Louisiana lawmakers have approved a bill that would let Gov. Jeff Landry choose most members of the state Ethics Board, which serves as a watchdog on public corruption and is locked in a dispute with Landry over his alleged violation of ethics laws.
The bill would give Landry tighter control over a majority of the same panel levying charges against him over private plane rides he took in 2021 from a top donor, but failed to disclose.
Though Louisiana law currently gives the governor the right to choose seven of the Ethics Board's 11 members, the current law requires him to choose from a group of finalists recommended by university leaders. Lawmakers also rely on university nominees to pick the other four members.
But Senate Bill 497, sponsored by state Sen. Blake Miguez, R-New Iberia, removes the colleges from the process, giving the governor the power to directly pick appointees of his choosing without having to draw from a pool of nominees.
Amendments approved by the state House on Tuesday proposed further overhauling the board, amid criticisms that the original bill gave Landry too much power. The altered bill would grow the board from 11 to 15 members and give the governor control of nine, rather than seven, appointees. Five of the governor's picks must be lawyers with eight years of experience or more.
The bill also suggests, but does not mandate, that the panel be made up of five retired judges, five former officials and five people who have never served in elected public office.
Miguez said he filed the bill because the process is onerous and concentrates power in New Orleans, which has a high number of colleges and universities.
“I think it’s inappropriate to have private institutions overseeing public work,” he said in an interview last week.
The House passed the amended bill 70-25, sending it back to the Senate to receive final approval from Miguez and senators. In a phone interview Tuesday evening, Miguez said he was still reading over the amendments.
Barry Erwin, CEO of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based watchdog group, called the board’s current setup “a Louisiana solution to a Louisiana problem." The structure has helped curb once-infamous levels of political corruption in the state, he said, adding that keeping it that way would be wise.
"Having insulation between the political appointment of the governor and the board itself just seems like a common-sense approach that we ought to keep going forward," he said.
The bill is one example of Landry's sweeping push to consolidate power within the governor’s office, which political commentators have likened to the governorship of Huey Long. Other bills Landry has backed sought to give him broader power over appointments to all state boards and to shield his office from public records law. The public records legislation died but the other bill related to board appointments remains alive.
It also comes as the Ethics Board has accused Landry of violating ethics laws by taking at least one private plane trip, to Hawaii in 2021, without disclosing it. The Advocate | The Times-Picayune reported last year that Landry has taken a series of trips aboard the private planes of some of his biggest donors; after the paper inquired about them, the Louisiana Republican Party began reporting some of the trips on campaign finance disclosures.
The Hawaii trip was provided by Greg Mosing of Broussard, a wealthy business owner who also ran a pro-Landry PAC called Make Louisiana Great Again. Landry's reports to the Ethics Board didn't account for that flight, though he has accounted for others provided by Mosing.
Kathleen Allen, the state’s Ethics Administrator, said in an email this week that a hearing in Landry’s case scheduled for late April had been pushed to July 11. She did not provide further details.
Elected officials must report private plane rides for campaign-related trips and official business trips, Allen said. The Hawaii trip appeared to be for a meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. Landry was serving as state Attorney General at the time.
In recent months, Landry has taken at least one other trip on a private, donor-provided plane: He and nine state lawmakers went to Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 9 aboard a jet owned by Boysie Bollinger, an influential Republican business owner and top ally, according to flight records and people familiar with the journey.
The trip was to visit Louisiana soldiers at their positions along the U.S.-Mexico border. Landry has more than a month left to disclose the recent Eagle Pass trip before he flouts an Ethics Board deadline, as the board gives officials 60 days to disclose flights, accommodations and other perks related to their work.
Landry's office did not respond to questions about the flight and the ongoing ethics case.
In addition to tracking public officials' perks, the state Ethics Board reprimands, fines and may remove officials who commit abuses of office, receive bribes, engage in nepotism or commit other ethical missteps.
Staff writer Sam Karlin contributed to this report.