The England Authority is advancing new rules that would require permits for protests and other \"expressive assemblies\" on its property — land that includes England Airpark and Alexandria International Airport (AEX), home to the nation's busiest hub for federal deportation flights.
The proposal grew out of a request from the sheriff's office to clarify some of the Authority's existing ordinances — not from any protest or disturbance, Executive Director Ralph Hennessy told The Kingfish Project in a written response Monday afternoon. \"There haven't been any issues here that prompted the need,\" he wrote.
The Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office provides security at England Airpark under contract with the Authority. Hennessy did not say what the office asked to have clarified or which ordinances were involved.
The Kingfish Project has requested comment from Sheriff Mark Wood's office and will update this story with any response.
Demonstrations connected to airpark property have already occurred. Last August, a group gathered outside AEX to protest the ICE staging facility at the airport, KALB reported, and the Rapides Parish Journal, which first reported the proposal, cited immigration enforcement and data center development as examples of activities that draw crowds.
Hennessy said the full text will be attached to the board's meeting agenda, which the Authority will post Wednesday. The ordinance will be introduced at the board's Thursday, July 23, session and voted on at the August board meeting, he said.
The Admin/Legal Committee reviewed a draft of the ordinance at a noon meeting on July 16. Hennessy said the committee took no vote and made recommendations that will be incorporated before the proposal reaches the board. According to the Journal, the draft provides for content-neutral regulation of demonstrations, protests, rallies, vigils, picketing, and other expressive assemblies on Authority property, sets permit procedures for certain planned demonstrations, and addresses spontaneous ones.
The committee consists of Myron Lawson Jr., chair; Charlie Weems, vice chair; and Steve Mansour. Authority Chairman Oday Lavergne serves as an executive official member. The Kingfish Project put its four questions to the three members and Lavergne as well; Hennessy answered for the Authority within the hour, and the others did not respond individually.
On Monday, The Kingfish Project also filed two public records requests with the Authority by email. The first seeks every draft of the proposed ordinance — including the original electronic files, whose properties and revision histories identify who wrote and edited them — along with communications about the proposal among Authority officials and with outside parties, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the data center developer Applied Digital, and other public bodies, a category that covers any written request from the sheriff's office.
The second seeks the Authority's security incident logs and reports from July 1, 2023, to the present, including every report involving a protest, demonstration, or other assembly — records that would test Hennessy's statement that no incidents prompted the rule. The Kingfish Project will publish both requests in full.
Louisiana's Public Records Law requires a custodian to produce available records immediately, and in all cases to provide a written determination or a time estimate within five business days — silence past that point is a legal denial (La. R.S. 44:32(D), 44:35(A)). For requests filed Monday, that window closes July 27, four days after the board's July 23 session. Wednesday's agenda posting will make the current text public, but it does not address the drafts, communications, or incident records the requests seek.
The England Authority is a political subdivision of the state, and its property is public property. Courts have long allowed governments to impose content-neutral rules on the time, place, and manner of assemblies on public land. They have struck down permit systems that give officials discretion over who may gather, including in Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham (1969) and Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (1992). Whether the England proposal contains such discretion can be judged once the text posts with Wednesday's agenda.
The proposal arrives amid heightened national attention to Authority property. The Alexandria Staging Facility, a 400-bed ICE detention site operated on the airport tarmac by GEO Group since 2014, has become the country's top hub for deportation flights, and Human Rights First's ICE Flight Monitor counted more than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights in and out of AEX in 2025, the Associated Press reported. In late June, ICE signed a contract for a new 528-bed holding facility for families and children at the former air base, according to the AP; Hennessy confirmed the contract in that reporting. ICE describes the new site as a staging area rather than a detention center.
The board's monthly session is scheduled for Thursday, July 23, with the proposed ordinance due to appear on the agenda that the Authority posts on Wednesday. The Kingfish Project will publish the text and any records produced in response to its requests.
