KEY TAKEAWAYS: Activists say Louisiana’s industrial deals lack transparency and exclude affected communities. Critics cite Meta, Hyundai and CF Industries projects as examples of secretive negotiations. Residents report health, environmental and quality-of-life impacts near new industrial si tes. State officials defend nondisclosure agreements and incentives as necessary for job growth. Louisiana leaders have recently touted a string of major industrial projects with the promise of creating thousands of jobs, but critics say these business negotiations lack transparency and pose great risk to the health and prosperity of the communities where this investment is taking shape.  They also believe state officials have shut them out of trade deals with businesses that stand to benefit far more than them.       The critics included residents and community activists from across Louisiana who spoke out Wednesday at a state agency hearing, where they asked officials to stop secretly brokering trade deals that give taxpayer money to large industrial companies.  Numbering around a dozen, the group aired their concerns at a Louisiana Economic Development rules hearing, which are normally sparsely-attended and mundane bureaucratic processes with just two staff members there to record public comments.   Louisiana Economic Development had published a notice on Oct. 20 stating that it planned to “hold a public hearing for the purpose of receiving comments on any rule of the agency.” The notice contained no further details about the reason for the hearing and didn’t specify which rules the agency is reviewing. Staff members did not discuss any particular rules at the hearing. The residents and activists — which included members of community and environmental groups such as the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Rural Roots Louisiana, the Descendants Project, Inclusive Louisiana and Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage — used the hearing as an opportunity to air a variety of complaints about the impacts industrial expansion has had on their neighborhoods. They all signed a letter that summarized their complaints and then took turns speaking at the hearing.  In their letter submitted to Louisiana Economic Development, the group criticized the hearing notice as “vague” and wrote that it provided “no meaningful notice of what the agency is considering.” They wrote and testified that the notice appeared to be part of a pattern of secrecy at the agency to fast-track industrial expansion in the state. They pointed to Gov. Jeff Landry’s Sept. 16 executive order, which he dubbed the “Louisiana Lightning Speed Initiative.” It directs Louisiana to push state agencies to fast-track permitting and regulatory processes to attract new businesses and spur industrial expansion, mentioning recent deals with Meta, Hyundai, Woodside Energy and CF Industries as examples. In December 2024, the state announced that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was coming to Louisiana to build the world’s largest data center in Richland Parish. Construction of the facility began almost immediately. Richland Parish residents Joe and Robin Williams also signed the letter submitted to LED. They live across the street from the Meta site and have reported rust-colored tap water and power outages at their home since construction activity began.  While the rapidly approved Meta project came as a surprise to Williams and the public, a small circle of Louisiana politicians had known about it and kept it under wraps for nearly a year. Several top leaders — including the governor, House Speaker Phillip DeVillier, LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois and Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson — quietly collaborated with corporate executives and local officials on the project, holding closed-door talks and rewriting state laws for reasons they withheld from the public and most of the Louisiana Legislature.  During the 2024 legislative session, Landry and DeVillier carried out plans to “hijack” another lawmaker’s bill, rewriting it in a way that would give a massive tax break to Meta without other legislators realizing it, as detailed in a Times-Picayune report. Bourgeois told the newspaper everyone involved in the negotiations signed “blank NDAs” (nondisclosure agreements) before the talks began.  Louisiana Economic Development officials often sign nondisclosure agreements with local government leaders and corporate executives to keep negotiations secret. In a phone interview Thursday, Bourgeois said it’s a common practice at the agency whenever a company requests it.  “It’s really just an industry standard,” Bourgeois said. “I understand there’s some people who don’t agree with it or like it, but go to any state and this is how it’s done.” Companies often ask for the agreements so competitors don’t undercut or foil their plans, she said. For example, if a company knows about its rival’s plans to build at a certain location, they could rush to purchase the land out from under them, Bourgeois explained. The Rev. Harry Joseph Sr., an Ascension Parish resident and church pastor, took part in Wednesday’s LED hearing. Speaking with the Illuminator before the meeting, he questioned the agency’s use of nondisclosure agreements and said his local elected officials routinely cite them as a reason they can’t answer questions about projects in his area. “We elected them. We should be able to talk to them about anything,” Joseph said. “The secrecy has gotten out of hand. Enough is enough.” Another example of secret negotiations, Joseph said, is the industrial RiverPlex MegaPark being built in the Modeste community of Ascension Parish. The area targeted for development had previously been zoned as a “conservation district” because it is “environmentally fragile” and lacked roads that can handle large traffic increases, according to the parish zoning code. Despite this, the state offered the MegaPark as a site for Hyundai’s new steel mill and two ammonia facilities. Louisiana Economic Development signed nondisclosure agreements with Hyundai executives and Ascension Parish officials, preventing them from speaking about the projects, according to William Most, an attorney representing Rural Roots and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.  