Louisiana
Bills targeting Louisiana’s public records law draw criticism
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Like the federal government, Louisiana allows the public to request and gain access to certain government records. But bills in the state legislature would water down Louisiana’s public records law, drawing condemnation from people who favor transparency.
A portion of Senate Bill 482, by Sen. Heather Cloud (R-Turkey Creek), would block access to any records “reflecting advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations,” that are part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are made.
“We find that very problematic,” said attorney Melia Cerrato, a Sunshine Legal Fellow at Tulane’s First Amendment Law Clinic.
Cerrato says reducing access to public records undermines public trust.
“Limiting public records like this lets the government operate in secret. And it erodes that public trust,” she said. “This bill creates a huge carve-out to our state public records law.
“This bill would essentially exempt all government records at all levels of government — from your city, your town, your parish to your state. So, this isn’t just to the governor. This is for every elected official and public agency that we have elected and our taxpayers fund.”
Dillard University political analyst Dr. Robert Collins said he thinks such a law, if passed, would prompt lawsuits.
“It’s bad from a public policy standpoint and a transparency standpoint,” Collins said. “And also, this law would — if passed — almost certainly automatically be challenged on First Amendment grounds.”
Another piece of legislation — HB 461 by Rep. Steven Jackson (D-Shreveport) — recently won approval in the House. It would allow confidentiality of certain information related to active economic development negotiations involving local governments.
“This will add local and parish governments to that statute,” Jackson said. “This is an already existing statute. LED (local economic development) already is exempt under this statute, as well as ports,” Jackson said just before the House voted.
But Jackson’s legislation faced opposition in the House Governmental Affairs Committee from an attorney representing the Louisiana Press Association.
“The local governments, they’re not the economic development districts,” attorney Scott Sternberg told the committee. “They’re not the ports and it’s not LED. They are the folks that are signing the bus contracts and making sure that people have appropriate housing and things of that nature. And those are the kind of records that people should be able to check up on their government for.”
Cerrato says that bill would deprive the public of valuable information.
“This bill definitely shrouds local governments in secrecy, and not only hides records of how public funds and how public lands are potentially used, but more broadly, it’s how public business is being conducted,” she said.
SB 423 by Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe) would allow only Louisiana citizens to request public records. And SB 502 by Sen. Blake Miguez (R-New Iberia) would require people who want to inspect, copy or reproduce public records to provide “sufficient” information to verify their age and identification.
Collins said he believes that, collectively, the bills are intended to target news media. But he said, “I’m guessing anybody — not just in the media, but anybody that cares about transparency and the First Amendment — is going to be opposed to these laws.”
Cerrato said limiting access to public records to Louisiana citizens will hurt students attending Louisiana colleges and universities who come from outside the state or country.
“We have a case in which a father of a man was murdered in Louisiana, and he sought access to those public records about the death of his son,” she said. “Under these two bills, that man — who is a Missouri resident just looking for answers about (the) handling of his child’s death — this bill would tell that grieving father he has no right to see those investigative records.”
Fox 8 requested comment from the governor and the lawmakers sponsoring the four bills, but did not receive responses.
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Louisiana
New Orleans artist Hannah Chalew imagines a postapocalyptic Louisiana through reclaimed oil wells
Hannah Chalew salvaged an old oil well from the Poland Avenue scrap yard in New Orleans. She coated it with bagasse, or sugar cane pulp, from Grow Dat, the urban farm in City Park. The paint is recycled, from another nonprofit, the Green Project, and the plants — palmettos, cypress, elephant ear — are largely from the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana’s greenhouse.
The embedded plastic trash — a toothbrush, a COVID-19 test, an old burned CD — “came from my life,” she said. “Plastic will be a fossil marker of our time, here long after we’re gone.”
The result is an artwork that gestures at what humans might leave behind, a sculpture called “Orphan Well Gamma Garden.” It’s a window into the post-apocalypse, where the stuff of civilization has coagulated around Chalew’s reclaimed steel wellheads, that questions the kind of future that humans are creating, and what might survive us.
Trash is packed into an art piece called, “Orphan Well Gamma Garden” in the back of artist Hannah ChalewÕs studio in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. The piece was on display the the CAC in New Orleans during Prospect. 6. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
“I felt kind of like a reverse archaeologist, imagining how some person in the distant future would think about this, like, disembodied sippy-cup top,” Chalew said. “What will the people, or the creatures, who encounter this make of it?”
