Louisiana Voice

You remember the saga of the F-bomb hurling school board member?

You should. It’s been less than a week since LouisianaVoice reported on St. Tammany Parish School Board member CHARLES HARRELL muttering “Go f**k yourselves” into a hot mic following a board vote last week that extended the collective bargaining agreement with employees that resulted in the crowd erupting in applause.

Well, the upshot of that little display of petulance has resulted in an official call for a special meeting of the board tomorrow (Tuesday) at 6 p.m. to consider a resolution of censure “pertaining to school board member District 5.”

As you may or may not know, there is only one District 5 school board member: Charles Harrell.

The meeting is to consider CENSURING Harrell for his outburst and the proceedings may be seen live on STPPS, the St. Tammany Parish Public School online feed.

The numbers vary, but the core facts remain the same.

The State of Louisiana, through the University of Louisiana Board and Louisiana Tech University are concealing the expenditure of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds in order to finalize a settlement between Tech and Conference USA, a settlement which clears the way for Tech to exit CUSA and move into the Sun Belt Conference.

Front Office Sports online news service puts the fee for departing CUSA after 13 years north of the $8 MILLION that UTEP paid CUSA in order to leave for the Mountain West Conference.

The numbers are confusing because CUSA first said it should cost as much as $5.5 MILLION to leave early and Tech opened the bidding at a lower amount.

Of course, the numbers would be crystal clear if the agreement had not contained the dreaded NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that shrouds the final dollar amount in secrecy.

It’s the explosion of confidential settlements that concerns me. This is taxpayer money that’s being bandied about as a bargaining chip in this comedic custody battle.

Want to know why it’s laughable? Get this official statement released by Tech: “The move to the Sun Belt Conference in July is one that will benefit the health and well-being of our student athletes, the fiscal stability of our athletics department and the economic vitality of our entire region.”

Really? A multi-million-dollar payout to jump from one conference to return one you were a member of a few years back and left for the Western Athletic Conference is going to somehow contribute to better health for student athletes? Or their well-being? Is that some sort of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. MAHA gimmick?

If you sincerely have their health and well-being in mind, you might consider backing off on scheduling the big boys who routinely beat your players’ brains out. You’re just not ready for the SEC or the Big Ten or ACC level of play. I love Tech, but hey, I’m a realist. I know you do it for the bucks and not the glory, the athletes be damned.

As for the fiscal stability and economic vitality, I pretty much covered those in the previous paragraph. Actually, the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

And with the exception of maybe one or two well-heeled alumni (I’m a Tech alumnus, but not a wealthy one), there is no TAF from which to draw a seemingly endless pool of cash to lavish on coach buyouts. Any major expenditure of $8 or $5.5 million—or whatever—is taxpayer money and the school should be held accountable for any such expenditure.

Yeah, I know, Tech is claiming the move will save millions in travel expenses. But it didn’t seem to mind shelling out travel expenses when it jumped from the Sun Belt to the WAC where it had to play games in Nevada, Idaho, California and Hawaii. That took a pretty good chunk of change and Tech made that move without batting an eye, as I recall.

LouisianaVoice REPORTED LAST MONTH that litigation had been initiated over the proposed move. That was after both CUSA and Sun Belt released football schedules for 2026 and both had Tech playing a full slate of games—more than two dozen combined. That would be enough to wear just about any team down.

But signing onto multi-million-dollar confidential settlements is enough to wear down the tax-paying citizens of Louisiana.

And of course, there are the God-know-how-much in attorney fees spent on flinging motions, countermotions, requests for information, interrogatories, denials, depositions—all of which eventually led to negotiations and maybe mediation before agreeing in principle to in all likelihood, a predetermined outcome.

By Paul Spillman, guest columnist

As I’ve written about this both here and elsewhere and the subject is vastly more complex than one essay can address. I think a deeper dive into the current state of college athletics is in order. The essential problem remains unchanged – the NCAA as it is currently structured and organized is not exempt from antitrust law and cannot regulate the movement or earnings of student athletes. So how did we get here?

The NCAA was founded in 1910, evolving from an earlier organization which began in 1906. It was founded at the suggestion of President Theodore Roosevelt to address safety concerns in football, which at the time was only played at the college level. As a rule-making body for college football there was not even a thought as to application of antitrust law. But times changed.

Over the next several decades the NCAA became not just a rule-making body for football, but the rule-making body for all intercollegiate sports. And not just a rule-making body but a governing body as well, the rule-enforcing body. During this period of time – roughly the 1920s though the 1950s – the NCAA was rarely challenged as a governing body and if challenged rarely lost. There was no actual cash compensation – at least not legally recognized – and “benefits” could be denied in exchange for the real value of a degree. Courts generally acknowledged the authority of the NCAA to enforce rules. But time continued on and things continued to change.

