BATON ROUGE — While the LSU Economic Development District has collected more than $876,000 in sales taxes as of May, the district has acknowledged that it’s unclear which tracts were excluded from the district and being used for residential purposes when the district was created, according to the Business Report.

Citing newly filed court documents, Business Report wrote that the disclosure prompted an attorney to challenge the district’s taxes and request that collections be suspended until officials can clearly establish the district’s taxable boundaries.

In response to discovery requests with a lawsuit filed by former Metro Council member Darrell Glasper, the LSU EDD reported that it had collected $876,466.78 between October 2025 and May 2026, averaging $109,558.35 per month. Glasper’s lawsuit challenges the taxes imposed by the LSU EDD and its Athletic Subdistrict, which began collecting a separate tax at the beginning of April. The collection total for the subdistrict has reportedly not yet been calculated.

The LSU EDD reportedly admits that one of its goals was to levy a tax without an election. The East Baton Rouge Metro Council OK’d the levy of the taxes while the state law establishing the district excluded residential properties.

Glasper’s attorney William Most questioned in a letter to officials whether they could properly identify which properties are subject to the taxes. In a letter to East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux, the parish’s ex officio tax collector, Most wrote that the district should look “something like Swiss cheese,” with many internal holes where residential land was when the law took effect.

The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office has clarified that it does not collect sales taxes—sales taxes are collected by other entities.

But in their discovery responses, the defendants of Glasper’s lawsuit said they were “not aware of any maps showing the specific areas within the LSU EDD beyond maps depicting the LSU EDD outer perimeter.” District officials say the state statute establishes their legal boundaries and repeatedly said the law “speaks for itself.”