Judge dismisses lawsuit over ethics board hire

A Baton Rouge judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday from state lawmakers meant to block the Louisiana Board of Ethics from hiring its new administrator.
The decision paves the way for the board to move forward with selecting its new top staff member at its Friday meeting. It is replacing longtime administrator Kathleen Allen, who retires Dec. 27.
Judge Kelly Balfour of the 19th Judicial District Court said he personally agreed with the legislators’ argument that the search for an ethics administrator should have been more robust and transparent. But he saw no state law violation that allows him to stop the board from moving forward with the hiring.
“Where’s the law for me to say what they’ve done was wrong?” Balfour asked during Monday’s court hearing, which lasted less than an hour.
“I can’t rule on ‘I don’t like the way they handled things,’” he added.
Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, had asked the ethics board to delay hiring a new administrator until appointees that he, Landry and House Speaker Phillip DeVillier, R-Eunice, pick join the board next month.
The current board is made up of appointees from former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards and former Republican legislative leadership who are no longer in office.
When the ethics board didn’t heed Henry’s request, Senate President Pro Tempore Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, and Sen. Stewart Cathey, R-Monroe, filed the lawsuit alleging the hiring process hadn’t been conducted properly.
It is the latest in an escalating public feud among Gov. Jeff Landry, lawmakers and ethics board members. Since Landry took office in January, legislators have complained more fervently about the board’s conduct, transparency and investigations into their political spending.
Landry himself has had a fraught relationship with the ethics board for years. The board cited him multiple times for violations before he became governor. He is still in negotiations with its members over what punishment he should receive for not disclosing flights he took on a private donor’s plane as attorney general.
In the spring, Landry and lawmakers rewrote state law to give them more power over the board starting in 2025, when the board will get as many as seven new members.
The ethics administrator position was advertised through the state Civil Service system for 10 days in October. Four candidates were interviewed in November, including two who already work for the board. Members are expected to vote to hire one of the four at the end of the week.
Gray Sexton, representing Barrow and Cathey, said the whole hiring process was done so secretly that legislators weren’t aware it was taking place until the job application deadline passed. He also alleged the board has violated Louisiana public meetings law 10 times when discussing the selection of a new administrator during private conversations in September, October and November.
“We’re here to see the process done in an open manner,” said Sexton, who previously served as the ethics administrator himself for over four decades before starting his law firm.
Though Sexton said there were multiple violations of the public meetings law during the court hearing, he only mentioned one in the initial lawsuit.
Balfour said he wasn’t in a position to rule on that one alleged open meetings item because it would have occurred Sept. 5, more than 60 days before the lawsuit was filed. The time for which the court was allowed to deal with enforcement had expired, the judge said.
In an interview after the ruling, Sexton said he learned of the other alleged public meetings law violations from the board’s records and correspondence he received as a result of the lawsuit. He had intended to present that information to strengthen their argument but Balfour dismissed the case before they got to that portion.
However, the judge said any outstanding complaints about open meetings violations should be handled by Attorney General Liz Murrill’s office.
Balfour also raised concerns that the lawsuit violated the separation of powers doctrine, in which one branch of government isn’t supposed to have undue influence over another, he said. The ethics board is part of the executive branch of state government and isn’t under the Louisiana Legislature’s control.
“Does President Henry need to know [they are hiring a new ethics administrator]?” Balfour asked. “Do they need to answer the Senate?”
“Should they just do what your clients – and the House and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee – tell them to do?” he added.
If the Legislature is unhappy with the process used to hire the ethics administrator, it should pass new laws to change the way the process works, Balfour said.
After the ruling, Barrow said she wasn’t sure whether Balfour’s decision would be appealed yet. If they do, it would have to be done before Friday’s ethics board meeting to stop the hiring of a new administrator.
Sexton said the legislators would also drop the lawsuit if the board agreed to hire its new ethics administrator on a temporary basis, which would allow the new board appointees to weigh in on the decision in a few months.
Barrow declined Monday to say who was paying for her legal representation.