on sunday 05 july 2009 the gannett/town talk's robert morgan posted two interesting stories about the hot wells mineral springs located near boyce, louisiana.
mr. morgan's first article: "hot wells sale reserved: investor has no-bid deal on rapides spa site" [link] [download two page .pdf] focuses on act 264 of the 2007 legislative session.
mr. morgan writes that act 264 of 2007, authored by senator joe mcpherson and co-authored by then state rep. israel "bo" curtis of alexandria, authorized the department of health and hospitals to transfer without public bid about 63 acres of state land in rapides parish that once was hot wells rehabilitation center to boyce businessman monroe thompson, through his cypress bend investments llc.
after reading the article, the first thing we did was navigate to legis.state.la.us >> then under bill search >> select a session >> selected the 2007 regular session from the drop down box. then at view a specific instrument choose act in the drop down box and typed in 264 and click view.
thats where we learned that act 264 was originally called senate bill no. 180. the first thing we wanted to see was the history on SB 180.
the history told us that SB 180 was assigned to the senate committee on natural resources and was heard by that committee which reported it with amendments on 17 may 2007.
we wanted to view the video of this committee meeting to see if mr. thompson testified or if it was said just exactly what he plans to do with hot wells -- unfortunately the senate archived video only covers 2009 and 2008. so there is no senate committee or chamber video.
the house archived video does go back farther than 2008 and SB 180 was heard by the house committee on natural resources on 12 june 2007 -- but wouldnt you know it -- the archived video for that meeting only contains the last two minutes and nineteen seconds of the meeting! [vid 2 on the playlist below]
so all that left was the house floor debate to see what we could learn about SB 180.
the house heard SB 180 on 22 june 2007. rep. rick farrar handled it for sen. mcpherson.
the house floor debate video wasnt any help either as you can see SB 180 was "debated" and passed in two minutes time.
so we decided that we better read the act and see what it says.
a. a certain tract of land, including all improvements, in section 118, township 4 north, range 3 west, louisiana meridian, rapides parish, louisiana, situated on the right bank of bayou cotile;sec 3 department of wild life and fisheries 10 acres near indian creek to billy joe and elsie b smith adjacent landowners;
b. a certain piece, parcel or tract of land, including all improvements, located at hot wells, in section 115, township 4 north, range 3 west, rapides parish, louisiana.
