The new arena might be in trouble

BATON ROUGE — Former Baton Rouge Councilman Darrell Glasper Sr. has filed a lawsuit alleging that two recently-created economic development districts broke the law when they raised taxes on local businesses without taxpayer approval.

Glasper's suit alleges that the taxes will take approximately $160 million from roughly one hundred businesses near LSU over the next 30 years.

The two districts — the Louisiana State University Economic Development District and the LSU EDD Athletic Subdistrict — are controlled by the LSU president.

The lawsuit says that Act 203, which created the two districts, defined them to exclude any location where voters might have lived on a certain date, meaning that, in theory, if there are no voters, the districts can avoid voter sign-off on the taxes.

"What will this taxpayer money be used for? Publicly, the defendants have said there is no plan for the money," the lawsuit says.

Glasper, however, says that private messages show that the plan is to use the tax dollars to help fund a $400 million arena along Nicholson Drive near LSU's campus.

"This effort to secretly give millions of dollars of taxpayer money to private developers without voter approval or knowledge is illegal and unconstitutional," the lawsuit says.