", "date_published": "2026-07-20T23:33:49.000Z", "date_modified": "2026-07-21T02:25:09.000Z", "authors": [ { "name": "Bentley Hensel", "url": "https://kingfish.la/author/bentley" } ], "tags": [ "News", "England Authority", "First Amendment", "Immigration" ], "image": "https://media.kingfish.la/2026/07/eeidd-permits_kingfish-news-piece-1.png", "_license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" }, { "id": "https://kingfish.la/what-is-the-england-authority/", "url": "https://kingfish.la/what-is-the-england-authority/", "title": "What is the England Authority?", "summary": "The England Authority is an appointed board that owns and runs the former England Air Force Base — now Alexandria International Airport and England Airpark — as a political subdivision of Central Louisiana. None of its ten commissioners is elected by the public; every seat is filled by appointment.", "content_html": "Drive west out of Alexandria and you reach a 4,000-acre spread of runway, warehouse, golf course, and rental housing that most people call England Airpark. The entity that owns and runs it is not the city, the parish, or the airport authority in the way most people picture one. It is the England Economic and Industrial Development District, known locally as the England Authority, and it is one of the most powerful units of government in central Louisiana that voters never elect.
Here is what it is, who controls it, and what it can do.
England Air Force Base closed on December 15, 1992, after the 1991 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round put it on the list. The 23d Fighter Wing and its A-10s left for Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, and central Louisiana faced the loss of its largest employer.
The Louisiana Legislature created the England Economic and Industrial Development District in 1991 to catch what the Air Force left behind. The district's job was to accept title to the base property from the federal government and convert the base into a working civilian economy. The Air Force transferred 2,447 acres to the district by 1995. Today the site includes Alexandria International Airport (AEX), more than a million square feet of occupied commercial and industrial space, the Oakwing Golf Course, and several hundred homes.
The enabling statute is La. R.S. 33:130.351 et seq. The statute creates \"a body politic and corporate of the state which shall exist in perpetuity.\" The district is a political subdivision of the state under Article VI of the Louisiana Constitution, and its territory is all of Rapides Parish.
That \"political subdivision\" status matters. It means the England Authority is not a private company and not a city department. It is its own unit of government, with governmental powers, run by a board that answers to the officials who appoint it rather than to voters directly.
The district is governed by a board of commissioners of ten members. Not one is elected by the public. Under the statute, the seats are filled this way:
Commissioners serve four-year terms and serve without compensation. The board elects its own officers — a chairman, a vice-chairman, and a secretary-treasurer — from among its members. It hires an executive director to run day-to-day operations.
The structure is worth sitting with. A board with the power to tax and to issue public debt is assembled entirely by appointment, with the two largest blocs coming from the parish police jury and the Alexandria mayor's office. The people who hold those seats are accountable to the elected officials who put them there, and only indirectly to the public.
The powers are broad. Under its enabling statutes, the England Authority can:
The district's own auditors summarize it plainly: it \"has power similar to a home rule community,\" can \"issue revenue bonds and general obligation bonds,\" \"has the power of eminent domain and can levy taxes,\" and can \"create sub-districts throughout the parish to accommodate economic development projects.\" Englandairpark
The England Authority is a large operation. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, its audited financial statements report operating revenues of $13,388,723 — most of it lease revenue — and operating expenses of $21,545,166, including $7.7 million in depreciation. Its total net position was $226,370,760, the vast majority of it tied up in capital assets: land, buildings, runways, and infrastructure. The district also received $9,020,150 in federal and state capital grants that year, largely for airport projects. state + 2
Revenue comes from commercial and residential leases, airport landing and facility fees, passenger facility charges, fuel flowage fees, golf course operations at Oakwing, and grants. The independent auditor, Kolder, Slaven & Company, issued an unmodified (\"clean\") opinion for the year ended June 30, 2024, and reported no audit findings. state
The executive director's compensation is a public record. For the year ended June 30, 2024, the executive director received a salary of $199,500 and total compensation and benefits of $260,726. state
As a political subdivision, the England Authority is a \"public body\" under Louisiana's Open Meetings Law (La. R.S. 42:11 et seq.). It must post written notice and an agenda for its meetings at least 24 hours in advance, exclusive of weekends and holidays, and it must keep written minutes. Louisiana
Its records are public under the Louisiana Public Records Law (La. R.S. 44:1 et seq.). Any person of the age of majority can request them. The custodian is the head of the public body or a designated representative; requests can be directed to the district's office at 1611 Arnold Drive, Alexandria, LA 71303, (318) 427-6406. Shreve-lib + 2
Accountability box: The England Authority