In an effort to avoid future legislation―and a potentially acrimonious debate―Speaker Pro Tem Mike Johnson has established a 10-member committee that intends to put the Louisiana High School Athletic Association under a microscope.

The panel convenes on July 29. Johnson expects to hold monthly meetings and deliver a report to the Legislature’s education committees by February.

While state lawmakers don’t have authority over the LHSAA, they do get phone calls when constituents are irate over an association decision.

“It’s a private corporation that is relying upon our children, our facilities and our support,” Johnson says. “But there’s very little interaction at all between the public entity that supports it and the private entity.”

The LHSAA governs sports for public and private schools throughout the state. While it does not get state tax dollars, it receives funding from principals who make up the association and pay dues from school coffers, and its games are played in publicly funded facilities.

Yet it’s a private organization with no oversight from the Legislature or any other public body, and it is not subject to laws mandating public meetings or records.

From the outside, LHSAA decisions can seem arbitrary and mysterious. When former Isidore Newman basketball coach Randy Livingston was suspended in 2023 for alleged recruiting violations, the school sued, and LHSAA Executive Director Eddie Bonine reportedly admitted on the stand that the organization violated its own rules by not giving Newman a chance to respond to the allegations.

A frequent source of controversy has been the ever-evolving definition of what constitutes a “select” or “nonselect” school. The distinction originally was created to ensure a level playing field for football programs at public schools that are limited to students from their districts and private schools that can recruit students from a wider area, and was later extended to other sports.

In 2022, the LHSAA Executive Committee expanded the definition of select schools to include charter and magnet schools, and schools in open enrollment parishes. That change pulled in Rapides Parish schools, which had gone to open enrollment to resolve a desegregation case.

The Rapides schools and others sued successfully to block the change, arguing that it needed to be approved by the entire body, though the full membership has since ratified the new definition.

“We had to file a lawsuit to get them to do the right thing,” says Johnson, who served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs. “There are other instances where they don’t follow their own policies.”

Some members have discussed bringing legislation that would ban public school athletes from participating in events governed by an organization that does not have certain transparency provisions, such as public meeting or records requirements. A bill like that would be a direct attack at the LHSAA, which Johnson would like to avoid.

Instead, he wants to foster communication, cooperation and a sense that everyone has the same goals.

“My intent is to do something positive, not something to settle scores or anything like that,” he says. “How do we build on this and do something good for student athletes?”

Bonine did not respond to interview requests for this story. Director of Communications Ethan Anderson says LHSAA is refraining from “media discussions” about the committee.

“Out of respect for the committee and its members, we believe it’s important to allow their process to begin without public commentary from us,” Anderson says by email. “We’ve extended an invitation to the committee to speak directly to our coaches at next week’s [Louisiana High School Coaches Association] Convention, and in turn, we’ve been invited to their first meeting scheduled for July 29. We see this as a positive and collaborative start and want to honor that dialogue by not getting ahead of it publicly.”

Anderson did not respond to a followup email asking for basic information about LHSAA, such as its annual budget and a breakdown of the revenue sources, which include sponsorships.

Johnson’s resolution passed the House 93-2 (with 60 coauthors) and 36-0 in the Senate.

“Four years ago it would never have passed,” Rep. Larry Bagley says. “When I came in ten years ago, that kind of stuff wouldn’t even be heard.”

Bagley, who voted against the resolution, serves on the LHSAA’s Executive Committee. He says he has helped to fend off prior efforts to take over the organization’s duties before he was included in the committee, and was brought in as a liaison of sorts with his colleagues.

He says legislators, particularly newer ones, often don’t understand how the association works or realize that they don’t have oversight.

“In the end, what are you going to make an independent organization do?” Bagley says. “I’m not sure what they want to change it to or even why.”

It’s impossible to make everyone happy, Bagley notes. But replicating what the association does would be costly and difficult, he says.

Legislators probably don’t want to be responsible for investigating cheating allegations, for example. As for the argument about publicly funded facilities, Bagley says those are used for all sorts of public events, not just games.

Along with Johnson, House representatives on the committee are Rep. Bryan Fontenot, who is Education Chair Laurie Schlegel’s designee, and four additional members Schlegel appointed: Reps. Tehmi Chassion, Vincent Cox, John Wyble and Rashid Young.

The Senate contributes President Pro Tem Regina Barrow, Education Chair Rick Edmonds and his appointees: Sens. Alan Seabaugh and Bill Wheat.

—THEY SAID IT: “I heard a loud screeching noise with a lot of static. It sounded like a 747 taking off.” — U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, explaining how a “malfunction in my earpiece” caused him to freeze mid-sentence during a Fox Business interview