A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by two state senators that sought to delay the hiring of a new Board of Ethics administrator, adding another chapter to a simmering dispute between the Louisiana Legislature and the board.
Judge Kelly Balfour of the 19th Judicial District Court made the decision on Dec. 2 about the lawsuit brought by State Sens. Regina Barrow (D-Baton Rouge) and Steward Cathey (R-Monroe), saying that nothing in the law barred the state’s ethics panel from hiring a new administrator using board members’ own time frame, according to KTBS in Shreveport.
The board’s current administrator, Kathleen Allen, said in September that she would be retiring from her post at the end of this year. The board, in turn, has moved forward with identifying candidates to fill the position despite the state Senate’s president, Cameron Henry (R-Metairie), urging the board to delay the hiring process until January.
At that time, the Legislature and Republican Gov. Jeff Landry will appoint new members to the board, which is now being run by several members appointed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat. State lawmakers and Landry have been critical of ethics board decisions, including the imposition of fines against them over violations of state ethics laws governing the reporting of campaign funds.
Last month, the 19th District Court issued a preliminary injunction to block the ethics board from moving forward on hiring a new administrator. But the injunction ended this week when Balfour dismissed the two senators’ lawsuit, which alleged that the panel had violated state open-meeting law requirements during a 10-day candidate-selection process.
On Nov. 5, Rep. Beau Beaullieu (R-New Iberia) sent a letter to the ethics board’s chairwoman, La Koshia Roberts, expressing disappointment that the board posted the administrator vacancy for 10 days in October despite a request from Henry to delay the hiring until January.
“We should all expect more transparency out of a board that oversees ethics in Louisiana,” Beaullieu said in the Nov. 5 letter. “It appears that the board is choosing to participate in political games instead of holding itself to a higher standard.”
The letter also criticizes multiple board decisions concerning its meetings in September and October, concluding that members violated provisions of the state open-meetings law multiple times. In addition, Beaullieu requested that the state Attorney General’s Office open an investigation into potential open-meetings law violations.
Asked if the attorney general is investigating the ethics board for violating government transparency laws during the ethics administrator hiring process, a spokesman for Attorney General Liz Murrill told the Louisiana Record, “We are not part of the lawsuit or any investigation associated with that lawsuit.”
Beaullieu, who chairs the Committee on House and Governmental Affairs, held a subsequent hearing on Nov. 13 in which the current ethics administrator testified that she was limited in what she could say about the board’s executive sessions since the dispute at that time was being litigated.
But Allen, the administrator, said the posting of the future job opening led to six candidates applying, but two were non-attorneys and so were disqualified because they did not meet the minimum qualifications. Among the four remaining applicants, two were internal candidates, meaning they were current board employees, she said in testimony before Beaullieu's committee.
Recently enacted legislation will enlarge the panel from 11 members to 15 members next year and give the governor more control of board operations.