At the meeting of the Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology (LSBC) of Monday, September 14, 2026, Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr., voices his concerns about the secrecy of a hastily-called meeting of the Board two weeks prior on Monday, August 31, 2026, with the core business at that meeting lasting approximately three (3) minutes.
It certainly didn’t require rocket science for one to determine that the August 31, 2026 LSBC meeting was clouded in extreme secrecy. Consider:
== LSBC posts on its Facebook page, “We hope you didn’t miss the announcement of the meeting,” with several folk who follow the page religiously stating, “You never posted anything.”
== No agendas were placed on seats as is normally the case.
== The newly hired EBRP Sheriff Deputy was not present.
The bottom line is that, aside from Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns, there was no member of the public present. Burns is not on Facebook; however, Phillips is, and he alerted Burns of the meeting literally about 14 hours before it convened!
At the September 14, 2026 LSBC meeting, Phillips let his sentiments about the secrecy of the meeting be known and the fact that he had to alert Burns about the meeting taking place:
9/14/26: Phillips expresses his concerns over the secrecy of the 8/31/26 “impromptu” meeting.
As explained in our coverage of the August 31, 2026 meeting linked above, the Board convened to (though they gave no specificity of the contract whatsoever, most especially not the dollar amounts involved), amend the ’26-’27 budget to provide for $50,000 for the hiring of human resources consultant Mary Gloston.
We believe that most, if not all, Boards and Commissions would have a discussion about why the sudden need for a human resource consultant, why it couldn’t wait until that September 14, 2026 meeting, and exactly what all Gloston would be expected to do for that $50,000/year. Not the LSBC! Nope! They were done in about three minutes.
Well, we’ve learned more than we could have ever dreamed during the 30 days since that hastily called meeting, and we can now shed a little light on the need for speed!
The LSBC was literally hemorrhaging cash paying for legal fees to deal with a single grievance as evidenced by invoices totaling $18,000 for one such grievance in the days leading up to the 8/31/26 meeting. Rev. Phillips, who has been the point person for all of the LSBC investigatory matters of late, tells us that there are three (3) more grievances pending. The $18,000 for the first grievance was paid to attorney Alyse Latiolais of Breazeale Schase. As is readily apparent from the linked invoice, Latiolais billed the LSBC at a rate of $350/hour.
We have also learned that an email was sent out to LSBC employees indicating that an “investigation” would commence on Thursday, September 24, 2026, with that investigation being headed by Ms. Latiolais’ colleague, Kayla M. Jacob.
Rev. Phillips has strong reason to believe that one or more parties filing grievances, which we explained to him would not typically be subject to public records requests, would waive their rights to privacy, thus making the grievances potentially subject to a public records request. Accordingly, Phillips made a public records request for all grievances or signed statements from those filing grievances that they had either waived or invoked their rights to privacy.
The LSBC responded to Phillips’ request indicating that, even if those filing grievances did in fact waive their rights to privacy, they cannot waive the rights of others associated with the grievances. We think that common sense dictates that those “others” would obviously have a vested interest in the contents of the grievances never seeing the light of day.
There has been plenty of talk within the last thirty days about many of the alleged problems which exist inside that office; however, at the present time, we are refraining from making any statements in that regard beyond stating the obvious: The LSBC’s Office is presently in a state of near-total chaos with employees angry at one another and sniping at one another.
We have also been requested to publish several other documents, and we’re going to publish some of them at this time, and those who requested of us to request the documents may feel free to look at them and make any observations they may wish to make:
- Long-term (i.e. two weeks or more) rental car invoices from Enterprise.
- Premier South Roofing invoices for interior painting and sheetrock.
Those individuals who requested being able to see the documents can now easily view them. Our focus is much more on the massive legal fees this Board continues to incur. Don’t forget this same Board (though different Membership) spent $157,000 blocking hair braiders from being able to practice their trade without the LSBC’s blessing and a useless 500 hour course.
We’ve now observed this Board for a decade, and what it seems really quite astute at doing is serving as a conduit to direct licensing fees paid by its licensees straight on to law firms. That’s a key reason that Phillips and Burns testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in staunch opposition to last year’s fee increase. The Board sought $1 million a year, but Phillips and Burns managed to scale it down to $400,000 a year. As anyone can plainly see, this Board is going through that $400,000 in consulting contracts and attorneys’ fees all for what, in our opinion, should be routine office activities that should not create this kind of chaos and acrimony.
We look forward to Monday’s meeting and whatever public comment Rev. Phillips may wish to make on the matters outlined above, and we sincerely appreciate his efforts. He has joined the Baton Rouge Press Club, and he is now a full-blown associate of Sound Off Louisiana and, with him now retired from the EBRP School Board, he’s got far more time to assist us, and we deeply appreciate all of his dedication and hard work!
