Opelousas ODDD Scandal Deepens With More Out-of-District Spending

Here they go again! Our last article revealed a stunning $5 million potential misappropriation inside the Opelousas Downtown Development District (ODDD). Since then, one question has hovered over the city: was this a one-time blunder or part of something bigger? Unfortunately, the answer is now obvious.

When the Opelousas City Council met that Monday night, they didn’t just confirm our earlier reporting — they accidentally handed us the next chapter of the story. What makes this even worse? We know many Opelousas officials read the article — some even acknowledged it. Yet during their entire meeting to authorize spending, the district boundaries never came up. Not once.

A New Out-of-District Project Surfaces

Instead, they buried deep in the November 17 agenda a seemingly routine item:

“Adopt a resolution authorizing the Mayor to enter into a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with the ODDD for reimbursement of architectural fees associated with erecting the Opelousas Community Center at 1524 S. Market Street.”

There’s only one problem:

1524 S. Market Street is not inside the Opelousas Downtown Development District. It sits well outside the district’s legislatively defined boundaries — the very same issue that calls the $5 million stadium project’s legality into question. This means ODDD was used again to fund a project outside the area for which it is authorized to serve. That makes two confirmed out-of-district expenditures:

1. The $5 million stadium project, and
2. The community center architectural reimbursement at 1524 S. Market Street

Both expenditures fall squarely outside the ODDD’s statutory jurisdiction, and both were approved without anyone even asking whether the projects were within the district’s boundaries. The confidence and speed with which officials rubber-stamped the money-changing operation are baffling, especially given that the entire community is now asking whether the spending is legal.

Transparency? Not On Your Life!

To verify whether there were other potential violations, we reviewed six years of council agendas — every meeting in which the phrases “Downtown” or “ODDD” appeared. If you want to know how the votes went on these potentially illegal expenditures, that’s just too bad. The City of Opelousas hasn’t consistently posted meeting minutes on its website for the past 2 years. That appears to be yet another direct violation of state law. Specifically, LARS 42:20(B)(2), which requires:

If the public body has a website, the public body shall post on its website a copy of the minutes…

Apparently, transparency and accountability are for chumps. The City of Opelousas will do whatever it pleases, and the subjects must obey. Higher taxes downtown go to pay expenses that aren’t in downtown because, well, who cares? We’re doing important things, like building sports stadiums, after all.

Still, they managed to post agendas during this same period, so we reviewed six years’ worth. While we won’t find out how the different councilmen voted, or if items passed or failed, we can at least get a sense of what leadership was asking for.

The results?

Getting this information was quite a task, by the way. The clerk uses a computer to prepare the agendas, but prints them and scans them back in to post online. That makes these meeting minutes non-searchable. They’re effectively just blurry pictures of the agenda documents. So once we had them, we still had to run them through several layers of cleanup, optical character recognition, and double-checking. Even so, what we ended up with still wasn’t perfect.

The best we can tell, though, no major ODDD expenditures were identified other than those we’ve now documented. Not so much as sidewalks slipping past the boundary line. There were no additional phases of the stadium and no mysterious reimbursements hiding in the margins.

In short:

The Council’s November 17 vote wasn’t part of a larger pile of questionable spending — it was the first time since the stadium vote that they knowingly directed ODDD money to a project outside the district.

This is important.

It disproves the “Oh, we always spend this way” excuse before officials can even attempt to use it. The problem isn’t that everything is out of bounds. The problem is that when it mattered most, the ODDD and City Hall acted without ever checking their own map. Was that accidental, or did they already know the answer? It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, right?

The Law Isn’t Optional

However, Louisiana law isn’t flexible on this point. Special taxing districts can spend money only inside their legally defined boundaries. Not one inch past them. When they do:

• It’s a misappropriation of public funds,
• Agency heads must notify the Legislative Auditor and the District Attorney (R.S. 24:523),
• And once misappropriation is confirmed, the Attorney General is required by law to recover those funds through civil suit.

These are not guidelines. They are legal mandates. By the way, “recovery” includes more than just what was spent. It means the principal, the investigative costs, and the Attorney General’s legal fees. To make it more stinging, the people who approved or authorized these out-of-district expenditures can be held personally responsible for repaying them.

The Question No One at City Hall Seems to Ask

That Monday vote confirms something more profound than a simple boundary error. No one in the Opelousas government appears to understand that ODDD has boundaries at all. When the Council approved the community center reimbursement:

• No map was presented.
• No boundaries were referenced.
• No one asked whether 1524 S. Market Street is in the district.
• No one even mentioned ODDD’s enabling statute.

The Council’s silence speaks louder than any excuse or explanation. The boundary wasn’t just ignored; it was never even considered. That alone speaks volumes about how casually ODDD funds have been handled — and how easily millions can leak into projects the district has no legal authority to touch.

Where This Goes From Here

With two unlawful expenditures now in question, the next steps become clear:

• The Legislative Auditor has grounds to investigate the ODDD.
• The District Attorney must be notified under R.S. 24:523.
• The Attorney General is obligated to recover misappropriated funds.
• Taxpayers may seek an injunction or file a mandamus action.
• Bondholders may raise material disclosure issues.
• Council members who approved these expenditures face personal liability if misappropriation is formally found.

The ODDD’s boundaries did not move. The statute did not change. Only the officials’ willingness to bend, stretch, or ignore the law changed. And that is why this story isn’t over.

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