Appearing at the Baton Rouge Press Club’s meeting of Monday, April 8, 2024, Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry (R-Metairie) fields a question by Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns regarding bills filed on the last day to do so in the current Legislative session entailing restricting access to public records.
Executive Summary for Gov. Landry:
Whenever your name is being directly linked to former Gov. Bobby Jindal, our advice is to reverse that phenomenon as quickly as possible!
The very day after we published this feature about Gov. Landry, acting through LSP Col. Hodges, blocking our LSP public records requests, The Advocate quickly followed in publishing this feature entailing key Landry Senate supporters filing bills to “gut” Louisiana’s Public Records Laws.
By far the most restrictive of the bills is SB-482 by Sen. Heather Cloud (R- Turkey Creek). From the preceding Advocate feature:
Cloud’s Senate Bill 482 goes the furthest of those bills by gutting from the list of records eligible for public access all documents that detail “deliberations” in government work. It would exempt documents containing “advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations” 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’s First Amendment Law Clinic, called it “extremely alarming” and said it risked violating the state’s constitution.
“This will create government secrecy on a level that should alarm people regardless of where they are on the political spectrum,” Cerrato said. “This is bad government.”
Cloud in a text message said she was traveling and unable to fully comment on SB 482
Translation (entailing Cloud): She has no clue what’s even in the bill and merely agreed to slap her name on it at the last second at Gov. Landry’s request!
Again, from the above-linked article:
Kate Kelly, the governor’s press secretary, said lawmakers filed dozens of bills in the hours before the deadline and that Landry’s staff is “still sifting through them.”
Do Landry’s folk really believe the citizens of Louisiana are so stupid as to believe these Senators fell out of bed and filed these bills? They were all filed at the direct request of Gov. Landry, so what a crock Kelly’s quote is!
Again, from the above-linked article:
Asked if Landry supports her bill, Cloud said in a text message, “I sure hope so.”
Well, duh! Given that Landry is the one who is behind the bill and merely using Cloud’s name as sponsor, one can only figure that, well, duh, Landry supports it!
A dedicated Sound Off Louisiana fan texted us the Advocate article the very morning it was published. Burns immediately responded with the following text to a high-ranking member of Jindal’s Landry’s top brass (sent on April 4, 2024 @ 7:58 a.m.):
Has Jeff Landry lost his freaking mind?:
https://www.nola.com/news/politics/legislature/louisiana-lawmakers-try-gutting-state-public-records-law/article_9cb3ea3e-f208-11ee-9c44-2b09aba6de20.html
He has TOTALLY stonewalled my PRRs on LSP and now this horse manure?????
This better not get signed into law or he won’t get my vote or support for being President of a Civic association!!!!!
This is worse than Bobby Jindal 2.0!!!!!
I’m so mad with him right now I could bite a 10-penny nail!!
One of the reasons we’ve waited so long to publish this feature is that Burns needed an extended period to calm down to compose something fit for print!
So, on Monday, April 8, 2024, Senate President Cameron Henry was the guest speaker at the Baton Rouge Press Club, so Burns decided that was a great opportunity to get his thoughts on the bills [though Burns did inadvertently fail to recognize that Sen. Jay Morris is no longer in the House of Representatives and, like so many other former Republican House Members, is now a Member of the Louisiana Senate — hey, he’s only been there four (4) years, give us a little time!!]. Here’s what President Henry had to say:
Louisiana Sen. President Cameron Henry responds to Burns’ question about the public records requests bills filed on the last day of the current Legislative session for filing bills.
Notice President Henry’s repeated references to former Gov. Bobby Jindal as he discusses Sen. Cloud’s bill! We know Gov. Landry is a busy man, so we provided the “executive summary” at the top of this feature for his convenience.
We want to now strongly, strongly, strongly, encourage every single person who is reading this feature to take just 14 minutes of your time to listen to the following broadcast of Tuesday, April 9, 2024 on WWL Radio in New Orleans by former Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand:
Any politician in favor of restricting public records aren’t worth your vote.
The reason we are so strongly encouraging everyone to listen to Norman’s 14-minute broadcast linked above is that, being honest, we could work for a week to try and be as articulate about the matter as Norman and not succeed. His broadcast is THAT good!!
With that, let’s update everyone on our public records request on the male trooper having allegedly sent a text picture of his genitalia to a female trooper followed by a text saying, “You could have this!” That is the first linked-feature above:
1. LSP asked us to resubmit the public records request because the timeframe we supplied for the alleged incident (November 1, 2023 through March 18, 2024) didn’t cover it. LSP also asked us: “Do you want the number of complaints or do you want the complaints themselves?”
2. We responded indicating that we want all complaints against the trooper from the time he was first employed by LSP through the then-current date of April 8, 2024.
3. We reached out to our sources for the initial feature, and they all said, “Oh, there’s a ton of them. He’s been doing things like that throughout his LSP career.”
Perhaps those are inconvenient facts that Gov. Landry and LSP Col. Hodges want to conceal from us, but we’ll also point out that we have two other public records requests for which Landry/Hodges have done nothing but stonewall us on, and we can’t help but wonder if perhaps that served as a catalyst for the bills filed on the last day of session (particularly Cloud’s).
Finally, we committed we’d keep our visitors up-to-date on the matter of former LSP Trooper and alleged domestic abuser Michael Satcher, II and Landry’s soft plea deal. Here’s what we’re told went down in court on Monday, April 8, 2024:
1. The case was postponed again. This time to April 25, 2024. The stated reason was to, “give all parties time to review the evidence.”
2. The judge declined to grant any sanity commission.
3. An inference was made that Satcher’s probation would likely be revoked (NEVER should have been extended to him by “tough on crime” — except for domestic abusers and/or politically-connected LSP Troopers — then-Attorney General Jeff Landry in the first place!!).
The folk we’ve consulted with regarding Satcher’s present situation is that he’s likely looking at “significant” jail time notwithstanding retired Judge Swent’s (allegedly Satcher’s great aunt) efforts to come to his rescue pulling the despicable act she attempted as outlined on the just-linked feature.
So, folks, we’ll keep our site visitors updated on LSP corruption and the Commander In Chief of LSP’s (LA-1, Gov. Jeff Landry’s) less-than-subtle efforts to shield the public from knowing about such corruption!