Louisiana Voice

(Editor’s note: The following was written by James C. Finney, Ph.D.)

The Louisiana Secretary of State and the East Baton Rouge Parish Registrar of Voters were sent an email December 10, 2025, by an attorney from a local law firm informing them of the East Baton Rouge School Board’s intention to use an illegal voting map for the Board’s election in the Fall of 2026. To be fair, the letter from the attorney didn’t admit that the plan is illegal, but facts are facts. There are many problems with the email, but this post will hit on some of the lowest-hanging fruit.

EBR Registrar of Voters & Sec of State 12-10-25Download

First, attorney Nathan M. Long of the Hammonds, Sills, Adkins, Guice, Noah & Perkins, LLP law firm has only been a member of the Louisiana Bar Association since October 21, 2024, so his knowledge of any activities from 2022 would be limited, making his selection as the Board’s spokesperson questionable.

Also, the law firm (Hammonds, Sills, et al.) may not actually have the legal authority to act on behalf of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, or at least not to charge the Board for any of its work. The board most recently approved a resolution designating the firm as a special counsel at their regular monthly meeting February 16, 2023 (item G5). Note that the resolution refers to Louisiana Revised Statutes 42:263. This law says, in part: “No parish governing authority, levee board except as provided in Subsection B hereof, parish school board, city school board, or other local or state board shall retain or employ any special attorney or counsel to represent it in any special matter or pay any compensation for any legal services whatever unless a real necessity exists, made to appear by a resolution thereof stating fully the reasons for the action and the compensation to be paid. The resolution then shall be subject to the approval of the attorney general and, if approved by him, shall be spread upon the minutes of the body and published in the official journal of the parish.” That appears pretty clear-cut, except that no such approval from the Attorney General has been produced despite several requests. What has been shared by the Attorney General’s Office is the following letter from former Attorney General Jeff Landry.

June 19 2023 letter from Attorney General Jeff LandryDownload

Now perhaps Mr. Landry had a change of heart before ascending to his current office of Governor, or his successor has since approved the board’s use of Hammond, Sills, et al., but documentation of such approval hasn’t been produced. Note that the next statute in Title 42, Louisiana Revised Statute 42:264, suggests that the Board may be justified in demanding a refund of all money paid to the law firm in recent years.

Furthermore, the current East Baton Rouge School Board, in its current membership following the 2022, hasn’t voted either to use the map adopted in 2022 or to authorize Hammond, Sills, et al., to act on its behalf in matters related to redistricting. In fact, the previous board didn’t authorize Hammond, Sills, et al., to do anything in response to a lawsuit (Adeline Rene’ Singleton, Christopher Kees, Sr., Tania Nyman and Dr. James C. Finney versus East Baton Rouge School Board, et al, C 710557 30) filed in the 19th Judicial District Court in opposition to the map adopted in 2022. Yet the attorneys not only lost at the District Court level but pursued an appeal that somehow resulted in the subsequent election taking place using the map adopted in 2014. So at least the law firm is consistent in acting without board approval, racking up many billable hours in the process.

Aside from some Executive Session discussions, the Board has taken two redistricting-related actions, both of which appear to have been in response to an effort by the plaintiffs to achieve a fair outcome for the 2026 election without the need for further litigation. The plaintiffs’ attorney sent the Board’s attorney the following letter dated June 30, 2023.

Letter to Mr. Evan M. Alvarez (settlement offer) 06-20-2023Download

The request was rather straightforward: Agree that Plan 22 is null and void, and start the process over. The board finally took action November 16, 2023. The recommendation that was approved as item 7 on the Consent Agenda was “Consideration of a request for the authorization of the Superintendent and staff to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to provide for the development of a Board reapportionment and redistricting plan such authority conditioned upon the dismissal of the lawsuit entitled ‘Singleton, Kees, Nyman, and Finney versus East Baton Rouge Parish School’ and captioned Number C-719057, Division 30, 19th Judicial District Court, and to provide for related matters.”

