A group opposing a grain elevator project in St. John the Baptist Parish is suing the Port of South Louisiana, accusing commissioners of violating the state’s open meetings law by covertly approving project agreements prior to a public meeting.
The Descendants Project, which views Greenfield Louisiana’s grain elevator project as a threat to workers and air quality in the Wallace area, filed the lawsuit last month in the 40th Judicial District Court. The nonprofit group has filed other litigation to stop the project, which members say will spread pollutants on the grain, including mold, bacteria, rodent feces and disease-causing silica.
The port’s executive director, Paul Matthews, emailed the vice president of the port’s Board of Commissioners, D. Paul Robichaux, in March of last year that the port had reviewed the grain elevator cooperative tax agreement and urged the board to approve it, the lawsuit states.
The emails were obtained through a public records request.
Matthews later emailed all members of the board more details about the plan’s tax implications, according to the lawsuit. In turn, Robichaux responded with a message to the entire group, saying that “I trust you have all matters in order and in place to proceed with successful passage of (the agreement) at our April 6 meeting,” the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit characterizes the officials’ email exchanges as an illegal convening of a quorum of a public body in violation of state law.
“Discussing and determining the outcome of a vote privately ahead of a public meeting amounted to ‘secret balloting” and circumvents the intent of Louisiana’s open meetings law,” the lawsuit says.
The port, however, strongly denied the accusations in an email to the Louisiana Record.
“The Port of South Louisiana Board of Commissioners has always strictly adhered to the open meetings law,” port spokesman Micah Cormier said. “At its April 2022 commission meeting, the Board of Commissioners complied with the open meetings law.”
The allegations lack merit and represent another attempt to assail a revenue-generating enterprise that will benefit the community, according to Cormier.
“Frankly, the petition is ludicrous, has no basis in law or fact, and reeks of rank supposition, if not fantasy,” he said. “This obviously is another attempt to baselessly impugn the Greenfield grain elevator project, even though that project, if implemented, would provide hundreds of the best-paying, safe jobs in St. John Parish, and improve its community and schools, especially on the underdeveloped west bank of the river.”