything, any contribtution would held and would be so much appreciated.

And anyone contributing $50 or more will receive a signed copy of my upcoming book, The Dinosaur Club–a historical novel about a group of retired newspaper reporters to undertake one last assignment to take down a child sex trafficking operation. In addition to the book’s fictional plot, it also contains many, many actual facts about child sex trafficking by churcn and religious leaders, police, judges, foster homes and politicians. At any given time, there are as many as 600,000 children being trafficked worldwide, not only for sexual purposes, but for labor, drug smuggling and other activities. And one of the main arteries for child sex trafficking in the U.S. is the I-10 corridor between New Orleans and Houston.

Click on the yellow “KEEP US INDEPENDENT” icon to the right of this post and follow the instructions to make a ONE-TIME payment by credit card.

You would think that with all the nut cases running around out there, a person would think twice before making an overt threat against a school.

But you’d be vastly overrating the intelligence of those ass-hats who are prone to put mouths in motion before having their minds in gear.

Some idiot forced a lockdown at Live Oak High School this morning because (apparently) he had nothing better to do than to shoot off his mouth by threatening to come onto campus—though thankfully, it appears it was an empty threat.

Nevertheless, it forced the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and the school to take the threat seriously and to put the school into lockdown.

“Out of an abundance of caution, the LOHS campus is on lockdown,” a blast text to parents said. “All students are safe and in a classroom. Parents will be notified when the lockdown has been lifted,” the text said.

A follow-up text said, “We are continuing in lockdown while the LPSO (Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office) conducts a full sweep. There is NO evidence of a credible threat but we continue to take it very seriously…All students continue to be safe and locked down in classrooms.”

I’m at a loss to try and understand the mentality of some ass-clown doing this. Whether credible or not, this is indicative of some troglodyte mindset, an action of some mentally deranged individual who apparently believes the world revolves around him.

But I have a news flash for this person: You are not important enough nor are you even remotely entitled to disrupt an entire school over your petty grievance, whatever it might be.

(Editor’s note: Paul Spillman is a U.S. Navy verteran who has authored the following guest column. He is a resident of St. Francisville)

To the casual fan it may seem as though college athletics has succumbed to greed and selfishness now that athletes sign name, image, and likeness deals and are even being paid by the schools they attend. The headlines invoke the end of an era – college athletes not playing for love of the game or good ol’ State U. just for whoever will pay them the most. But that view is a result of the all-encompassing political climate we currently live in, a doom-and-gloom environment of both real and imagined horrors. College sports is not nearly so desperate or so difficult to address. But no problem can be addressed or resolved if it cannot be accurately stated. The biggest impediment to resolution so far is that so few people can accurately state the problem.

This current wild, wild west era of college sports began with a 2014 Supreme Court ruling in favor of former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon who sued the NCAA for denying him the right to earn money from his name, image, or likeness while the NCAA profited by selling those rights to EA Sports. This ruling opened the door for athletes to be compensated for the use of their name, image, or likeness and effectively ended the NCAA’s definition of “amateurism.” That ruling was followed by a 2021 decision in the case of former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston who challenged the NCAA’s right to deny education related benefits and privileges afforded any other student by withholding athletic eligibility. In a truly remarkable 9-0 decision the Supreme Court found the NCAA in violation of antitrust law – remarkable for the unanimous ruling. How settled must an issue be for all nine justices on today’s Court to agree? This is a crucial point. All nine justices agreed the NCAA was in violation of antitrust law.  In a concurring opinion Justice Kavanaugh wrote the “NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America,” further commenting that price-fixing labor while generating billions in revenue is unjustifiable under antitrust law. The overriding issue forcing change is that the NCAA clung to its outdated definition of “amateurism” instead of adapting to the 21^st century. It is not athletes, agents, or greed that created the current circus. It was a governing body failing to govern, leadership failing to lead.