The plaintiffs dismissed the lawsuit (but without prejudice) June 24, 2024, never having been contacted by the Board’s attorneys in response to the settlement offer from a year earlier. RFQQ Number 05-2024 for Reapportionment Services was finally issued February 5, 2025, with a submission deadline of March 12, 2025. Two firms submitted proposals. It wasn’t until August 21, 2025, that the board formally responded. Despite the Superintendent’s recommendation at the Committee of the Whole two weeks earlier, to accept the higher-ranking proposal, the board decided that somehow the entire process was tainted by the district administration having handled this RFQQ process using its typical processes. So RFQQ 03-25 was issued September 30, 2025, with an opening date of November 5, 2025. The action taken in August was “Consideration of a request that the RFQQ be re-issued and that the Superintendent collate the responses to the re-issued RFQQ and present them directly to the Board at a future Committee of the Whole meeting without scoring or recommendation.” Conveniently enough, there was a Committee of the Whole meeting scheduled for November 5, 2025, and there were three proposals received — from the same two that submitted earlier, plus one more firm.

The board did not discuss redistricting at the November 5, 2025, meeting of the Committee of the Whole. Nor did the board discuss redistricting in December (the Committee of the Whole did not meet), nor at the Committee of the Whole meeting on January 8, 2026. Perhaps they will choose a consultant at the February 5, 2026 Committee of the Whole meeting. But the letter from the gentleman who purports that his firm is acting on the Board’s behalf would suggest that the Board has absolutely no intention of adopting a legal election map.

So what, exactly, is wrong with Plan 22, the map that the board adopted (but didn’t use) in 2022?

The litigation that blocked its use (until an appeals court partially reversed the initial order) focused on the map’s use of split precincts, which are forbidden unless unavoidable. Louisiana Revised Statute 17:71.3 states, “The boundaries of such election districts shall contain whole election precincts established by the parish governing authority under R.S. 18:532 or 532.1.” There is an exception for circumstances when the use of whole precincts is impossible, but the board has not shown any evidence that there was a need to split precincts. They only demonstrated that their 2022 demographer didn’t offer any plans without split precincts, nor did the public submit any 9-member plans without split precincts. Writing as the member of the public who submitted several proposed maps, the reason not to submit a legal 9-member map was a strong preference for a map with at least 11 single-member districts, if not more. Revised Statute 17:71.2 states, “In accomplishing the reapportionment authorized by this Subpart, each of said school boards may, by majority vote of said board as presently constituted, reestablish itself with not less than five nor more than fifteen members. . . .” RS 17:71.3.B states, “Each of said boards, after determining the number of members of said board after reapportionment is to be effective, may create such school board election districts as it deems desirable.” Had the board followed the mandated sequence in 2022 (determining the number of members, and then subsequently creating the districts), the public would have offered a 9-member plan that satisfied the law. Instead the board considered both the 9-member plan that was later adopted and a competing 11-member plan up until the date of plan selection.

Whenever a precinct is to be split if circumstances demand it, there are limits. A map may “divide a precinct into portions which are bounded by visible features which are census tabulation boundaries.” There are some split precincts in Plan 22 that abide by that restriction by following streets, but there are two that do not.

State law also requires that school board districts be as equal in population as possible. Revised Statute 17:71.1 states, “Each of the parish and city school boards, as heretofore created and organized, is hereby authorized to reapportion itself so that each member of said board represents as nearly as possible the same number of persons.” Plan 22 has a population range from 41,119 to 45,126 out of a total school-district population of 387,014 according to the 2020 Census. The ideal population for each district is 43,002 (nearest whole number after dividing 387,014 by 9). The difference in size between the largest and smallest population (45,126 – 41,119) is 4,007, which is 9.32% of the ideal population of 43,002. Federal one-person-one-vote case law generally allows that number to be as high as 10%. However, the state statute, demanding “as nearly as possible the same number of persons,” is a higher standard.

A plan with district populations between 42,159 and 43,785 would have been possible without splitting precincts. Current numbers might be slightly different since some precinct boundaries have changed since 2022. That difference represents a difference of only 3.78% of the ideal population, less than half the variation in Plan 22. That alternate plan is also more compact as required by RS 17:71.3’s provision that board member election districts “shall be compact and contiguous.” One measure of compactness is the Reock score, which measures how dispersed each district’s shape is. A higher number is better, with the theoretical maximum being 1. By this measure, the adopted plan has a score of around 0.31; the alternate plan mentioned above has a Reock score of 0.33. Another easily-calculated measure is the Polsby-Popper score, which measures how indented districts are. Plan 22 has a score of around 0.22; the alternate plan has a score of 0.29.

