On Monday morning, The Descendants Challenge filed go well with in fortieth Judicial District Court docket in Edgard in opposition to Greenfield Louisiana LLC, the Port of South Louisiana, and St. John the Baptist Sheriff Mike Tregre. 

In its submitting, the nonprofit alleges that by lowering Greenfield’s tax burden, the Port and Sheriff of St. John violated the Louisiana structure’s prohibition on gratuitous donations, basically handing over cash to Greenfield. 

For over three years, environmental justice advocates had fought Greenfield’s plans to construct a towering, $800 million grain elevator alongside the final rural stretch of Louisiana’s River Street between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. As a complete, this largely unindustrialized span in St. John mirrored a historical past and setting that ought to be preserved, the Nationwide Park Service determined, because it beneficial in October that the 11-mile span of Nice River Street be awarded the designation of Nationwide Historic Landmark. 

On the opposite facet of the Mississippi River, the plantation heaps turned the state’s petrochemical hall, lined with smokestacks and also known as “Most cancers Alley.”

Whereas some residents had been drawn to Greenfield’s pledges about job creation, vital opposition got here from Wallace, a small black hamlet in St. John the Baptist Parish, the place residents feared they’d be devoured by business.

Older St. John residents nonetheless related grain elevators with catastrophe. In 1977, 40 years earlier than the battle in opposition to Greenfield started, the Westwego Continental Grain Elevator exploded an hour’s drive downriver from Wallace, killing 36 folks, with an explosion that the Instances-Picayune described as a thousand-foot-high “mushroom cloud of grain.” It stays one of many worst industrial disasters in trendy Louisiana historical past and one of many deadliest within the nation’s grain business.

In August, these Wallace neighbors breathed a sigh of aid, when Greenfield introduced that it was scrapping its plans for the grain-export facility. 

However Greenfield didn’t pay its share even because it exited, say twin sisters Pleasure and Jo Banner, natives of Wallace who led the battle in opposition to the Greenfield Terminal by way of The Descendants Challenge, which they co-founded. The lawsuit filed Monday summarizes these contentions in opposition to Greenfield.

The Lens reached out to Greenfield for touch upon the problems outlined within the lawsuit, however a response was not instantly out there.

Officers allowed Greenfield to skirt tens of millions in taxes, lawsuit contends

Greenfield had bought 1,300 acres of residential, riverfront land that wanted to be rezoned as heavy industrial for the elevator to start development. However in December, 4 months after Greenfield unexpectedly halted its industrial grain-elevator undertaking, the Port of South Louisiana authored a Termination and Launch Settlement that allowed Greenfield to exit the deal by paying the Port a termination charge of $538,020. 

This sum is simply a fraction of what Greenfield owes the parish in property taxes, The Descendants Challenge contends.

The lawsuit outlines how the Port and the sheriff helped Greenfield keep away from its tax burden. Although Greenfield was the rightful proprietor of the $40 million property, it averted paying taxes on that land by forging a Cooperative Endeavor Settlement and a Cost in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) settlement with the Port and Sheriff. 

That settlement allowed Greenfield to “promote” the $40 million property to the Port for zero {dollars}, after which allowed Greenfield to lease it again from the Port, giving the Port technical possession of the property, although Greenfield nonetheless managed the land. 

The benefit was all tax-related. As a result of public entities don’t pay taxes, the land turned tax-exempt, saving Greenfield roughly $200 million in taxes.

PILOT agreements aren’t uncommon. Cities and parishes typically use them to draw new enterprise to an space. However even the acronym makes clear that firms benefitting from PILOT agreements should make annual funds — in lieu of paying taxes.

In Greenfield’s PILOT settlement, Greenfield pledged to make a one-time fee of $4 million in 2022, with subsequent annual funds of $2 million to kick in as soon as operations started. Greenfield additionally agreed to pay the Port annual administrative charges of $300,000 for 5 years starting in 2022, presumably when the positioning was in improvement, and to proceed these administrative funds at a $200,000 per 12 months price all through the lifetime of the lease.

“These sums are substantial. However they pale compared to what Greenfield would pay if it truly paid property taxes,” The Descendants Challenge wrote. 

Ultimately, Greenfield by no means did pay property taxes. 

Greenfield additionally didn’t make any of the agreed-upon PILOT funds.

As a substitute of gathering on Greenfield money owed, the Port and Sheriff forgave them

As parish sheriff, Tregre’s statutory responsibility was to gather and implement funds required by the PILOT settlement. 

However 12 months after 12 months, as an alternative of gathering and imposing, the Port and the Sheriff had been each forgiving Greenfield’s missed funds, in response to The Descendants Challenge lawsuit, which claims that the debt cancellations violated Artwork. VII, Part 14 of the Louisiana Structure, which prohibits the donation of funds, credit, property or issues of worth to any particular person or company.

“The Sheriff had a authorized responsibility to ‘implement fee’ when Greenfield didn’t pay. It’s a dereliction of responsibility for a regulation enforcement officer to refuse to implement the regulation like this,” mentioned William Most, The Descendants Challenge’s lawyer.

The tax-forgiveness selections had been additionally made with out the settlement of different native entities that obtain part of these tax funds, together with St. John Parish Council, the Faculty Board, the Assessor, the Library, Lafourche Basin Levee Board, Pontchartrain Levee District and the LA Tax Fee, in response to the courtroom submitting. 

After scrutinizing the general public transactions with Greenfield, The Descendants Challenge alleges that three agreements had been unlawful – the Feb. 2023 settlement that retroactively forgave Greenfield’s failure to pay and prolonged the deadline to Dec. 2023; the Oct. 2023 modification that prolonged the fee deadline to Dec. 2024; and the termination settlement in December that canceled the unique $4 million fee solely. 

The association might be thought-about fraud, in response to the lawsuit, which notes that the Port, the Sheriff and Greenfield instructed the parish tax assessor and the general public that the Port owned the land—however regardless of that, the land remained on Greenfield’s stability sheets and wasn’t claimed by the Port in its audited monetary statements, as submitted to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. 

Together with the $538,020 termination charge paid to the Port, Greenfield paid a further $87,730.19 to Sheriff Tregre, to be divided amongst all of the advert valorem tax recipients—the record of native entities such because the library, the levee board and public colleges. That’s a complete of $625,750.19.

But when Greenfield had stored up with its PILOT funds, these entities would have cut up $900,000, $300,000 yearly, by way of the top of 2024—on high of Greenfield’s preliminary $4 million fee slated for 2022.

“The Port of South Louisiana’s coping with Greenfield is probably the most obvious instance of the unfair benefits given to huge enterprise that we as residents would by no means obtain,” Pleasure Banner mentioned. “Agreeing to excuse $200 million in taxes with flimsy proof of jobs and financial improvement is unhealthy sufficient, however to have our officers give illegal extensions after which dismiss nearly all of the cash that Greenfield nonetheless owes is totally indefensible.”

The Descendants Challenge is asking the courtroom to annul the three allegedly unlawful agreements – dated Feb. 2023, Oct. 2023, and Dec. 2024 – and to bar defendants from making gratuitous donations or contracts that violate state regulation.

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