Louisiana ethics board wants state Senate to reject bill that lifts complaint confidentiality

The Louisiana Board of Ethics expressed alarm Friday that the Louisiana Legislature is just one vote away from eliminating confidentiality for people who provide tips about government misconduct.

“This is all just abusive. It’s just trying to dissuade someone from filing a complaint,” said retired attorney William Grimley, a Louisiana Senate appointee to the ethics board since 2022, about House Bill 160 sponsored by Rep. Kellee Hennessy Dickerson, R-Denham Springs. 

Other members of the 15-person board nodded in agreement with Grimley. As a last-minute effort to stop the legislation, they instructed their staff to send a letter from the board expressing their concerns about the bill. 

The board members also said they intended to personally contact their own senators and Gov. Jeff Landry’s office to warn about the legislation. 

“I think it will have a drastic chilling effect on the number of complaints you receive,” Ethics Administrator David Bordelon told board members. “We often receive complaints that are asking not to be disclosed because there’s some sort of relationship or some sort of fear of retaliation.”

Under the bill, investigations into ethics law violations would still be kept private and shielded from the public unless the board votes to bring charges. But the name of a person who provides a tip about alleged wrongdoing would be revealed to whoever they accused of misconduct. Currently, the identity of someone providing a tip to the ethics board is never shared with the target of an investigation. 

Dickerson said she is bringing the bill to protect government officials from political retaliation similar to what she experienced personally.

In 2023, the ethics board voted to fine Dickerson $1,500 when she was a member of the Livingston Parish School Board and running for state representative. The members concluded she had broken state ethics laws by inappropriately helping a public school teacher get paid for doing construction work at the high school where the teacher was employed. State law doesn’t allow public employees to perform contract work for their employers.

“I believe this is a fight for truth and justice and to give you the knowledge to know who is fighting against you,” Dickerson said of her legislation. 

Her bill would likely encourage “witness tampering and documents not being provided,” Bordelon said. The tipster might experience harassment and intimidation from the subject of the investigation even before the probe gets underway, he added.

Dickerson said she has guarded against intimidation in her bill by allowing any tipsters to sue the accused for damages if they experience harassment. Critics of the legislation said those lawsuits would be expensive and not financially feasible for many members of the public. 

The ethics administrator also reiterated that the board – not the person providing the tip – decides whether to charge someone with ethical misconduct. Even if the person who submitted the complaint to the board is politically motivated, the board is not.

“It’s the board that is the accuser,” Bordelon told members. “You make your decision based on the facts and the evidence that we present to you as staff.”

Dickerson included another barrier to ethics investigations the board found troubling. It requires people submitting tips to the board to either have them signed by a notary, which costs money, or to deliver them personally to state ethics administration headquarters in downtown Baton Rouge. Currently, the public can submit tips via mail and sometimes electronically. 

“Imagine somebody in Grand Isle complaining about their local councilman. They would have to either pay a notary to notarize a statement … or drive to Baton Rouge and file it with us in person here,” Bordelon said. 

Dickerson also wants to limit materials the ethics board can use to launch an investigation to just tips from the public and reports from state officials. The board has no existing limits on the sources it can use to launch an investigation. 

For example, it undertook 18 investigations from 2020-23 based on news reports that resulted in a discovery of wrongdoing. Under the bill from Dickerson, a former broadcast journalist, they would no longer be able to use a news story as the basis for an inquiry. 

This year, Landry and legislative leaders have gotten behind a few bills that would dramatically curb the ethics board’s authority to pursue investigations. Lawmakers said the effort is a response to overzealous enforcement by the ethics board that crossed the line into harassment.

Still, it’s not clear whether Landry supports Dickerson’s legislation. His staff hasn’t endorsed it during public hearings like they have other ethics  bills. 

Recent ethics board appointees from Landry and lawmakers are also among those worried about Dickerson’s bill. 

“I would love for 100% compliance and to put us out of business. But you know, that’s not happening,” said Jason Amato, a former St. James Parish Council member who Landry picked to lead the ethics board earlier this year.

“I’d love to be able to cancel our monthly meeting because we didn’t have any items on the agenda. But I’m only six months in, and that isn’t happening anytime soon,” he added.

Lawmakers have until Thursday to decide whether to send Dickerson’s proposal to Landry’s desk to be signed into law. The House voted 88-7 for the bill last month, and it is scheduled for Senate debate Sunday.