Louisiana handed SpaceX a $24 billion tax break in a meeting posted on a courthouse door

The vote two hours before the party

Two hours before Governor Jeff Landry announced a $100 billion SpaceX spaceport in Abbeville on 25 August, seven people met in a room at the Vermilion Parish Courthouse. The parish industrial development board, convening for only the second time in its existence, took up an agenda posted on the courthouse door 24 hours in advance; by NOLA.com↗'s account, nobody seemed to notice. The item was "Project Osprey": a $23.8 billion property-tax abatement, the largest in Louisiana history. ¹

The parish keeps two cents of every dollar

State documents obtained by the Louisiana Illuminator↗ value the package at an estimated $27.5 billion: the abatement plus $3.6 billion in aerospace sales-tax rebates, likely a national high for a single project. ²

Together Louisiana analyst Broderick Bagert puts the property-tax bill of a completed $100 billion facility at roughly $1.3 billion a year, against SpaceX's contracted $25 million, shared by the sheriff, the schools and the police jury: 2% of the bill. ² For scale, all 99 payment-in-lieu-of-taxes contracts in Louisiana's six most populous parishes abated $44 million combined in 2025. ²

SpaceX has committed to 3,000 permanent jobs by 2035 at an average salary of $92,600. ² The abatement alone across those jobs works out to nearly $8 million each over 25 years; even at the 10,000 jobs Shotwell suggests, Moller's math puts the cost at $108,000 per job per year. ²³ "If Louisiana is the only place on earth that really can accommodate this project, then why do we need to give away this much?" asked Jan Moller of Invest in Louisiana. ²

Six bills, thirty silences, $800 an acre

The runway was built in the dark. More than 30 officials signed nondisclosure agreements, and a six-bill package Landry signed before the announcement↗ shields aerospace companies from noise and sonic-boom nuisance suits, exempts their records from the public-records law and lets them pause evidence-gathering in litigation. ¹⁴⁵

The land came through the same channel. The coastal-damage suit against ExxonMobil settled, Exxon turned roughly 125,000 acres of marsh over to the state, and the state sold them to SpaceX for $100 million, about $800 an acre↗, in a no-bid sale under a 2025 law used only twice, for Meta and SpaceX. ¹⁴⁶ The settlement is sealed by court order, and whether Vermilion Parish, which left the litigation in 2021, received any compensation is unclear. ⁷⁸

A rounding error, says the governor

"When you think of what we gave up in return for $100 billion, it's a rounding error," Landry said. ¹ Officials say the incentives are performance-based, paid only against investment and hiring benchmarks. ³

Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois defended the price of the marsh plainly: "We literally sold them swampland." ¹ Corbett LeBoeuf, who chairs the board that approved the abatement, weighs the coast the other way: "I have more concern that we won't have a coast if this doesn't come in." ¹

An FAA waiver, sealed papers and a 2027 groundbreaking decide the rest

Three things now set the real price. The FAA has proposed waiving 13 environmental laws for aerospace projects, the Clean Water Act among them, and the proposal is pending. ²⁷ The Exxon settlement stays sealed; construction is slated for 2027, first launches for 2029, toward thousands of Starship flights a year for Starlink and orbital data centers. ⁴⁷⁹ SpaceX posted its first four Louisiana jobs this month↗. ¹⁰

In Pecan Island, Kim Nehrbass watched the announcement on a livestream. "He didn't ask anybody if they wanted to do it, the people of the state," Nehrbass said of Landry. "He just ramrodded it through." ⁴