In an email, LED spokesperson Emma Wagner pushed back against the other criticisms lodged at Wednesday’s hearing, calling them part of an “ambush not based in the actual work of economic development” and job creation in Louisiana. “This state has long suffered from a failure to diversify our economy,” Wagner wrote. “What we have done over the past 23 months is unprecedented and transformational economic growth that has finally turned the tide of losing our people.”   State and local leaders have touted industrial expansion as a way to bring new jobs to economically depressed areas. In exchange for the jobs, the state and the parishes typically offer the companies lucrative tax breaks and grants. Joy Banner, co-founder of the Descendants Project, called on the state to require objective data on job creation and wage claims before incentivizing companies with Louisiana tax dollars.  Hyundai has said its steel mill will bring an estimated 1,300 jobs to Louisiana. In exchange, the state promised the company a $100 million grant and other incentives estimated to cost taxpayers $600 million, according to a Times-Picayune report.  CF Industries estimates it will bring 103 new jobs to its proposed ammonia facility in Ascension Parish. In exchange, the state offered the company a $6 million grant for the proposed ammonia plant in Ascension Parish. The company is also expected to be exempt from paying most parish property taxes through the Industrial Tax Exemption Program and receive a payroll tax rebate from the state via the Quality Jobs program.  In his Sept. 16 executive order, the governor pointed to low jobs numbers as the reason for his fast-tracking initiative while deflecting blame for Louisiana’s sluggish economy. He claimed the state lost 12,000 jobs from 2016-23. Although the figure is technically accurate, by framing the data between those years without context, Landry’s executive order implied his predecessor, Gov. John Bel Edwards, was responsible for the job losses.  Louisiana actually gained about 7,000 jobs during Edwards’ first term and, like other states, suffered a sudden employment drop in March 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state’s employment numbers rebounded during Edwards’ second term, though the job market didn’t fully recover to its pre-pandemic mark until this January. Federal data shows Louisiana’s employment numbers under Landry have so far hovered around and slightly above peak figures during Edwards’ tenure at around 2 million jobs. The state has slowly but steadily added jobs from January 2024, when Landry took office, through at least August 2025. The jobs market has become murkier in recent months because the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not collect monthly employment data during the six week government shutdown that began Oct. 1.  “I’m tired of hearing ‘jobs, jobs, jobs,’” Joseph told LED officials at Wednesday’s hearing. “We don’t get these jobs. They’re not for us.”  Modeste resident Twila Collins, who works with Rural Roots, told the agency the jobs claims often don’t benefit long-time local residents. Instead, she said, they see the ill effects of heavy pollution that often comes with industrial facilities.  Ascension Parish lies in an industrial corridor along the Mississippi River referred to as “Cancer Alley” for its high concentration of industrial pollution containing carcinogens. Scientific studies have linked cancer rates in its communities to the toxic pollution, though the state Department of Environmental Quality rejects such findings. “I had to watch my child die in the same area,” Collins said at the hearing. In a later interview, she explained that her 9-year-old son, Denzel, died of an asthma attack more than two decades ago.   Gramercy resident Gail LeBoeuf, who was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2022 and founded the activist group Inclusive Louisiana, told agency staff industrial expansion isn’t worth the risk it poses to the people.  “Economic development has not happened for us,” LeBoeuf said. “These deals don’t do anything but give money back to the people that promised to bring economic development.”  Anne Rolfes, executive director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said the Louisiana Economic Development agency is “pretending” that Hyundai and CF Industries are the solutions to poverty.  “This is destruction masquerading as economic development,” Rolfes said. Wagner, the spokesperson for Louisiana Economic Development, said the Landry administration will “never apologize” for attracting jobs, wages and new opportunities to the state. “The Governor and Secretary both firmly believe the absolute best way to lift people out of poverty is by giving them access to ever-growing wages,” Wagner said via email. “Anyone who would reject those opportunities clearly does not have the best interest of Louisiana citizens at heart.” ...read more read less