NDA secrecy for major projects hovers over Louisiana’s congressional elections

Jamie Davis believes there’s one specific reason Congresswoman Julia Letlow hasn’t agreed to appear in person with him for debates or any other events during their U.S. Senate race. 

Letlow, the Republican candidate, doesn’t want to answer questions about the nondisclosure agreement she signed with a Meta company about Richland Parish’s $50 billion dollar data center project, he said. 

“Any other questions I want to ask about Meta, she won’t be able to answer because she might break her NDA,” said Davis, the Democratic candidate. 

Letlow not only signed the NDA but also began buying stock Meta and Nvidia, a company that makes computer equipment for data centers, in the months that followed, according to reporting from Gulf States Newsroom. The congresswoman didn’t disclose the stock purchases publicly until more than a year after the federal deadline to do so. 

By signing the NDA, Letlow might have had access to information about Meta’s business operations and finances not available to the public. 

Letlow’s campaign spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests  this week for comment about the NDA. But in August, her congressional staff told Gulf States Newsroom she was unaware the Meta and Nvidia trades were happening on her behalf at the time. 

As Louisiana undergoes an industrial megaproject boom, the extent to which public officials are trading away public transparency for economic investment through NDAs has become controversial. 

Dozens of local and state elected officials signed NDAs related to economic development projects such as the SpaceX complex in Vermilion Parish, the Hyundai steel plant in Ascension Parish and data centers in other parts of the state.

More than 100 employees in Gov. Jeff Landry’s office also signed blanket NDAs prohibiting them from talking about what they learn working for the governor.

Landry and his administration have said the NDAs are necessary to attract global brands. But the agreements raise questions about whether government officials are free to share information about the projects’ impacts on resources such as water and the electrical grid.  

LSU political science professor Robert Hogan said backlash over NDAs is part of a broader “general distrust that people have of government” right now. 

“I do believe this could be a very effective issue at sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of voters about people who signed these,” Hogan said in an interview this week.

As the underdog in the Senate race, Davis is trying to make Letlow’s Meta NDA into a campaign issue and brought it up during a speaking engagement at LSU this week. 

Davis said he never signed an NDA when he was an elected member of the Tensas Parish Police Jury and wouldn’t sign one if he was elected to the Senate. 

NDAs could creep into competitive US House races

In addition to the Senate race, the NDA issue could come up in the U.S. House  races, including open races for the 5th and 6th congressional districts, where many of the closely guarded industrial projects will take shape.

Four state legislators and the chair of the Board of Regents, which oversees state higher education, are among the nine candidates running to replace Letlow in the 5th District.

Of the five major candidates, two said they signed NDAs as elected officials in order to receive information about economic development projects.

State Sen. Stewart Cathey, R-Monroe, confirmed he signed an NDA to learn basic details about the Meta data center coming to Richland Parish from state Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois before the project was publicly announced. 

Even after he signed the agreement, Cathey said Bourgeois would only tell him it was a data center project and not the name of the company behind the site. He’s not sure if he would sign an NDA again if elected to Congress.

“The only legislators who have not signed NDAs are people who weren’t asked,” Cathey said. 

State Rep. Gabe Firment, R-Pollock, said he signed an NDA required to attend a meeting about a data center under construction in Rapides Parish, but the information shared at the meeting didn’t turn out to be particularly confidential. 

“I would not sign one again,” Firment said. “A lot of people I represent and I may represent in the future are not comfortable with that.”

State Rep. Mike Echols, R-Monroe is one of the three 5th District contenders who has not signed an NDA as an elected official. He said he also wouldn’t sign one as a member of Congress. 

“I want to be as transparent as possible. I don’t see value for me,” Echols said.

State Rep. Pat Moore of Monroe, the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate, said she has not signed an NDA as a legislator and could not recall signing one while a member on the Ouachita Parish Policy Jury.

Misti Cordell, a Republican from West Monroe who leads the Board of Regents, said she hadn’t signed an NDA while in her current public position.

But Moore and Cordell wouldn’t rule out signing NDAs if elected to Congress.

Cordell said she would make sure any agreement she signed didn’t require her to shield information about what might hurt the public. 

Moore said she wouldn’t personally benefit from any information she received through an NDA. 

“If there was confidential information that I could not disclose, I would not do anything to profit off of it,” Moore said. 

Two legislators are also among the 10 candidates running to replace U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, in the 6th District. Fields decided against running again after state lawmakers redrew the district’s lines to make it harder for a Democrat to win.

State Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, said he has signed one NDA with the Louisiana Economic Development agency. He said he couldn’t say whether he would sign any if elected to Congress because he doesn’t know entirely what the position would entail yet.

State Sen. Blake Miguez, R-New Iberia, did not return phone calls seeking comment on his policy regarding NDAs. It’s not clear whether he has signed one as an elected official.

Two Democrats in the race, Pat Forbes and Lindsay Garcia, have not held elected positions previously and said they would not sign NDAs if elected to Congress. 

“I don’t think NDAs have any place in government,” said Forbes, who led disaster relief efforts as the head of the state Office of Community Development for several years.

“There is a distinct irony in you serving the interest of the public while keeping the public in the dark,” said Garcia, a community organizer and former teacher who graduated from Southern University Law Center last year.