In 1952 the NCAA had licensed the “Game of the Week” to NBC. The NCAA strictly controlled media rights under the argument it would impact attendance at games. Ticket sales and associated revenue was then, and still is now for many, a major source of dollars for both athletic departments and their colleges/universities. It was an argument with some legitimacy. Except that it was wrong. Games on television did not limit ticket sales but it did increase the demand for more games on television. Over the next twenty or so years the NCAA slowly licensed more games to broadcast companies but it maintained it controlled the media rights for member institutions until the University of Oklahoma successfully sued the NCAA in 1984. The Supreme Court found the NCAA in violation of antitrust law by limiting the media opportunities for schools. This ruling coincided with the advent of cable television and the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN).

ESPN for a decade had been desperate for content. It would broadcast almost anything and sometimes days or weeks late just to have programming to fill the hours. The broadcast networks controlled the sports market leaving their rejects for ESPN. But suddenly hundreds of colleges and universities had media rights to sell and a burning desire to be on television. Most of those schools allowed their conferences to negotiate for them and in the last half of the decade there was an explosion of college football and basketball on television. By 1991 ESPN was not only airing multiple football games each Saturday but a prime time Thursday night game as well.

Fast forward twenty more years. Conferences are negotiating their own skyrocketing media deals. College sports of all kinds are on multiple networks. There is a football playoff in place. There are more post season bowl games than ever. March Madness legitimately causes work slowdowns all across America. This isn’t 1954 anymore. The value of a scholarship has become diluted by the money involved. The revenue generated is in the billions of dollars. And the NCAA is selling the name, image, and likenesses of former NCAA basketball players to EA Sports for their NCAA Basketball computer game. And refusing Ed O’Bannon any compensation for it. Whoever were the attorneys advising the NCAA at that time have to be the worst ever because every move the NCAA made then and from that point forward has been the wrong move.

Clinging to its definition of “amateurism” the NCAA lost the O’Bannon ruling and stopped selling rights to EA sports. But it stayed the course … right into the sandbar. The 2021 Alston ruling from the Supreme Court flatly denied the NCAA an antitrust exemption leading to the current state of affairs – there is no governing body for college sports.

That’s not universally true. The NCAA can still regulate eligibility, for example. But the proposed rule of five years of eligibility to be played in five years that start at high school graduation or age nineteen is a knee-jerk reaction to the transfer portal mess that will surely be challenged in court if adopted.

So what would the NCAA have to do to be granted an antitrust exemption? Simply, it would have to become more like a singular business entity than an umbrella organization. Among some of the issues that would need to be addressed is whether or not athletes are employees, with the legal standing of an employee. If not what standing do they have because they create the value. The membership would need to be more strictly divided and rules for each division would need to be consistently and universally enforced – as opposed to the sometime arbitrary enforcement of the current NCAA. The NCAA might also need help from Congress. If it was unable to reorganize in a way the Courts would support its authority Congress would need to write laws granting such. Regardless of any other law Congress will be required to write a national law on NIL compensation to override the current laws of 32 different states. And there is already one law on the books governing revenue sharing of those billions of dollars. NIL deals, transfer portal, and eligibility are all separate issues to be addressed.

Congress getting involved became inevitable following the O’Bannon ruling in 2014 when the NCAA did absolutely nothing to address any of the issues. College sports could not survive fifty different sets of rules. But Congress is a solution, not the best solution. Whatever law Congress writes and however many of them it takes college athletics will be bound by it for good or bad. Conservative author and commentator George Will is fond of writing about The Law of Unintended Consequences which immediately becomes applicable anytime Congress acts. There is certain to be unintended consequences to Congress governing college athletics. But will they be inconsequential?

We’ve entered the final week of our Spring fundraiser and if you haven’t noticed, I have not posted very many solicitations for this one. That’s because of the guilt I feel for asking for your hard-earned money when we’re fighting higher costs of fuel, food, medicine, housing and transportation, to name but a few of the consumer goods and services that have skyrocketed out of control because of gross indifference in Washington.

It’s true. Those 535 members of Congress, the occupant of the Oval Office and the judiciary have no concept of the struggles Americans are facing, nor do they seem to really care. The would-be Jesus President is far more preoccupied with his $400 million ballroom, his proposed golden archway, begging for the Nobel Peace Prize while invading Venezeula and Iran and threatening Canada, Greenland and Cuba, planning a redneck UFC Freedom 250 fight, molding the military to his desired level of featy and grifting billions of dollars for him and his family. They’re all out of touch with reality while we try to balance the household budget.

That’s why I feel pangs of guilt in coming to you when I know there are disabled veterans, homeless people, mentally ill people in need of help. That’s also why I always try to plug the food pantry, or food bank. They do wonderful work and are deserving of all the help they can get.

But if you have anything left to spare and you like to see journalism speak truth to power and to not shrink from its responsibilities, we would greatly appreciate your support. We at LouisianaVoice strive to maintain a high level of credibility with interesting, factual information that others seem to try to avoid or to merely give superficial coverage to.

