Senate Bill 229, the Louisiana First Transparency Investing and Reporting Act of 2025, drew extended testimony and questions on April 30 in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that ranged from foreign-agent registration and higher-education gift reporting to U.S.-made solar panels and restrictions on certain Chinese-made drones and hardware. Committee members voted to defer consideration temporarily to allow more stakeholder input and to await a fiscal note.

Sponsor Senator Miguez said the bill requires agents of foreign adversary nations, as determined by federal agencies, to register and report identifying information, financial transactions and contracts. The sponsor named countries the bill would treat as foreign adversaries, citing examples such as the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, Iran and North Korea.

Brian Sikma, a policy witness who works with national advocacy groups, described the measure as containing two foreign-agent components: a federal-style registration requirement for anyone representing a foreign nation that lobbies state officials, and an additional disclosure obligation that applies only when the client is domiciled in a nation identified as a foreign adversary by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Sikma said the Secretary of State would be the initial recipient of filings under the bill.

Nitu Arnold, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, addressed the bill’s higher-education reporting provisions. She said the federal reporting threshold under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act is $250,000 and that some states use a lower $50,000 threshold; she testified that Louisiana already has a reporting requirement but the bill would broaden scope to capture gifts and contracts from all foreign sources, not only those on a narrow federal adversary list.

Secretary of State Nancy Landry testified that her department is willing to administer filings “provided that you provide us with the appropriate resources” — funding, personnel and programming time — and warned of possible duplication with existing public dashboards maintained by the Board of Ethics. Landry asked that the committee attach a filing fee to cover administrative costs and raised staffing concerns for a proposed whistleblower hotline.

On national-security alarm points, Lieutenant Jonathan Kemp and Sergeant Scott Gregg of Louisiana State Police said the agency currently operates roughly 85 drones and that 83 of them are Chinese-made DJI models; they told the committee replacement with U.S.-made alternatives would be fiscally burdensome. The sponsor and witnesses discussed an implementation timetable and an amendment to require U.S.-made components for certain state-funded solar projects and to require U.S.-made or U.S.-hosted software shields for law-enforcement drone operations. Industry representatives and local law-enforcement groups submitted mixed cards of support and opposition; a Lenovo representative testified he and his client were working with the sponsor to clarify language that could unintentionally capture commercially sold laptops and equipment.

After extensive questioning from committee members about coverage (for example, how economic-development incentives would apply if a U.S. company has minority ownership by an entity domiciled in an adversary country), implementation burdens, federal preemption concerns and supply-chain availability for U.S.-made solar panels, the sponsor asked for time to work with stakeholders. The committee voted to temporarily defer the bill for a week to allow those conversations and to obtain a fiscal note.