re: La senator helped secure Meta’s largest data center. Then he sold the land beside it

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Morris bought seven properties within five miles of the data center since the Meta announcement in December 2024 — plus a 165-acre tract about 10 miles southwest.

The timing of those land deals shows how closely he mixed official actions with personal business dealings.

In 2024, Morris co-sponsored and voted for a wide-ranging bill that, among other things, gave LED new authority to lease state-owned property.

The state had purchased a large tract of land from the family of Fred Scott Franklin, Sr. — Morris’ business partners — nearly two decades earlier for a deal that fell through with a different company. But shortly after the 2024 bill passed, LED used its new authority to lease the site to Meta.

Four months after Meta signed the lease, Morris and the Franklins paid $1.2 million cash to buy an 80-acre plot just across the street from the project site. Morris signed the deed in early 2025. Less than two months later, one of the senate committees he’s part of began considering a second bill that would play a pivotal role in finalizing the state’s deal with Meta: giving LED the authority to sell state-owned property.

By late April, Morris had signed on as co-sponsor and voted for its passage.

By early May, Morris and the Franklins had begun monetizing the property in a more immediate way: turning it into a dirt quarry for eventual use on the Meta job site, the senator told Floodlight.

Three months after that second bill was signed into law, LED sold Meta the property that the tech company had been leasing, which was just a stone’s throw from Morris’ land.

That series of events raises serious ethical concerns, according to La Koshia Roberts, a former chair and currently the longest-serving member of the Louisiana Board of Ethics — the body that investigates potential ethical misconduct by government officials.

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I can actually feel my heart rate increasing reading this shite. It’s absolutely appalling.

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NIH wants white males to profit from all the shady legislation because they are a protected class.

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The overt corruption of some state and national republicans is what may create an opening for democrats to win elections.

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