If you are so inclined and are in a position to do so, go HERE and scroll down to the Keep Us Independent button. Click on it and follow directions to make a ONE-TIME contribution.

Those who contribute $50 or more will received a signed copy of my new book, The Dinosaur Club. It’s about six geriatric former news reporters who become angry over the sex trafficking of children and unite to go after the traffickers.

A pretty good living could probably be hashed out by an enterprising investigative reporter writing only about Jackson Parish what with deputy sheriffs sexually assaulting daughters, a local juvenile detention center fashioned out of storage containers, moonlighting of health products by the sheriff and a deputy, questionable associations between the sheriff and a Covid testing service, bulk dirt purchases from a company owned by a deputy, all followed by the abrupt “retirements” of Sheriff Andy Brown and his chief investigator (AND BUSINESS PARTNER) Donovan Shultz last November.

But it apparently didn’t stop when they stepped down.

Word on the street is Jackson Parish may yet not be free of Brown’s influence. Charles “Chuck” Garrett owned a building SOUTH OF TOWN on U.S. 167 that the sheriff’s office once (but no longer, it seems) used for an animal control facility.

Sheriff candidate Jesse Allen Magee and Garrett are partners in a company identified as C & J LIVESTOCK  and Garrett and his family are generous contributors to Magee’s campaign a you might expect a business partner to be. Of the $19,000 received by Magee during 2026, fully 40 percent, $7,700 has come from Garrett, his wife and two others named Garrett from Corsicana, Texas, and Coushatta, respectively, have also contributed ($1,250 between the two), according to reports filed with the state. Actually, figures show that Garrett and his wife have contributed a total of $12,500, but there are two separate $5,000 contributions by Charles Garrett that are only four days apart in January. That’s most likely a duplicate entry.

The only question remaining is this: given the business relationship between Brown and his chief investigator Shultz, could there be a deputy’s job awaiting Magee’s business partner should he win the election for sheriff?

And if you think all that is curious, then there is the mayor and employees of the town of Hodge, also in Jackson Parish, are taking the fifth over the disappearance of a couple of pet cats.

“This time the corruption appears to be in the [Brent] Barnett Sheriff’s Office,” says the cats’ owner, Tommy McDougald who added the matter is apparently “under investigation” by the sheriff’s department).

On April 8, he said the town of Hodge baited, trapped and removed his two pet cats. “We had pictures of these traps the morning of the cats disappeared,” he said. “The neighbor confirmed via text that the town had reached out to set traps on their property and around the neighborhood. I went searching the alley and porches of vacant houses around my home and found no traps other than the one just under the neighbor’s carport. I immediately called the mayor of Hodge Gerald Palmer. I asked where I could reclaim my two cats. He confirmed the city caught some cats and “they were hauled far away.” 

The next morning, at an intersection in town, I flagged down the town vehicle that had been driving by and stopping to check traps. I asked them where I could reclaim my two pet cats. They asked me what they looked like and I described then they confirmed they had trapped my cats. I asked again where they had taken my cats. The said they were taken up the hill. I asked them to specify where is up the hill. They stated ‘They were taken up the hill in Jonesboro to town where they were then taken somewhere in Monroe.’’’ 

McDougald said he then called the town of Jonesboro and he was told they had not taken in any cats, saying they don’t have any way to do that and definitely don’t take any animals to Monroe.

“We contacted every animal shelter in Ouachita Parish [and] they all stated they don’t take animals from outside the parish,” he said.

“There is a Village animal control ordinance #135 that was put into law in 1993 that is 10 pages. It specifically specifies in detail how every aspect of animal control “shall” be handled. It leaves very little space for executive discretion anywhere (the ordinance is below).

“I was hesitant to go to the sheriff’s department because I knew it was a direct conflict of interest since the mayor was a retired deputy with the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “I sent the sheriff a personal email about the situation to make him aware of the conflict of interest.  His chief deputy called me, assuring me there would be a ‘thorough investigation’ and again I disclosed the conflict of interest. He assured me that didn’t matter. 

He said the sheriff’s office previously wanted him to obtain the records and only recently said they will look for them if they exist.

Ordinance 135 says unequivocally there “shall be intake logs, due process for owners” to reclaim any animal held. The mayor (Gerald T. Palmer) and his employees have pled their fifth amendment rights,” McDougald said.

“The sheriff ‘s department initially said there isn’t much to go on since we don’t have witness statements and again, I pushed for the objective evidence to be pursued. This is animal theft by taking my personal property (cats), animal cruelty by dumping the cats, and malfeasance for not following the laws within ordinance 135. I had never received a complaint or citation for my animals from a neighbor or the town. I have sworn affidavits, texts, emails, call logs, photos, and surveillance footage to support my claims.

“The Humane Society of Louisiana has been working in promoting justice and a safe return of the pets. There has been a $1000 reward posted. The sheriff’s department is stonewalling.”