Finally, a fair election map would give voters an opportunity to vote for members who represent their interests. The East Baton Rouge School Board serves a population that is more Black than White (but with neither race having a majority). And there are more Democratic voters registered than Republicans. Plan 22 almost certainly violates what’s left of the Voting Rights Act, although that analysis is rather complicated and the United States Supreme Court has weakened the power of that legislation in recent years.

Note that, as of February 1, 2026, the East Baton Rouge Parish School district has 238,874 registered voters. Of those, 108,888 are Democrats. 61,544 are Republicans. Another 68,442 are registered with neither of those parties. Yet Plan 22 has five districts that lean Republican. And it received votes from the five Republicans then serving on the Board.

There is still time for the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board to create the circumstances so that the new board can be elected fairly, although it’s hardly certain that they have any intention to do so.

They COULD select one of the three demographers when they meet February 5 (although a final decision would likely be two weeks later).

They COULD decide in February or March to expand the number of seats to a more reasonable number so that board members are more accessible to their constituents. Or they could vote to keep the number the same. Or they could threaten to shrink the number of members to satisfy business interests and punish the activists who are pushing for a fair map. The current average size of 43,002 is almost as large as a Louisiana House district and larger than any other single-member school board district in Louisiana except for Jefferson or Orleans Parishes. In fact, 43,002 is higher than the population of many whole parishes in Louisiana.

They COULD decide that compactness, equal population and fair opportunities for representation are important enough ideals that they should be given primary consideration in development of a map. Or they could pick another ridiculous map and leave it to their attorneys to defend the map as meeting the tight legal standard of “good ‘nuf,” especially if it helps the incumbents stay in power.

We shall see.

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What’s going on in the 22^nd Judicial District of Louisiana?

Comprised of the parishes of Washington and St. Tammany, it’s beginning to appear that anything goes in those two Florida parishes that abut the Pearl River in the easternmost part of the Louisiana toe.

There’s the going on nine-year-old as yet unsolved murder of NANETTE KRENTEL.

 And while the 2012 murder of St. Tammany native businessman BRUCE CUCCHIARA did not occur in either of the two parishes (it happened in New Orleans East), his ties to Covington’s Jared Caruso-Riecke continue to raise questions while providing no answers.

It didn’t help when Sheriff Randy Smith arrested Jerry Rogers in 2019 for “criminal defamation” (a law that does not even exist) when Rogers, an investigator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, criticized the lack of progress in solving the Krentel killing.

Rogers filed a LAWSUIT against Smith and two of his deputies in federal court in 2020. Rogers prevailed in his lawsuit when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit RULED IN HIS FAVOR in 2023.

Nor did it help burnish the local image when Smith’s predecessor, Jack Strain, was arrested in 2021 on state charges of rape, incest and indecent behavior with a juvenile. He was subsequently SENTENCED to life imprisonment for those offenses and for 10 after entering pleading guilty to soliciting and receiving bribes involving contracts for privatization of a work release program in St. Tammany Parish.

We’re rehashing all those past stories as a way of bringing events to the present day as they pertain to the City of Bogalusa and apparent reluctance by the district attorney’s office to investigate claimed irregularities in the previous city administration.

A Jan. 22 posting on Facebook by The Parish Spectator called into question the apparent lack of interest in investigating claims of bid irregularities that allegedly occurred during the administration of former Mayor Wendy Perrette.

Early in the tenure of Perrette’s successor, Mayor Tyrin Truong formally requested that District Attorney Collin Sims “investigate potential contractor fraud” connected to the administration of Perrette, the Facebook post said, adding that among the questionable transactions were “more than $1 million spent between two contractors without bids or quotes, with work allegedly awarded directly to individuals described by many as friends of the former administration.”

