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Louisiana should have strong and effective laws to ensure high standards for ethics and campaign finance disclosures. The system should foster compliance by helping prevent infractions and promote clarity and confidence in the laws and their enforcement.
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The primary goals of ethics oversight are to establish ethical standards for public servants and promote public confidence in government. Strength of oversight can be reduced to two elements–what is required from those who serve the public and to what extent can the requirements be enforced?
As part of the governor’s ethics reform package in 2008, substantial changes were made to the process of prosecuting and judging those who violate the state’s ethics code. One unsettling change was the transfer of adjudicatory power from the Board of Ethics to civil service administrative law judges. The ethics board detailed its concerns about […]
The 2009 regular legislative session was the short version of a Louisiana Legislative Session, which lasts 60 calendar days and focuses primarily on fiscal issues. While development of the budget did dominate much of the debate this year, the fiscal focus was limited to ordinary approaches to budget cutting and put off for another year […]
Louisiana’s ethics code generally prohibits public servants from receiving things of economic value, barring certain exceptions. Past exceptions, such as free tickets to events and lavish wining and dining from special interest groups, fueled public perception that access to policy makers could be bought. As a result, exceptions such as these were eliminated or scaled […]
A recent change to the state’s ethics code will weaken the enforceability of the state’s ethics laws by making violations more difficult to prove. There have been no problems cited with the lesser burden of proof, which continues to be in effect until August 15. Rather, increasing the burden of proof seems to be an […]