The Louisiana ethics board is trying to rein in PAC spending. Lawmakers are balking.

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The Louisiana Board of Ethics has quietly clamped down on political action committee (PAC) spending for over a year, angering state lawmakers and a campaign advisor to Gov. Jeff Landry. 

Campaign finance attorneys said the ethics board has started to ask more questions – and possibly launched more investigations – into elected officials’ PAC spending since the middle of 2023. Legislators confirmed in interviews with the Illuminator that they were being told to take precaution when spending PAC money for the time being. 

“There is considerable interest in this issue that has been developed with respect to some of our clients,” said Gray Sexton, the former general counsel for the ethics board who now specializes in defending elected officials against ethics and campaign finance infractions.

Whose PACs the board is scrutinizing and to what extent ethics investigations are taking place isn’t clear.

The ethics board is required to keep its investigations confidential, unless it takes disciplinary action. Campaign finance attorneys and legislators did not say who had been questioned by the board. 

But those private inquiries into PACs might have helped fuel the very public fight involving the board, lawmakers and Landry. 

The governor has been reprimanded by the ethics board multiple times in the past, but it’s not known whether the board has questioned his PAC spending. He currently faces other ethics charges for failing to disclose a flight he took to and from Hawaii on a political donor’s plane.

With the help of state lawmakers, Landry passed a law for 2025 that weakens the ethics board’s independence from the governor and the Legislature. Lawmakers and one of Landry’s campaign attorneys then blasted the board earlier this month for allegedly harassing elected officials. 

“My clients want to obey the law. However, the board of ethics has made that particularly difficult,” Stephen Gelé, an attorney for Landry who also represents other elected officials and PACs, said at the legislative hearing on Oct. 8. 

Gelé and legislators complain the ethics board is flagging spending by what they call leadership PACs that wasn’t prohibited in the past.

There is no definition of a leadership PAC in state law, but at the federal level, a leadership PAC is typically one set up by a member of Congress to give money to other candidates running for office. What elected officials consider a state leadership PAC  presumably serves a similar purpose. 

The board told the Legislature’s committee chairs they can no longer use PAC money, leadership or otherwise, to purchase lunch for other lawmakers during public hearings, according to lawmakers.

It is also asking questions about PAC spending on Washington Mardi Gras, a four-day series of parties and meetings each year in D.C. that scores of elected officials, lobbyists and government contractors attend. 

“Washington Mardi Gras seems to be getting a lot of attention and I don’t know why,” said Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, who leads the Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee that oversees the ethics board. 

Even if legislators face restrictions with how they can spend their PAC money, they are still able to tap into their traditional campaign accounts to cover these expenses.

Lawmakers have long been allowed to use cash from their campaign accounts to reimburse themselves for expenses related to the “holding of a public office” under state law.

The ethics board has interpreted this provision liberally to include legislative lunches, Washington Mardi Gras and even LSU football tickets as legitimate campaign purchases.

Yet elected officials likely want to be able to use their PACs to cover such expenses because it’s far easier to raise money through a PAC than a traditional campaign in Louisiana.

For example, traditional campaign accounts can only receive $5,000 from each person during an election cycle. At their most restrictive, PACs limit contributions to $100,000 per person, and certain PACs have no restrictions on the amount individual donors can give at all. 

For the purposes of spending, however, the ethics board believes the state law places more limitations on PACs. The statute that carves out an exception for traditional campaign account spending on items such as colleagues’ lunches does not provide the same flexibility for PACs, according to the board’s interpretation.

The board sought to clarify its position in June when it proposed a new state government rule that said PAC spending could not be used for “for the purpose of supporting an elected official’s holding of public office or party position” like a traditional campaign account can. 

The proposed regulation raised the hackles of legislators. While the board hasn’t withdrawn it, its members also haven’t taken steps to adopt it over the past few months. Beaullieu said he would move to throw it out, which his legislative committee has the power to do, before it ever went into effect. 

“I don’t have a time frame for doing that,” Ethics Administrator Kathleen Allen, the board’s top staff member, said when asked when the rule might go forward.

At the federal level, elected officials can spend more freely from their leadership PAC than campaign accounts. For example, members from Louisiana’s congressional delegation use their leadership PACs to cover their expenses for Washington Mardi Gras instead of their traditional campaign money. 

But with no state definition of a leadership PAC, the ethics board has interpreted PAC spending, whether for leadership purposes or not, to be more restricted.

In 2023, Louisiana elected officials gave up nearly $600,000 in political cash to attend Washington Mardi Gras, mostly from traditional state campaign accounts. Total spending for this year’s event in D.C. isn’t available because campaigns and PACs aren’t required to submit their financial expenditures for 2024 until early next year. 

A relatively small number of state elected officials, not including those in Congress, used PACs to cover their D.C. Mardi Gras bills last year. 

Former Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was in his final year in office, took $65,200 from his leadership PAC to pay Washington Mardi Gras expenses. Gov. Jeff Landry, then the state attorney general, spent $25,000 from his Cajun PAC II, and Senate President Cameron Henry spent $14,900 from CameronPAC on the event. 

Landry’s Cajun PAC II also spent at least $21,000 on Washington Mardi Gras tickets in 2024, according to campaign finance reports the group voluntarily submitted earlier this year. 

Staff members for Landry’s and Edwards’ PACs did not return phone calls for comment earlier this month about whether their groups had been the subject of an ethics board inquiry. Henry could not be reached for an interview before publication. 

Legislators and campaign finance attorneys have also complained that they believe the ethics board is making inquiries into leadership PACs based on media reports, instead of formal complaints from the public. 

“The board was just investigating anything in a newspaper article,” Gelé said.

The Times-Picayune published a story on House Speaker Phillip DeVillier’s leadership PAC just a few weeks before the ethics board released its proposed rule on PAC spending limitations.

In the story, DeVillier said he was using the PAC to provide promotional materials to other lawmakers that they could share to boost his legislative agenda on their social media accounts, though no campaign finance reports covering 2024 expenses have been submitted yet. 

DeVillier did not return several calls and texts from a reporter over the last two weeks, including those directly asking him if the ethics board had inquired about his PAC.

Beaullieu said he plans to introduce legislation that would clear up confusion about leadership PAC spending.

“If the Board of Ethics is having a change of heart, why don’t we address the issue?” Beaullieu said.