That work turned out to be only the first in a series of orphan-oil-well-inspired work. A new piece, “Christmas Tree” — named after the Christmas Tree wellheads that pockmark Louisiana’s coastline and are so called because they taper somewhat like a tree — was inspired by a June trip to the mouth of the Mississippi River. There, Chalew saw wells that had become “orphaned.” The companies that owned them had gone bankrupt and responsibility for plugging them had fallen to the state. Some were leaking oil.
She wonders, too, what kind of plant life might recolonize old wells. She embedded “Christmas Tree” with oak wood and resurrection fern — a plant that can dry out and enter into a desiccated, dormant state, and remain that way for up to a century. When exposed to water, the fern comes back to life.
Artist Hannah Chalew poses in a studio in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
She said she wanted to imagine “what might recolonize” old, abandoned fossil-fuel infrastructure.
Chalew’s “Christmas Tree” was just on display at Good Children Gallery part of a show called “Mining for Wonder in the Humdrum.” The show closes Dec. 7. She has work on display as part of another exhibition, called “Fragile Matter,” at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette.
“I realized that this is a body of work,” she said. “These totemic sculptures are part of an eventual show that will be a kind of ‘orphanage’ of old well sculptures.”
Hannah Chalew’s new sculpture, “Christmas Tree,” on display at Good Children Gallery on St. Claude Ave. in New Orleans. (Photo by Alex Lubben, The Times-Picayune)
‘You don’t need to worry about the radon’
The ‘gamma garden’ in the title is an allusion to the post-World War II, U.S.-led initiative called Atoms for Peace, which sought to find peaceful uses for nuclear technology. The idea was to speed evolution in plants by planting them around a pole made of radioactive metal. (Most of the plants died.)
Chalew named her work after this practice because old oil wells can themselves be radioactive, which she learned as she was building the sculpture. She called up a friend who works at an environmental advocacy group, who told her, “You don’t need to worry about the radon. You need to worry about the benzene,” another carcinogenic chemical that can waft off oil wells.
She tested her wells for both and found them to be free of radiation and toxins.
The legacy of the petrochemical industry has been the focus of Chalew’s work. In one of her recent paintings, “Feedback LOOP,” now on display at the Hilliard, Chalew paints plants as intertwined — as they often are in south Louisiana — with industrial pipes and valves.
An art piece called, “Orphan Well Gamma Garden” stands in the back of artist Hannah Chalew’s studio in New Orleans, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. The piece was on display the the CAC in New Orleans during Prospect. 6. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
An oak tree, downed in Hurricane Ida, almost appears to be fighting against the pipes that make up LOOP, an offshore oil hub connected to pipelines that weave their way through Louisiana’s coastal wetlands. As with her orphan well sculptures, the materials are natural or salvaged, with ink made from oak trees and paper made from sugar cane and used plastic.
Her critique extends further, calling out industry’s affiliation with the arts.
Artist Hannah Chalew poses near a pile of dumped metal near Venice, La., Thursday, June 5, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
She emblazoned the words “HELIS OIL + GAS” on each of the wells, a reference to the one-time Louisiana oil and gas company, which, through its charitable foundation, is a major patron of the arts in Louisiana. By centering this particular well in her work, she is critiquing how the arts in New Orleans are funded. She’s refused funding from grant-making institutions that are linked to the oil and gas industry, she says, and won’t accept support from Helis.
She also logged the carbon footprint of producing and transporting the sculpture at 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide, which she’s tried to offset by planting cypress trees. She considers this a challenge to other artists to consider the environmental impact of their work.
“I want to create these visions that are beautiful, but then as you explore them, sort of unsettling,” she said. “Is this the future we want our descendants to inherit?”
Louisiana
Three inmates escape from Louisiana jail — cops racing to nab final fugitive murder suspect
Three inmates allegedly broke out of a Louisiana jail through a crumbling wall on Wednesday — and authorities are racing to capture the final escapee, who is a murder suspect.
