Community activist Belinda Parker-Brown, along with fellow St. Tammany Parish residents Rita McDonald (right) and Hvishi Opa Luksl (left), explain why they sued the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) alleging violation of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Laws entailing the mailing of a letter to the campaign of Collin Sims, who ran successfully for St. Tammany Parish District Attorney in an election held on Saturday, March 23, 2024.
On March 18, 2024, community activist Belinda Parker-Brown and six other St. Tammany Parish residents sued the seven individual members of the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) whose signatures appeared on a January 20, 2024 letter to Collin Sims’ campaign for St. Tammany Parish District Attorney. The plaintiffs alleged a violation of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Laws. Members had to be sued individually because such violations create personal liability that the agency cannot reimburse. Let us refresh site visitors’ memories by once again placing a copy of the letter on full display:
As clearly depicted above, the letter, which was sent on official LSPC letterhead that displayed Governor Jeff Landry’s name, accused Sims of using a photograph, “in a false light to depict those (Louisiana State Police) troopers as standing in support of your campaign.” Plaintiffs contended the commissioners drafted, circulated, digitally signed, and mailed the letter without placing the matter on any agenda, giving public notice, holding a public meeting, or taking a recorded vote. They described the process as a “modern-technology slow-motion meeting” or “electronic meeting” amounting to prohibited proxy voting and secret balloting under R.S. 42:14(B). Digital signatures were time-stamped from January 20–22, 2024, beginning with then-Chairman Eulis Simien, Jr. at 5:04 p.m. on January 20 and ending with Jared Caruso-Riecke at 12:36 p.m. on January 22. The suit sought $100 per defendant per plaintiff plus attorney fees and costs under R.S. 42:26 and 42:28, and was filed within the 60-day window.
We previously covered the letter (February 1, 2024) and the Sims campaign’s March 10 response denying any violation and pointing to apparent involvement by then-Commissioner Riecke. Parker-Brown called the letter a “blatant violation.” At the May 9, 2024 LSPC meeting she and her husband Carl addressed the commission; she said members had been “caught with your drawers down” and called on Governor Landry to seek their resignations for alleged violations of the Louisiana Constitution, their oaths, and LSPC rules. Plaintiffs argued the letter created the impression that Landry opposed Sims (who won 69–31). Landry’s office did not respond to Sound Off Louisiana’s inquiry on that point. Let us reproduce Parker-Brown and her husband venting their frustration at that May 9, 2024 LSPC Meeting:
5/9/24: Brown and her husband, Carl, read off a letter by Collin Sims’ campaign manager, Lionel Rainey, III, wherein Rainey cites the “apparent involvement” of then-LSPC Member Jared Caruso-Riecke, who opposed Sims’ election, in the sending of the letter by the LSPC to the Sims campaign.
The commission’s Executive Director, Jason Hannaman, declined service in late March/early April 2024. Defendants later filed a Peremptory Exception of No Cause of Action, arguing there had been no meeting and no quorum. Plaintiffs’ opposition memorandum countered that the trail of digital signatures on a single official document proved an electronic meeting of the entire membership and that the letter was issued in official capacity. They cited prior LSPC political-activity controversies, including 2015 resignations over campaign contributions, Chairman Simien’s later apology for inaccurate testimony about his firm’s political campaign contributions, and other resignations.
On June 17, 2024, 19th Judicial District Court Judge Richard “Chip” Moore denied the exception. The suit proceeded. Parker-Brown said discovery would begin immediately, starting with emails about the letter.
On September 19, 2024, Parker-Brown personally served discovery (interrogatories, requests for admission of fact, and requests for production of documents) on the commissioners’ attorney, Lenore Feeney, at an LSPC meeting and provided copies to Sound Off Louisiana for publication. Requests sought all emails about the Sims letter (except attorney-client communications) and admissions on historical matters involving commissioners, including alleged campaign contributions, former Executive Director Cathy Derbonne’s lawsuit and $130,000 settlement plus legal fees, hotel check-ins after a meeting, Riecke’s reality-TV racing footage and radar-detection comments, and a former commissioner’s payroll-fraud issues. Defendants answered on September 20, 2024; additional counsel enrolled on October 2, 2024. An anonymous long-term observer told the site the materials showed commissioners, “have been derelict in their duties as have many of the troopers whom they oversee.” We at Sound Off Louisiana, citing our own eight-year observation of the commission, found that assessment difficult to dispute.
Later Sound Off Louisiana coverage noted Parker-Brown remained one of the seven plaintiffs and continued public commentary on individual commissioners, including a December 2024 letter to Dillard University’s president about Riecke’s appointment and conduct. We committed to publishing further developments, and that is the purpose of today’s feature.
Brown and her fellow Plaintiffs sought to settle the suit; however, such settlement efforts were futile. Accordingly, on June 11, 2026 Parker-Brown and her fellow Plaintiffs filed this Motion for Summary Judgment. The Motion speaks for itself, but it essentially states that there simply are no issues of material fact entailing this matter and that therefore Brown and her fellow Plaintiffs are entitled to a Judgment in their favor as a matter of law.
