A judge ruled Wednesday that nondisclosure agreements between Ascension Parish, state officials and business leaders related to industrial projects can remain secret while an earlier judgment ordering their release is appealed.
Less than two weeks ago, state District Judge Cody Martin ruled that the agreements and other records were public and should be released. The agreements relate to an industrial buildout proposed for thousands of acres in western Ascension Parish.
Rural Roots Louisiana and Louisiana Bucket Brigade, environmental groups which oppose the RiverPlex MegaPark planned near Modeste, sued for the documents in December after the parish denied public records requests.
But Martin indicated Wednesday he would delay the release of those agreements and of additional records not subject to his original ruling so the parish government could appeal.
What's left of a sharecropper cabin built around 1890 lies beside sugarcane fields near Modeste on Oct. 28, 2025. Two cabins on the Mulberry Grove Plantation property were recently torn down, while the house and two additional cabins remain standing.
Christopher Cartwright
That expected appeal to the Louisiana 1st Circuit Court of Appeal, one attorney said, is believed to be the first time an appellate court will test the legality of a 2024 exception to the state public records law that the parish is using to keep the documents under wraps.
That law keeps secret documents and meetings tied to economic development negotiations if a set of public notice procedures are taken in advance of those meetings. The law is one of three exemptions that the parish says apply to the documents; Martin had originally rejected the argument that the exemptions applied.
Pamela Spees, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the continuing delays occur as pre-construction work and dirt moving have been under way since March in the Modeste area. Heavy trucks, cranes, piles, backhoes and periodic losses of power have occurred for the few hundred rural residents living in a historic Black community with its roots arising from antebellum slavery.
"People are being affected by this, their lives are being affected by this in very concrete, very real ways. They are dealing with this attempt to basically erase their communities and can't get a record from the parish, can't get a public record out of the parish for anything," Spees said after the hearing in Gonzales.
An attorney for the parish, Jean-Paul Robert, declined to comment after the hearing.
In addition to the fight with parish government, the plaintiffs recently won a ruling from a separate judge in a different case for access to economic development agreements, letters, emails and other records related to the RiverPlex MegaPark from the Ascension Economic Development Corporation, the parish's nonprofit business recruitment arm.
Spees, who is a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the plaintiffs haven't received those records either.
The RiverPlex MegaPark industrial complex is proposed for 17,000 acres of farmland and woods in western Ascension.
Hyundai Steel, CF Industries, Clean Hydrogen Works' Ascension Clean Energy complex and Linde have announced new plants for the west bank park along the Mississippi River. Entergy is proposing nearly $500 million in transmission upgrades to power the west bank operations, some of which will rely on carbon capture and sequestration to cut CO2 emissions. ACE is also proposing its own large gas-fired power plant.
The change is promising billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs for a high poverty corner of the state. But the projects will transform the rural region north of Donaldsonville, which already has elevated cancer risk from toxic air pollution. Homeowner buyouts are being proposed.
Wednesday's hearing saw the parish seek to have the stay also apply to a second records request the plaintiffs made in late December. That second request sought agreements and other documents between Hyundai Steel and the parish's industrial development board, including any property tax reduction deals, public bonding documents and lines of credit or grants.
An excavator sits on the edge of acres of farmland in Modeste on Friday, October 4, 2024.
Javier Gallegos
Martin effectively sided with the parish on that issue for now, saying he believed it was appropriate for the appellate court to rule before he takes further action in the case.
The parish's court pleadings revealed some information about the negotiations between the parish and Hyundai Steel. Robert argued that the plaintiffs also weren't entitled to the second set of records because they remain only drafts.
"There has been talk of doing business, however, none has been contracted to date," he wrote Friday.
In court papers, the Ascension Economic Development Corporation has maintained that it is a private corporation and that its records are private, except where at least $10,000 in public money has been spent.
The corporation's attorneys added that it hasn't spent any public dollars on the industrial park, though AEDC has been working on it for , and so has no records responsive to the plaintiffs' requests.
, AEDC says it is 100% funded through government dollars.