Louisiana’s “No-Bid” $54M Motorola Deal: What the Documents Say

When the Louisiana Office of Technology Services asked lawmakers to approve an alternative procurement process for a sweeping Motorola Solutions public-safety technology contract, criticism was almost immediate—and so were conclusions. At the time of the July 23 hearing, however, the proposal remained under negotiation. Appropriations Chairman Jack McFarland (R 7/10) said the committee wanted to review a draft contract before considering final approval.

One article in particular, published by The Center Square, questioned the administration’s decision to forego a traditional competitive bid, highlighted thousands of hours of reported outages on the Louisiana Wireless Information Network (LWIN), and raised doubts about whether taxpayers were receiving a fair deal. Another point worth making is that the proposal’s reported value and its projected savings are separate figures. The Times-Picayune reported CIO Evelina Broussard described the proposed ten-year procurement as a $54 million agreement, while the administration’s written memorandum estimates approximately $40 million in savings over the same period.

The Center Square raised what seem to be fair questions. But they are only as good as the facts supporting them. So rather than repeat claims made by either side, we did something increasingly uncommon in modern reporting—we sat down with the public record. After reviewing legislative committee documents, procurement records, NASPO cooperative purchasing agreements, GOHSEP presentations, Motorola’s own technical documentation, and Louisiana procurement law, a very different picture began to emerge.

Another important detail often omitted from public discussion is that, according to OTS, approximately 69 percent of devices already operating on LWIN use Motorola-specific equipment. In that context, the proposal is less about selecting a new vendor than standardizing and expanding an ecosystem that already serves as the backbone of the state’s public-safety communications network.

This Isn’t Just a Radio Contract

Perhaps the biggest misconception surrounding the proposal is treating it as a purchase of two-way radios. It isn’t. According to the July 21 memorandum submitted by Louisiana Chief Information Officer Evelina Broussard to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, the proposal encompasses virtually the entire operational ecosystem used by many public safety agencies throughout the state.

That includes:

• the Louisiana Wireless Information Network (LWIN);
• portable radios;
• body-worn cameras;
• in-car video systems;
• automated license plate recognition;
• evidence management;
• real-time mapping;
• command-and-control software; and
• ongoing support and maintenance.

In other words, the administration isn’t proposing to replace one vendor’s radios with another’s. It is attempting to standardize an integrated communications, video, evidence, and command platform under a single manufacturer.

Whether one ultimately agrees with that approach or not, it is a far broader proposal than much of the public discussion has suggested.

The Ever-Important Integration Question

The administration’s principal argument is straightforward. While competing manufacturers offer many of these products individually, OTS concluded that Motorola is currently the only vendor capable of supplying the complete suite as a natively integrated system. Publicly available documentation substantially supports that claim.

Motorola’s own public documentation describes features such as emergency radio activation automatically triggering paired body-worn cameras, integration between body cameras and in-car video, live officer location, broadband extension of P25 radio communications, evidence management, and command-center visibility. These are documented product capabilities, although manufacturer materials alone do not establish that every capability will be included in Louisiana’s final configuration.

Publicly available NASPO cooperative purchasing agreements reinforce that point. While multiple manufacturers offer body cameras, radios, or other individual components, Motorola appears to be the only awarded manufacturer participating in both the principal public-safety communications and public-safety video portfolios. That does not foreclose the possibility that another integrator or consortium could assemble a competing solution, but it helps explain why OTS viewed Motorola as uniquely positioned to provide a native end-to-end system.

The Outage Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

One of the strongest criticisms cited in The Center Square involved thousands of reported hours of LWIN outages. Standing alone, those figures sound alarming. The problem is that the context wasn’t hidden. The same publicly available GOHSEP presentation where they found the cumulative outage hours also identified what caused them.

GOHSEP presentations dating back several years consistently attribute the overwhelming majority of reported outage time to telecommunications circuits carrying traffic between tower sites. For example, a February 2021 presentation attributed 81 percent of outage issues to telecommunications circuits, with only 9 percent attributed to equipment-related issues. By October 2024, telecommunications still accounted for approximately 84 percent of reported outage hours, while equipment represented only 11 percent — the final 5% attributed to power outages.