The lack of response from the NCAA is the very thing which created the current state of affairs. The NCAA took no action following the O’Bannon ruling leaving lawmakers in all fifty states on edge over the fallout of that ruling. Finally, California became tired of waiting and passed NIL legislation in 2019. Thirty-one states have followed. Perhaps that was the unspoken purpose of the NCAA’s failure to act because the only action it has taken is to go hat-in-hand to Congress begging for an antitrust exemption in the form of legislation that solves all their problems for them and one of their main arguments is to point to all the different state regulations regarding NIL. Since the Alston ruling the NCAA has lost virtually every case brought to court on the basis of violating antitrust law. And in the absence of a governing body to set and enforce rules in compliance with the law who is surprised that in free-market-get-it-while-you-can America the circus came to town?

It is possible Congress can write legislation that grants the NCAA an antitrust exemption. Courts will uphold legislation that is specific and narrowly tailored, but are less willing to support broad or blanket legislation with a one-size-fits-all law. Currently there are several pieces of legislation in Congress attempting to address the issues either all or in part. The SCORE Act, for example, attempts the specificity needed for an antitrust exemption but would likely require the NCAA to reorganize its divisions. On the other hand, legislation introduced by Senator and former coach Tommy Tuberville grants five years of eligibility over a five-year period with one transfer allowed without penalty. That is basically the full wording of the bill. Senator Tuberville is not known for loquaciousness. That legislation should it pass would certainly be challenged as too broad to allow wholesale application for an antitrust exemption.

But again, the NCAA itself is the larger part of the problem. The NCAA is the governing body for more than 1150 colleges and universities. Division 1 has just over 350 schools that range from a university such as Ohio State with athletic department revenue of around $170 million and fielding teams in 36 sports involving more than 1,000 athletes, to a school such as Mount St. Mary’s with an athletic revenue less than $14 million for 708 athletes comprising 22 teams, if you count flag football and bowling. And therein lies the problem. Ohio State and Mount St. Mary’s are not the same kind of athletic entity. To get legislation specifically tailored enough for an antitrust exemption would likely require acknowledging the differences between two such schools and placing them in different divisions. That would mean an end to March Madness – the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments – as well as the post season for almost every other sport. The SCORE act for example would apply to schools with athletic revenue of greater than $20 million – so it would apply to Ohio State but not to Mount St. Mary’s. This would require the restructuring of NCAA divisions which no one is eager to do. It’s why the NCAA has dragged its feet. It’s why they want a broad antitrust exemption from Congress. It’s why they are doing their best to drag us back to 1985 and keep us there. Because no one wants to be the person who makes the call that ends March Madness as we know it.

But if one thing is certain it’s that change is inevitable. One can either roll with it or get rolled over by it. Those are the only two choices. If the NCAA refuses to reorganize it likely cannot get a broad antitrust exemption. If Congress writes legislation specific enough for an antitrust exemption it will likely not be broad enough for the current division structure of the NCAA. Congress could legislate college sports to death but no one in their right mind should want Congress involved any more than it has to be, if at all. If Congress starts legislating college sports it will not stop with NIL, revenue share, and transfer portal. Realignment, scheduling, and playoff selection would all soon follow and all legislation would have other unrelated bills attached and carry the force of law. Truly that would be the end of college sports.

Another option is for schools that wish to participate in the modern era of college sports to break away from the NCAA and form a separate umbrella organization for its member schools with rules specific enough to members to grant the antitrust exemption needed to regulate and enforce rules concerning eligibility, transfer, compensation, etc. This would also mean the end of current post-season tournaments.

So, yes, it’s a mess and the future course is still undetermined. But for readers who are upset with the current state of affairs in college athletics the blame falls squarely on the failed leadership at the NCAA. No where else. But change is in order and it can’t be stopped. Leaders with a vision forward are needed, not dinosaurs clinging to the way it used to be.

What happens when a taxpaying citizen decides he’d like to know more about how a public, taxpayer-supported entity operates and proceeds to submit public records requests (PRRs) that conceivably could prove embarrassing to that public body?

Why, that public body files a lawsuit to stop the citizen in his tracks.

LouisianaVoice has documented at least two instances of that tactic being employed in the past: the first was when 4^th District Court judges up in Monroe filed suit against the Ouachita Citizen newspaper. That was more than a decade ago, back in 2015. We followed that sordid story with several posts. You can check them out HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

It was such a bizarre strategy that even a local television station had a STORY  about the unique litigation.

