By TODD HORNE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Louisiana HB 608 is not a privacy bill.
It is not a fairness bill.
It is not a narrowly tailored answer to a changing college-sports economy.
It is a secrecy bill.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tehmi Chassion, is now pending before House and Governmental Affairs after the House amended it, ordered it engrossed, and recommitted it there.
The current version leaves one number public — the total amount a postsecondary institution spends each fiscal year on revenue sharing — while shielding the amount or percentage paid to a specific athlete, the amount or percentage allocated to a specific sport or athletic program, and records tied to negotiating those agreements.
That is not transparency.
That is controlled disclosure.
It is Baton Rouge trying to give the public one headline number while hiding the allocation decisions that give that number meaning.
And now the names deserve daylight too.
HB 608 belongs to Rep. Tehmi Chassion. It now sits with House and Governmental Affairs: Chair Beau Beaullieu, Vice Chair Rodney Lyons, and members Beth Anne Billings, Delisha Boyd, Wilford Carter Sr., Les Farnum, Foy Bryan Gadberry, Mike Johnson, Ed Larvadain III, C. Denise Marcelle, Dixon Wallace McMakin, Candace Newell, Rodney Schamerhorn, Polly Thomas, Joy Walters, Mark Wright, and John E. Wyble, with Speaker Phillip DeVillier as an ex officio member.
These are the lawmakers who will decide whether Louisiana creates another public-records carveout for a politically powerful public institution.
The case for HB 608 rests on two claims, and both collapse under scrutiny.
The first is the claim of student privacy.
No.
This bill is not about medical files.
It is not about grades.
It is not about home addresses.
It is not about personal trauma.
It is about money allocation. It is about which athletes got what, which sports got what share, and how a public institution divided the money.
That is not the same thing as personal privacy.
That is institutional spending.
And here is the part supporters do not want to admit: Louisiana does not need a broad new secrecy carveout to address any legitimate privacy concern that may exist. There are narrower tools available than hiding how a public university allocates money. If lawmakers truly wanted to protect sensitive identifying information, they could do that without walling off the underlying allocation patterns, spending structure, and institutional priorities from public view.
The second is the claim of competitive disadvantage.
That one is even weaker.
Do you really expect serious adults to believe that a billion-dollar brand like LSU cannot compete unless it is allowed to hide how it spends public funds?
LSU is one of the most powerful brands in college sports. It has donor strength, facilities, visibility, recruiting reach, and political clout. The idea that LSU needs secrecy to survive is nonsense. What LSU wants is not protection from competitors. It wants protection from scrutiny.
And the irony is that the proof is already in plain sight.
Tiger Rag first reported LSU’s revenue-share allocation for this year on February 27, when Verge Ausberry said the $20.5 million pool was being divided 75 percent to football, 15 percent to basketball, 5 percent to women’s basketball, and 5 percent to other sports.
Then on April 8, Ausberry went on Matt Moscona’s show and discussed LSU’s revenue-share structure again, including baseball funding. By Thursday morning, that discussion was already circulating publicly again, with the latest reporting saying baseball’s share is going up in 2026-27.
That is exactly the problem in one example.
LSU officials can talk publicly about shifting the money. Media can repeat it. Fans can debate it. Narratives can be shaped in real time. But if HB 608 passes, the public would be denied the records needed to verify those sport-by-sport allocation changes for itself.
That is not a privacy policy.
That is a narrative-control policy.
The public can hear the spin, but HB 608 would block the records needed to verify it.
And it also destroys the “competitive disadvantage” argument. College sports already runs on information moving everywhere all the time. Coaches know. Agents know. Collectives know. Recruits know. Rival programs know. Everybody talks. The only people HB 608 really blinds are the public, the press, and the taxpayers.
So let’s say it plainly:
HB 608 does not protect LSU from Alabama.
It protects LSU from questions it does not want to answer.
How much went to football?
How much went to baseball?
How much went to women’s sports?
Who got favored?
Who got squeezed?
Who made those calls?
Those are not nosy questions.
Those are accountability questions.
And at a public university, accountability is not optional.
This was actually a chance for Louisiana to lead.
College sports is changing fast. Athletes are being compensated more openly. Public institutions are more deeply entangled than ever in the economics of labor, value, and distribution. That should push lawmakers toward stronger transparency, clearer rules, and more public trust.
Instead, Baton Rouge’s instinct is to hide the structure and leave the public with one sanitized top-line number.
That is not legislative leadership.
That is retreat.
If LSU wants the privileges of public status, it gets the burden of public scrutiny. That is the deal. You do not get public branding, public facilities, public prestige, and public political protection, then suddenly demand secrecy when the money gets sensitive.
So let there be no confusion about where the light belongs. It belongs on Rep. Tehmi Chassion, who filed HB 608. It belongs on Chairman Beau Beaullieu and every member of House and Governmental Affairs, because this is the committee now standing between Louisiana and another secrecy exemption in public-records law.
If this bill moves, the public should know exactly who moved it.
If lawmakers want to vote for secrecy, they should at least be honest enough to call it secrecy.
Do not call it student privacy.
Do not call it competitive necessity.
Do not call it reform.
Call it what it is: a legal shield for public universities that do not want citizens to know how they divide the money.
House and Governmental Affairs should reject HB 608.
Because if Louisiana cannot demand that a public university disclose how it allocates revenue-sharing money by athlete and by sport, then Louisiana public-records law is not being defended.
It is being narrowed, one politically convenient exemption at a time.
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