Instead, an investigation was initiated into Truong himself. Truong was indicted last October on multiple charges, including malfeasance of office, public intimidation and theft. The charges were tied to a drug trafficking investigation. Truong, incidentally, supported Sims’s opponent. Sounds much like a scaled-down version of Cankle Ankles Trump.

“It is not unreasonable for the public to ask whether that political reality has influenced what followed,” the Facebook post said. When prosecutorial power is exercised in a way that appears retaliatory, public trust erodes—and with it, confidence in the justice system itself.”

Fast forward to today. The results of a 71-page INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT conducted by the Legislative Auditor’s office has revealed a plethora of violations of state laws and regulations as well as a violation of the Louisiana State Constitution and the city charter.

The question that must be asked, then, is just where has the district attorney’s office been all this time?

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There’s a woman out there named Hannah Silveira who is searching for her husband.

ICE has him but they won’t tell her where he is.

It took a fellow detainee to communicate with her that he was removed to a facility in Louisiana.

But where in Louisiana? That remains unknown.

But here’s the really weird part: while she is a citizen of the U.S., he is Brazilian. Because of the turmoil foisted by Dorito-face Trump, they made their own decision that he would self-deport to Brazil and she would follow so they could start their lives over.

And here’s the really frightening part: As Mrs. Silveira has learned, her voice is already being silenced via a state-sanctioned takeover of the new TikTok spinoff that will be controlled by Trump billionaire allies.

She recently went on TikTok to explain that her husband, who had been detained by ICE, was going to take a regular commercial flight from San Diego to Brazil and that she would follow him at a later date. A judge ordered that he be allowed to do so.

She learned, however, through an app they had been using to communicate that he was “no longer in the system.” She called Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego where he supposedly was being held and asked why she was no longer able to communicate with her husband. The Otay Mesa representative told her, “We don’t know where he is.” The ICE spokesperson said that meant he was likely “in the process of being discharged,” which normally would have been good news for the couple.

“However,” Mrs. Silveira said, “he does not have a flight which was supposed to be arranged while he was in detention. You have not communicated with his attorney to organize his flight home,” she told the ICE rep. “I just received a call from one of his friends who is in the facility with him and he said they took him in the middle of the night to bring him to Louisiana.

“This means ICE is going against the judge’s order to allow him to take a commercial flight. Instead, they’re going to take him to Louisiana and put him on a deportation flight from Louisiana to eventually end up in Rio.

“One, why is [his] friend the one who has to communicate that information to me? Two, why do you tell me you don’t know where he is; you know exactly where he is and you’re not telling me because you know he’s not supposed to be there?

“I don’t know if he’s on a plane, if he’s on a bus, the next time I’ll speak to him. This was not what was agreed on by the court. If I am so on top of his case, I can’t imagine what’s happening to those people who don’t have the luxury of having someone who is trying to track them down. The reason I am so diligent about trying to figure out where he is, is because I know people are getting lost in the system and I cannot imagine the families they [ICE] are taking advantage of when people don’t have the means to simply communicate with their loved ones.

“I am sick and f**king tired of this administration jerking people around.”

Okay, that’s pretty straightforward and easy to understand. But wait. It seems her Tik Tok message is getting “glitched” in areas outside the U.S. Here are some of the responses she received:

• “It’s glitching. BLOCK ORACLE.”
• “We are watching censorship in real time with our own eyes!”
• “Canadian here. All ice videos have started to glitch.”
• “I’m in Spain and all videos talking about ICE are glitching!!”
• “America is silencing you guys.”

A little paranoia, perhaps? Maybe. And also maybe, a funereal portent of things to come.

Take THIS STORY,  for instance.

For years, there was this demand that China sell TikTok to American investors or face banishment in the U.S. Well, be careful what you wish for. The all-new TikTok we eventually got is one to be owned by close-knit billionaire ech leaders with direct business ties to Trump and/or members of his administration and/or family. These include Oracle’s Larry Ellison, X’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

Besides the complaints above, other TikTok users have lodged complaints of alleged censorship of content, much of which consists of criticisms of the killings in Minneapolis and allowing the Department of Homeland Security to enter homes without judicial warrants.

The ANNOUNCEMENT came down just a week ago today (Jan. 22) of the TikTok United States Digital Services (USDS) joint venture. The LLC was created with the executive order signed by Trump last September.