A failed fiber connection, telephone circuit, or power outage would affect virtually any radio system operating over the same network, regardless of which manufacturer supplied the radios. None of this suggests equipment failures never occur. It does suggest that presenting raw outage hours without their publicly documented causes can leave readers with an incomplete understanding of what actually failed.

A second problem is how the cumulative total was translated for legacy media readers. During GOHSEP’s October 2024 presentation, approximately 3,432 cumulative site-outage hours were reported across the LWIN network. That figure has been characterized elsewhere as the equivalent of “143 days” of downtime. While the arithmetic is correct, the framing is misleading. Those hours represent cumulative outages spread across approximately 150 tower sites—not a statewide network outage lasting 143 consecutive days. On average, that equates to roughly 23 outage hours per site over the course of a year.

Viewed another way, those figures equate to approximately 99.74 percent average site availability before even accounting for the cause of each outage.

What About the Savings?

The administration has also argued that the agreement would save taxpayers money. Can that claim be verified? Partially. The July 21 OTS memorandum estimates approximately $40 million in savings over ten years, largely through guaranteed pricing on replacement equipment and long-term procurement discounts.

Public NASPO cooperative purchasing contracts also provide one of the best available benchmarks for evaluating the administration’s claims. Those contracts already establish nationally negotiated pricing for many Motorola products, often around twenty percent below manufacturer’s suggested retail pricing. If Louisiana negotiated prices below those already-discounted rates—as officials have suggested—the resulting savings could indeed be substantial.

Louisiana’s own spending history also provides useful context. Louisiana Checkbook records approximately $37.4 million paid to Motorola Solutions and approximately $18.9 million paid to Axon Enterprise (the state’s current primary body and in-cab cameras vendor) during fiscal years 2024 through 2026—a combined total exceeding $56 million over three fiscal years. Most Motorola expenditures were associated with Louisiana State Police and GOHSEP, while Axon spending was concentrated in State Police and corrections agencies. Since the new Motorola contract would now include cameras, we’re lumping those purchases (with Axon) into analysis.

One Important Question Remains

Those expenditures do not independently prove the administration’s projected savings. They represent purchases by multiple agencies for different equipment, software, maintenance, subscriptions, and related services, without the quantities or configurations necessary for an apples-to-apples comparison. They do demonstrate, however, that Louisiana is already spending tens of millions of dollars across these technology ecosystems. Against that existing expenditure base, the administration’s claim that long-term negotiated pricing and lifecycle purchasing could produce meaningful savings is neither implausible nor unsupported by the public record.

At the same time, one important question remains unanswered. The public documents currently available do not include the detailed cost model showing exactly how the administration arrived at its ten-year savings estimate. That isn’t a criticism. It’s simply not something we were able to independently verify from available online documents. Until that reconciliation is made available, it would be premature to independently verify every dollar claimed in savings.

However, an official familiar with the negotiations characterized the administration’s written $40 million estimate as conservative and suggested total savings could ultimately reach $75 million to $100 million. Considering the state’s current spending patterns with Motorola and Axon, these even higher savings estimates of $75 to $100 million actually appear to be reasonable.

Transparency Still Matters

Perhaps the most surprising part of this research wasn’t what we found but where we found it. Nearly every significant fact discussed above came from documents already available to the public—committee packets, procurement records, cooperative purchasing contracts, state presentations, and manufacturer technical publications. None required confidential sources, leaked documents, or even a single public records request.

That’s why Citizens for a New Louisiana continues investing in this kind of work. Government transparency isn’t achieved simply because documents exist somewhere on the internet. Transparency only has value when someone takes the time to read them, compare them, and present the complete picture.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether Louisiana should standardize around a single technology provider. But those debates should begin with all of the facts. Fortunately, those facts are increasingly available online for anyone willing to read them.

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