Of course, the Gannett newspaper, the Monroe News-Star remained characteristically mute on the subject, preferring instead to concentrate on the local chamber of commerce’s biggest draw to Ouachita Parish: the Robertson family and their Duck Dynasty reality show.

Then in 2021, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry, aka “Squeaky Toy,” captured the coveted “BLACK HOLE AWARD” for outright contempt of government transparency when he filed a lawsuit after he filed suit against Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Andrea Gallo after she made PRRs in December 2020 for copies of sexual harassment complaints against Pat Magre, erstwhile head of Landry’s criminal division. He resigned soon after a Baton Rouge judge ordered Landry to make the documents available.

Score: Transparency 1, Landry 0.

Now, as George Santayana or Edmund Burke said (no one’s certain who should be credited), “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it,” the same strategy is now being employed by Butch Browning and the West Baton Rouge Fire Protection District No. 1, who have filed a similar lawsuit against John O Summers, editor and publisher of the WBR Independent news publication, who made the mistake of peppering Browning and the district with PRRs.

Oh, it’s not that the district has outright refused to provide records but for approximately 200 pages of documents it estimated it would cost Summers in excess of $1500.

First of all, the standard price for copies of records from a public body (except for clerks of courts, which generally charge $1 per pate) is 25 cents per page.

But, the Louisiana Public Records Law (La. R.S. 44:1 et seq.), stipulates that any citizen may view records at no charge and that that same citizen may make his own copies—again, at no charge. So, if one possesses a portable hand scanner, he should never have to pay for copies of public records. Again, clerk or court records are a notable exception because clerks are unique in that they fund their offices through charges for copies and through filing fees.

The basis for some of Summers’s PRRs is because he raised questions about safety procedures at a fire board meeting. As a result, both he and another firefighter were politely shown the door and told their services were no longer needed—or welcome.

Events have evolved rather quickly since Summers filed his first public records request last July and the fire district responded with a cost estimate of $1500. In August the fee was reduced to $83 and then waived—in writing—by the fire district’s own records custodian. Then over the end of August and first of September Summers was blocked on Facebook and he received a cease and desist from Browning’s personal attorney.

Then, in October, the Parish Council adopted a new fee schedule for public records that was four times the state standard. After that came more public records requests from Summers and a dispute over a fee of $121.50 until on March 20 of this year, a petition was filed in court at 9:02 a.m., followed at 4:51 by a blanket public records request refusal.

Exactly a week after that, a citation was issued against Summers and served on March 31 and a hearing set for April 29 before Judge Alvin Batiste Jr. of the 18^th JDC.

All of which has prompted a sharp, three-page letter to Browning and the district from the TULANE UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL’S FIRST AMENDMENT LAW CLINIC reminding Browning of the existence of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which spells out freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The letter from the law clinic noted that John Summers is a decorated veteran who began his tenure following his return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, where he earned a Purple Heart (something Browning did not earn despite once decorating his state fire marshal’s uniform with military medals he did not earn).

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is now involved in the case on Summers’s behalf.

Just another day, folks, in the never-ending fight between people like John Summers who strive to keep the public informed as to what the local leaders are up to and those in positions of power who would rather not be held accountable.

I’ll be the first to admit that I know precious little about Facebook. But after years of covering the underbelly of Louisiana politics — public records requests, legislative hearings, sources who’d rather not be named — I’ve apparently done something that causes men of my generation to break into a cold sweat.

I rejoined social media.

LouisianaVoice now has a page at facebook.com/louisianavoice. Same independent, unfiltered coverage of Louisiana politics you’ve been reading for years — the stories the majority of media are too content attending ribbon cuttings and speeches to bother with.

Anyway, all this is just my way of saying we’re expanding our reach. If you’re on Facebook, give us a follow. Then share us with someone in this state who needs to know what’s really going on in Baton Rouge and Washington.

As always — your support keeps us independent. While you’re here — our Spring fundraiser runs through April. If Louisiana Voice is worth something to you, click below.

— Tom Aswell, Publisher