A bill filed in the Louisiana Senate would eviscerate the state鈥檚 open records law by blocking from public view emails, text messages and other documents produced at all levels of government, from the town hall in Waterproof to the governor鈥檚 office in 香港六和开奖历史记录.
The bill carried by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, is one of three filed by Republican state lawmakers late Tuesday 鈥斅爐he deadline to enter proposals for the 鈥 that would add transformative new hurdles to the process for obtaining documents and other records from official agencies. Some of the provisions appear tailored to the office of Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who has bristled聽in the past at scrutiny leveled through that process.
颁濒辞耻诲鈥檚 goes the furthest of those bills by gutting from the list of records eligible for public access all documents that detail 鈥渄eliberations鈥 in government work. It would exempt documents containing "advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations鈥 that feed into any government decision or policy-making choices.
Watchdog groups and attorneys dealing with public information issues decried the bill Wednesday. Melia Cerrato, a Sunshine Legal Fellow at Tulane University鈥檚 First Amendment Law Clinic, called it 鈥渆xtremely alarming鈥 and said it risked violating the state鈥檚 constitution.
鈥淭his will create government secrecy on a level that should alarm people regardless of where they are on the political spectrum,鈥 Cerrato said. 鈥淭his is bad government.鈥
Cloud in a text message said she was traveling and unable to fully comment on SB 482.
Two more bills filed near the deadline propose more hurdles to the public records process. , sponsored by Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, would allow only Louisiana residents to make such requests. Sen. Blake Miguez鈥檚 would require ID checks on people who file requests.
In an interview, Miguez said his bill aims to cut down on what he described as proliferation of requests sent by nameless people to government agencies. Miguez suspects some of those requests come from people with political motives, he said.
Journalists, businesspeople and officials who request access to public documents should still be able to obtain them, he said.
鈥淣ow they have AI, they have programs that can go and hit every agency head with all these requests, weigh them down,鈥 said Miguez, a New Iberia Republican. 鈥淏ut the press and the public have a right to know, so I鈥檓 trying to balance that.鈥
Morris did not return messages Wednesday. His bill risks angering out-of-state businesses who sometimes require public records as they draft deals for new ventures in Louisiana, said Steven Procopio, head of the nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, a 香港六和开奖历史记录-based good-government group.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e making companies jump through hoops to try and come here,鈥 Procopio said. 鈥淚t probably wouldn鈥檛 kill a deal, but it wouldn鈥檛 look good.鈥
Kate Kelly, the governor鈥檚 press secretary, said lawmakers filed dozens of bills in the hours before the deadline and that Landry鈥檚 staff is 鈥渟till sifting through them.鈥
Miguez said he filed a version of his public records bill in a past term when it faced a tougher path with Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor and fewer conservative allies for Miguez to lean on in the Legislature. Landry, the state attorney general at the time, supported the bill then, Miguez said.
颁濒辞耻诲鈥檚 bill resembles a measure in the state House聽鈥斅爈ater withdrawn聽鈥斅爐hat sought to exempt those same 鈥渄eliberative鈥 records produced by the governor鈥檚 office from public records law. Rep. Michael Melerine, R-Shreveport, who sponsored that bill, said he had conversations with Landry鈥檚 staff about that bill but declined to say whether the governor had pushed for it.
Asked if Landry supports her bill, Cloud said in a text message, 鈥淚 sure hope so.鈥
The exemption for 鈥渄eliberative鈥 records has spurred debate in recent Louisiana governors鈥 administrations. Gov. Bobby Jindal that allowed his office to hide under similar exceptions.
Jindal sold that measure as a tool to subject the governor鈥檚 office to sunshine rules that hadn't applied to it in the past. His aides and appointees used it instead to shroud executive-branch agencies in secrecy by claiming that certain requested records were part of "deliberative" policy discussions and thus off limits.
Lawmakers agreed to reverse the rule after Jindal left office.
Landry鈥檚 office has touted transparency and freedom of speech as core values of his nascent governor鈥檚 administration.
The governor supported a bill in to reveal some youth court records in the name of transparency despite blistering pushback from advocates who warned it would leave a mark on children accused of crimes. And on Wednesday, Landry鈥檚 Twitter account posted an with the Epoch Times, a right-wing publication backed by the conservative Chinese Falun Gong , in which Landry discussed 鈥渙ur continued fight to protect Americans鈥 First Amendment rights.鈥
At the same time, the governor鈥檚 office supported efforts to pare back access to death penalty records through a bill in that February special session that鈥檚 set to shield lethal injection drugs from public view beginning in July.