One of the features touted in the announcement of the venture was “The Joint Venture will safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem and have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.”

There you have it: there is now a state-sanctioned communications system owned by political and business allies of Trump—and they will have control over content.

It’s almost as if George Orwell was speaking directly to us when he wrote in his classic 1984:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”

“There was no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any moment… You had to live assuming every sound was overheard, every movement scrutinized.”

“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”

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Funny how things can come full circle sometimes.

It was way back in April of 2017 that LouisianaVoice FIRST ALERTED YOU to the cruel, hard fact that you weren’t always in good hands with Allstate, that you didn’t necessarily have a good neighbor in State Farm and Nationwide wasn’t necessarily on your side.

Now, nine years after we first sounded the alarm, The Guardian has taken up the mantra that, as the Rolling Stones song goes, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. But unlike the song, you also don’t always get what you need, either.

While the emphasis of the LouisianaVoice story was on floods and hurricanes, The Guardian today ran a STORY about the problems homeowners have had with insurance claims from the devastating Los Angeles fires of a year ago that reads very much like the story we ran nearly a decade ago. It was the familiar story about delays, lowball settlement offers and outright denials of claims.

Right after Hurricane Katrina inflicted catastrophic damage on New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast in September 2005, State Farm instructed its adjusters that “where wind acts concurrently with flooding to cause damage to the insured property, coverage for the loss exists only under flood coverage.” That was a convenient (for State Farm) way to deny a claim even though the flooding may have been caused, say, by the wind ripping the roof off a home.

Allstate likewise relied on “insufficient physical evidence to determine the proportion of wind versus storm surge that destroyed [a] structure.”

Not to be outdone in denying claims, Nationwide said less than a week after Katrina, “If a loss is caused by both flood and wind, there is no coverage.” So, in other words, regardless of how much damage may have been cause by wind, if there was any damage at all from flooding, then all bets were off and the property owner was SOL.

It’s not like insurers hadn’t already taken measures to protect themselves by declaring if damage is caused by a named storm, the homeowner’s deductible, instead of being a set fee of say, $1,000 or even $5,000, immediately converts to a PERCENTAGE of the home’s insured value. So, a homeowner’s deductible could suddenly become somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000—or more—for a $250,000 home. And the sad truth is our Louisiana politicians sat back and let the insurance companies dictate the policy terms despite the existence of a so-called Insurance Rating Commission.

It didn’t take long for the perils of “DELAY, DENY, DEFEND” strategy of insurance companies that we warned about back in 2017 to become stark reality to Louisiana residents. A year after successive hurricanes slammed southwest Louisiana, homeowners were still wrestling with insurance companies to get claims settled while the insurance companies were offering pennies on the dollar.

The strategy is no secret. A Baton Rouge injury attorney has an effective TV ad in which he poses the questions, “Why do billion-dollar insurance companies constantly delay and deny claims?” Then he answers his own rhetorical question, declaring, “because that’s how they got to be billion-dollar insurance companies.”

No matter how warm and fuzzy those insurance companies’ TV commercials may appear, it’s important to remember when it comes to paying out claims, they ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.

Of course, it’s not like the politicians don’t get in on the act themselves. When an attorney, a former state senator, told the State Licensing Board for Contractors that companies bidding for a contract to manage the state’s $1.6 billion flood-recovery program following the 2016 flooding in south Louisiana needed to have a residential contractor’s license, it meant the two low bidders for the work were immediately disqualified.

But the attorney FAILED TO MENTION that his son worked as an affiliate for the number-three-ranked bidder, which, by default, was in a position to be awarded the work for about $350 million. That company, SLS, was owned by three Texas brothers who also owned DRC Emergency Services, for whom the attorney’s son worked as a regional manager.

So, while The Guardian is one of the most reliable and most credible news sources out there, it was not exactly breaking new ground with its story about what it called a “broken insurance industry.”

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“You just can’t make this stuff up!”

—C.B. Forgotston

Donald Trump Once Again Asks Supporters for Donations to Help Him ‘Get to Heaven’ in Bizarre Mass Email

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