Senate President Pro Tempore Regina Barrow is one of two legislators suing the state ethics board over the hiring process used to pick a new state ethics administrator. (Pool Photo/Gerald Herbert via AP)
Two state senators have filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Board of Ethics seeking to temporarily halt the hiring process of the board’s most prominent employee.
Their court action comes weeks ahead of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry gaining more influence over the makeup of the board that investigates alleged violations of state campaign finance laws and ethical conflicts of public officials.
Sens. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, and Stewart Cathey, R-Monroe, have asked the 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rouge Parish to grant a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to keep the ethics board from selecting a new ethics administrator before the end of the year.
The senators want to stall that hiring process until at least January, when the governor and legislative leaders will gain more control of the board.
Ethics board members interviewed four candidates this week to replace current administrator Kathleen Allen and appeared to be on track to hire her successor by the end of December before the lawsuit was filed.
“No one’s interest will be harmed, and the interests of the Plaintiffs and the public will be greatly enhanced, if the Board of Ethics is enjoined for a short period of time to enable the Board of Ethics, stake holders, and the watchful public to give more deliberate consideration to this important decision,” Gray Sexton, an attorney representing Barrow and Cathey, said in the lawsuit.
Sexton also served as the state ethics administrator for 46 years prior to starting his law practice. Allen took over from him 15 years ago and announced in September she would be stepping down from the job at the end of the year.
Barrow and Cathey could not be reached immediately for comment Friday morning. At its meeting Friday, the board voted unanimously to go into a private session, which lasted over an hour, to discuss the litigation.
The lawsuit is just the latest episode in an escalating standoff between the ethics board, Landry and legislators. It comes two days after state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, asked Attorney General Liz Murrill to investigate the board for violating government transparency laws during the ethics administrator hiring process.
Many of the concerns raised in Barrow and Cathey’s lawsuits are similar to those outlined by Beaullieu in his letter to the attorney general earlier this week.
In the lawsuit, Barrow and Cathey argue the ethics administrator opening should have been advertised for a longer period of time. Applications for the job were only accepted for 10 days, from Oct. 15-25. Two of the four applicants considered qualified for the job already work for the ethics board.
“Arguably, the Board may have met the minimum timeline requirements to advertise the position, but in a manner that did not allow or encourage the involvement of the public,” Sexton wrote in the lawsuit.
“The short duration of the post and the lack of notice hindered the process as reflected in the low number of applicants,” he said. “The Board received only four applicants for this high-level, competitively paid, classified civil service position.”
The lawsuit also alleges the ethics board violated government transparency laws. Sexton said the board did not take a public vote at its September meeting before it went into a private session to discuss “personnel matters,” which could have included the hiring of a new ethics administrator. It also did not explain why it a private session out of the public eye was warranted.
Sexton also said the ethics board might have held a private meeting to discuss a request from Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, to delay the ethics administrator hiring. If so, that discussion would have violated the state’s open meetings law, which requires government bodies to discuss most matters publicly in the name of transparency, he said.
Landry, in general, has had a fraught relationship with the ethics board for years. Prior to becoming governor, the board reprimanded him multiple times for violating ethics and campaign finance laws.
In the most high-profile incident, the board charged Landry last year with failing to disclose flights he took to Hawaii on a political donor’s private plane for his job as attorney general. The board and Landry are still in private negotiations over what his penalties for that violation should be.
Legislators have also started criticizing the ethics board over the last month for being “abusive” and aggressive in their investigations of potential law violations. The board has been cracking down on the activities of political action committees run by legislators.
Shortly after becoming governor, Landry pushed lawmakers to pass the new law that expands the ethics board’s membership from 11 to 15 members in 2025. The law also requires seven of the positions to be filled quickly with appointees from Landry and legislative leaders in January.
Currently, most of the board is made up of people appointed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, and Republican state lawmakers who are no longer in office.
Unlike the former governors and legislative leaders, Landry and current lawmakers in charge will also get to pick their appointees to the board directly because of the new law approved this year.
Previous governors and legislators could only pick their ethics board appointees from lists of people recommended by Louisiana’s private college and university leaders. The arrangement, which has been eliminated, was supposed to help insulate the board from political pressure.
This is a developing story and this article may be updated.