The fugitive trio — Joseph Allen Harrington, 26, Jonathan Jevon Joseph, 24, and Keith Eli, 24 — escaped St. Landry Paris Jail in Opelousas by prying through a decaying wall over time and lowering themselves to freedom with sheets and other items, according to the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Joseph was soon nabbed, while Harrington killed himself after being found hiding inside a home. Eli is still on the run, authorities said.
“We would prefer that he surrender himself peaceably,” Sheriff Bobby J. Guidroz said of Eli, who is charged with second-degree murder.
“But we will not rest until he is captured.”
Officials said Joseph — jailed on rape and other charges — was nabbed Friday after a brief chase. Police tracked a tip to a home, where he ran to nearby storage shed before being cornered and surrendering.
Harrington killed himself with a hunting rifle Thursday after police found him at a home and used a loudspeaker to try to get him to surrender, according to Port Barre Police Chief Deon Boudreaux.
Records show Harrington had been facing nine felony charges, including home invasion.
Authorities and SWAT continued the manhunt Saturday.
Police warned anyone who spots Eli to stay away and call 911 immediately.
The jailbreak comes six months after 10 inmates escaped a New Orleans prison through a small window hidden by a toilet, leaving behind graffiti mocking authorities, including “To Easy LoL.”
Authorities scoured multiple states for the runaways as local officials blamed each other for the breakout.
It took five months to recapture all 10 inmates.
The sheriff’s office said the trio in this latest escape were more cunning than in past prison busts.
Officials said the jailbreakers pried through a degraded wall, gradually removing the mortar between concrete blocks until they could slip out. They then used sheets to scale an exterior wall, drop onto a roof, and lower themselves to the ground.
“These three were just a little more creative than in years past,” sheriff spokesperson Major Mark LeBlanc said.
“They’re charged with violent felonies and we know they’re desperate to get away.”
The prison break will be investigated internally.
With Post wires.
Two inmates accused of violent crimes, including second-degree attempted murder, are on the run after escaping from a south-western Louisiana jail on Wednesday by removing pieces of a deteriorating interior wall and using sheets to scale another outside wall, officials said.
A third inmate who joined in the breakout died by suicide after he was tracked down.
It was only the latest bold jail escape in Louisiana. In May, 10 inmates broke out of a New Orleans jail after crawling through a hole behind a toilet. It wasn’t until five months later – following the discovery of the escape crime scene with a message that read “To Easy LoL”, finger-pointing by officials as to who was to blame for the audacious escape and a search that spanned multiple states – that all 10 inmates were recaptured.
Wednesday morning’s escape, which took place at the St Landry parish jail in Opelousas, Louisiana, involved three inmates. Sheriff Bobby J Guidroz, who oversees the jail in question about 130 miles (209km) north-west of New Orleans, said the “inmates discovered a degrading part of an upper wall area and, over time, removed the mortar allowing them to remove concrete blocks and provide their exit”.
The inmates then used “sheets and other items” to scale the outer wall and “drop on to” the first floor roof, before “lowering themselves to the ground”, Guidroz said in a press release.
Additional details about the escape were not immediately available. Guidroz said it will be investigated internally.
The sheriff’s office identified the two escaped inmates still on the loose as Keith Eli, 24, of Opelousas, who was facing a second-degree attempted murder charge, and Johnathan Jevon Joseph, 24, also of Opelousas, who was facing several charges, including principal to first-degree rape.
The third escaper, Joseph Allen Harrington, 26, of Melville, who faced several felony charges, including home invasion, died by his own hand after he was found, the Port Barre, Louisiana, police chief, Deon Boudreaux, said by telephone.
After a tipster who recognized Harrington told police on Thursday that he was seen pushing a black e-bike, an officer spotted the e-bike at a nearby home. Police used a loudspeaker to urge Harrington to come out of the house, and they later heard a gunshot. Harrington was found dead inside the home. He had shot himself with a hunting rifle, Boudreaux said.
St Landry sheriff’s department spokesperson Maj Mark LeBlanc wasn’t aware of the jail being breached in a similar way in the past – but noted that anyone will try to escape with enough time and opportunity.
“These three were just a little more creative than in years past,” he said.
There’s no credible indications that the remaining fugitives have left the parish (Louisiana’s term for county), and LeBlanc warned residents to secure their homes and vehicles.
“They’re charged with violent felonies and we know they’re desperate to get away,” he said.
Anyone who helps the fugitives will be prosecuted, he added.
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