Louisiana’s public works statute contains three dollar figures, and they answer three different questions. A guide that reports one of them as “the Louisiana threshold” has a two-in-three chance of reporting the wrong thing.
Five thousand: write it down
The first obligation is not a bond at all.
“Written contract and bond A.(1) Whenever a public entity enters into a contract in excess of five thousand dollars for the construction, alteration, or repair of any public works, the official representative of the public entity shall reduce the contract to writing and have it signed by the parties.”
Above five thousand dollars the contract must exist on paper and be signed. That is a formality requirement on the public entity, and it says nothing about security.
It is also the figure most often quoted as Louisiana’s bond threshold, because it is the first number in the section. It is not.
Twenty-five thousand: bond it, at half
“(2) For each contract in excess of twenty-five thousand dollars per project, the public entity shall require of the contractor a bond with good, solvent, and sufficient surety in a sum of not less than fifty percent of the contract price for the payment by the contractor or subcontractor to claimants as defined in R.S. …”
Five times the writing figure, and this is the one that decides whether you need a bond.
Two features beyond the number. The measure is per project, not per contract with a given entity — so splitting work across contracts does not obviously escape it. And the penal sum is not less than fifty percent of the contract price: a floor at half, which puts Louisiana with Nevada (NRS 339.025) and Colorado (C.R.S. § 38-26-106) among the states that bond substantially less than the job.
That last point is the one a claimant should care about. A Louisiana payment bond is a fund that may be half the size of the contract, shared by everyone who claims against it.
Two hundred fifty thousand: one parish
“(3) Notwithstanding any other provision to the contrary, for each contract in excess of two hundred fifty thousand dollars per project in Ascension Parish, the public entity shall require of the contractor a bond with good, solvent, and sufficient surety in a sum of not less than fifty percent of the contract price for the payment by the contractor or subcontractor to claimants as defined in R.S. …”
A parish-specific threshold, ten times the general one, at the same fifty percent. Nothing else in this series does this — Illinois carves out two named agencies, Nevada carves out a chapter, but no other state we have read sets a different bond threshold for one county-equivalent by name.
The opening words do the work: notwithstanding any other provision to the contrary. In Ascension Parish the general twenty-five thousand dollar figure does not apply.
For a contractor working across parish lines that is a genuine trap. The same contract value can be bonded work in most of Louisiana and unbonded in Ascension Parish, and nothing about the contract itself signals the difference — only its location.
The ten-day rule
Most claim provisions in this series tell a claimant what to do and by when. Louisiana also tells the surety what to do and by when, which almost none of the others do:
“(c) The materialman has not been paid in full on or before ninety days after delivery of the material. (3) If the requirements of Paragraph (2) of this Subsection are satisfied, the surety shall pay the materialman within ten days after the materialman sends a payment notice to the surety.”
Read the sequence. Ninety days of non-payment after delivery establishes the condition. The materialman then sends a payment notice to the surety. The surety shall pay within ten days.
That is a materially different posture from the federal scheme, where 40 U.S.C. § 3133 gives a claimant a right of action and says nothing about how quickly a surety must respond to a demand. Illinois puts a clock on the surety too — 15 working days to state a course of action, 30 at the outside, under 30 ILCS 550/1 — but that is a duty to respond, not a duty to pay.
The conditions in Paragraph (2) are not quoted here because we have not read them in full, and they gate the whole mechanism. A materialman relying on the ten days needs to satisfy them, and this page cannot tell you what they are.
One year, from a recorded event
“38:2242(B), of his right of action on the bond furnished pursuant to this Part, provided that the action must be brought against the surety or the contractor or both within one year from the registry of acceptance of the work or of notice of default of the contractor, except that before any claimant having a direct contractual relationship with a subcontractor but no contractual relationship with the contractor shall have a right of action against the contractor or the surety on the bond furnished by the contractor, the claimant shall, in addition to the notice and recordation required in R.S. …”
The period is a year, as it is federally and in Maine, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin. The starting event is unlike any of them. It runs from the registry of acceptance of the work, or from notice of default — a recorded, public, project-level event, not the claimant’s own last day.
The consequences cut both ways. A supplier who finished early is not out of time before the job ends, which is the federal trap under 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(4). But the clock is invisible unless you are watching the registry: nothing arrives in your post to tell you it has started.
The passage also confirms a second-tier condition — a claimant with a subcontract but no relationship with the prime must satisfy notice and recordation requirements in another section before it has a right of action at all.
What La. R.S. 38:2241 sends elsewhere
This page quotes the three figures, the fifty percent floor, the ten-day surety rule and the limitation period. It leans on cross-references it has not followed, and they matter.
“Claimants as defined in R.S. …” — the claimant class is defined in another section and this page does not state it. The Paragraph (2) conditions that switch on the ten-day rule are likewise unread. And R.S. 38:2242(B) carries the notice and recordation requirements a second-tier claimant must satisfy first.
Bid security is not in this section either. As in most states it belongs to the procurement provisions.