The Motion was set for a hearing on a Rule to Show Cause as to why Parker-Brown et. al. should not prevail, with that hearing being on Monday, September 21, 2026 at 9:30 a.m.
Leading up to the hearing, the LSPC, on August 28, 2026, filed this Opposition Memorandum to Parker-Brown et. al.’s Motion. We will be there to cover the hearing and, just like the Motion itself, the opposition memorandum also speaks for itself. Parker-Brown and her cohorts will have to decide for themselves the nature of oral arguments they wish to make at Monday’s hearing, but here are a few observations of our own regarding the Opposition Memorandum:
- Defendants seem to go to great lengths to try and exclude the letter for consideration in making a ruling on the Motion (see Motion to Strike), and the obvious reason is that the letter is so damning,
- In doing so, the LSPC seeks to have its cake and eat it too. How so?
- Because in their own Affidavit of Executive Director Jason Hannaman, they seek to use the very same letter they want stricken as Hannaman states: “On January 20, 2024, I sent a letter addressed to Collin Sims to each of the individually named defendants, separately, through a software application, in which each person was separately asked to affix his signature to the letter if he wished to do so, and I mailed the letter to Collin Sims.” [Note: Bold emphasis is our own.]
- In our firm opinion, this is classic proxy voting! It’s no different than every publicly-traded company mailing out a proxy to permit their shares to be voted by the firm in which they are held in street name if they wish to. While the proxy voting is a direct correlation, the key difference is that shareholders in a publicly-traded corporation are not Members of a Board or Commission subject to Open Meetings Laws and can therefore freely execute the proxy and have their shares voted accordingly. The same absolutely does not hold true for these Defendants, and Hannaman admits in the affidavit that he essentially provided them with a proxy (the damning letter which the LSPC wants stricken) to vote to mail that letter to Sims upon the signatures (proxy votes) demonstrating a firm desire to do so. Would Hannaman have mailed the letter had nobody agreed to sign the letter (i.e. chose not to exercise their proxy vote to send the letter on out)? Of course not! Therefore, the mailing of the letter arose out of an official proxy vote by each Commissioner authorizing the mailing of the letter!
- If the function being performed was not of a nature of an official act by the Commissioners (it clearly was), why didn’t Hannaman simply draft the letter himself, sign his own name, and mail it to Sims? We believe the answer is clear: The mailing of that letter was an official act of the LSPC and its membership which was carried out via secret proxy voting! It is as plain as the nose on anyone’s face, and that’s why, notwithstanding the fact that the LSPC references the very same letter they want stricken from the record for Plaintiff arguments, the LSPC is pushing so hard for Judge Moore to grant a Motion to Strike the letter, which we believe should be denied.
- Hannaman’s statements in his affidavit about Assistant Attorney General Madeline S. Carbonette stating that the facts of this case don’t rise to the level of a violation because no “meeting” transpired are ludicrous on their faces! The Attorney General is tasked with defending state agencies, so making that statement is akin to approaching a defense attorney for State Farm or Allstate and asking if they believe their client is liable in an auto crash! There was no requirement that the Plaintiffs seek any guidance from the Attorney General’s Office. They had every right to file the litigation and not seek for the Attorney General’s Office to file it, an act which almost certainly would never have transpired because the AG would have simply done precisely what Carbonette has done in this instance and state, “It’s not a violation.” That takes real rocket science to decipher that one!
In denying LSPC’s Peremptory Exception of No Cause of Action, Judge Moore stated that it was pretty disingenuous to suggest that no discussion of this matter transpired between LSPC Members and that they all just received an email out of the blue with the letter above and just signed it, no questions asked.
In our opinion, the acts of these Commissioners were not only a blatant violation of the Open Meetings Law, but it is an egregious one because it entails the LSPC Members directly sticking their noses into a political campaign, which is something those Members are expressly prohibited from doing per Louisiana’s Constitution. Furthermore, they all knew that was the case, which, in our opinion, is why they did this entire act in a cloak and dagger manner! Furthermore, they would have pulled it off had we at Sound Off Louisiana not received a copy of the letter from an anonymous source (everyone is welcome to use their imaginations as to just who that anonymous sender may have been, and we have our own strong, strong, suspicions) seeking for us to publish a feature on the matter, which we did. It was that publication that caught the attention of Parker-Brown and her fellow Plaintiffs who then took the action which they have taken.
Obviously, no other media will be in Judge Moore’s courtroom on Monday to cover this matter, but we promise to be there, that we will report upon the results, and we will conduct any interviews with any parties seeking to be interviewed and, somehow, we have a strong feeling that, irrespective of how the ruling goes Monday, Parker-Brown, who is never known to be camera shy, will have a few words to say on the matter.
