Legalized bribery

How Gov. Jeff Landry and Donald Trump are making it easier for Louisiana public officials to get away with public corruption

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When I left U.S. Sen. John Breaux’s staff in 2004 to work for Gov. Kathleen Blanco, I remember being impressed with the relative strength of Louisiana’s ethics laws. Despite having worked under a stringent ethics code in the U.S. Senate, Louisiana’s seemed even tougher.

Just one example: U.S. Senate employees may generally accept gifts under $50 (and an aggregate of no more than $100 per source, per year) unless the donor is a federal lobbyist or foreign agent.

Louisiana’s ethics code has for many years imposed a blanket ban on accepting “anything of economic value” from anyone who does business with, seeks contracts from, or is regulated by the public employee’s agency. (There are a few narrow exceptions for promotional items or family/friends.) Violations can result in a civil fine of up to $10,000 per gift.

All that is about to change.

Louisiana will soon transition from having a tough ethics law for public officials to one that one good-government advocate fears might lead to “legalized bribes.”

It’s all happening because Gov. Jeff Landry is angry at the Louisiana Board of Ethics for trying to hold him accountable for not disclosing the air travel he accepted to and from Hawaii when he was attorney general in 2021.

And state lawmakers of both parties, who apparently resent not being able to take larger gifts from lobbyists and others, appear eager to go along.

Here’s what’s about to change, as reported this week by the Louisiana Illuminator’s Julie O’Donoghue:

Louisiana lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a set of dramatic changes to state ethics laws Wednesday that will make it much more difficult to charge elected officials and public employees with misconduct.

House Bill 674 alters the process the state ethics board used to bring charges against Gov. Jeff Landry two years ago that are still pending.

Landry’s charges won’t be affected by the legislation, but he pushed for the bill and is expected to let it pass into law. The governor’s personal attorney, Stephen Gelé, helped craft the language contained in it.

Beyond making it harder to bring ethics charges, the legislation also loosens limits on elected officials’ and state employees’ state travel, weakens restrictions on government contracts with public servants and their families, and reduces requirements for elected officials and political candidates’ disclosure of financial interests.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, said it is a reaction to the ethics board’s overzealous enforcement that has frustrated officials in both parties. The anger toward the board was reflected in lawmakers’ overwhelming support of the bill.

The Louisiana Senate and House voted 34-2 and 92-1, respectively, for the ethics overhaul this week. . . .

“This is designed to make sure we don’t have ethics investigations,” PAR President Steven Procopio told lawmakers at a hearing last week.

By the way, this is not a partisan issue. This isn’t a case of Landry and GOP lawmakers weakening ethics laws. It’s a case of Landry proposing all this and Democrats and Republicans going along with enthusiasm.

In the House, only Democratic Rep. Aimee Adatto Freeman of New Orleans voted against the bill. In the Senate, only Republicans Patrick Connick of Jefferson Parish and Jay Morris of West Monroe voted against it.

In an interview broadcast on the public radio show “Louisiana Considered” on Thursday, Stephen Procopio, president of the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR), declared the “vast majority” of the changes “dangerous.” He said he believes “when people find out what’s really in these bills, they’re going to be angry.”

Even stronger was Procopio’s condemnation of a change that would allow elected and other public officials to accept gifts of up to $200 (an increase from $100 in current law). The gift provision has been a centerpiece of Louisiana’s Ethics Code for decades and one of its major strengths. Now, Procopio suggested, Landry and lawmakers are returning Louisiana to the days of “legalized bribes.”

As the Illuminator’s Greg LaRose wrote in a May 27 op-ed, this gift-provision change “would end a prohibition in state law on government employees and elected officials from receiving gifts under most circumstances. Between ‘seasonal or holiday food’ and regular gifts, the largesse could reach up to $400 in value annually. When you think of the potential to grease the skids of bureaucracy with a $100 gift card here or $100 worth of festive fare there, you should get an idea of why Beaullieu’s bill might be cause for concern. If not, you don’t have to look very far back to find out why – at both the state and local level.”

I don’t always agree with Rolfe McCollister, the conservative former publisher of the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, but his assessment of H.B. 674 is spot on. “If Landry supports it, one can be certain that this bill, if enacted, will facilitate politicians and those who influence them with cash, while also concealing more from public view,” McCollister wrote in a May 23 column in the Business Report. “They have no shame.”

Legalized bribery isn’t the only policy change in this bill. Landry, through his appointments to the ethics board, can shut down any investigation of a public employee, including himself or anyone on his staff.

Under the bill’s provisions, the ethics board cannot launch an investigation without a two-thirds vote of the board’s members. Last year, Landry persuaded lawmakers to amend the law, granting him greater control over the board. Of its 15 members, Landry has appointed nine, presumably giving him enough influence to prevent any future ethics investigation he doesn’t like.

And lawmakers are about to pass another egregious bill, this one making it harder to file an ethics complaint. As the Illuminator reports, the bill “would place even more limitations on ethics complaints. House Bill 160 by Rep. Kellee Hennessy Dickerson, R-Denham Springs, would require the identities of people who provide tips to the ethics board to be revealed to the person accused of misconduct, Currently, the board keeps this information confidential.”

Say farewell to credible, confidential whistleblower complaints; say hello to more public corruption.

Speaking of public corruption, the changes to Louisiana’s ethics code aren’t the only recent developments that will enable Louisiana public officials to engage in corrupt behavior.

In Washington, President Donald Trump has corrupted and politicized the U.S. Justice Department to a previously unimaginable degree. He’s pardoned thousands of violent criminals and insurrectionists. He has pardoned former members of Congress convicted of public corruption and granted clemency to other public officials convicted of felonies.

According to the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), “Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of seven federal elected politicians and nine state and local politicians convicted of corruption charges. As part of a larger pattern of decriminalizing political corruption, his Department of Justice has dropped cases or charges into two others.”

CREW also notes, “Beyond pardons, Trump’s Department of Justice has also furthered what appears to be an effort by Trump to decriminalize political corruption by dropping its criminal prosecution of former Representative Jeff Fortenberry and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Trump’s Department of Justice has also largely dismantled its Public Integrity Section, which is charged with investigating and prosecuting corruption cases nationwide.”

What we know about Trump is that he will not allow the Department of Justice to prosecute his friends and political associates. Each of the 93 U.S. attorneys has been appointed by Trump. They are his prosecutors. Even if one of these Trump-approved prosecutors has a notion to investigate or indict a Trump ally—say, a Republican governor or one of those governors’ close personal or political associates—there is no chance that Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, would allow such an investigation or prosecution to go forward.

Put another way, if you are a GOP governor or member of Congress in good standing with Donald Trump, you are functionally immune from federal prosecution for the next three and a half years.

If you are Jeff Landry, his staff, his family, or close personal associates, you are free to commit any form of public corruption you like with the knowledge that Trump’s Justice Department will never prosecute you.

What the Landry and the Louisiana Legislature have done in gutting Louisiana ethics laws, combined with Trump’s refusal to police corruption in the GOP, means that it’s open season for bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and all manner of public corruption in Louisiana.

As long as Landry and Trump are in charge, they and their political allies are free to commit all the crimes they wish, knowing there is no ethics commission or federal prosecutor who will be allowed even to investigate them, much less charge them with a crime.