It seems like the
investigation, under its own volition, of the Louisiana Board of Ethics
concerning changes and its implementation of campaign finance law is beginning
to bear fruit. You can tell because legislators are starting to carp about it.
Starting in January with a target
date to finish
by the end of the year, the Board hopes to provide clearer guidance in the
way it interprets the law. Comments coming from its members indicate they
believe current interpretations, such as the one offered by state Sen. Robert Adley, that “[t]he law says that campaign dollars can be used to
anything that is part of the cost of serving your office,” is unclear and
deserves more precision.
In fact, that is not at all what the law intends on the matter.
R.S. 18:1483 broadly defines an expenditure as “a purchase, payment,
advance, deposit, or gift, of money or anything
of value made for the
purpose of supporting, opposing, or otherwise influencing the nomination or election
of a person to public office,” and in R.S. 18:1505.2 is related to
contributions in that “contributions received by a candidate or a political committee
may be expended for any lawful purpose, but such funds shall not be used,
loaned, or pledged by any person for any personal use unrelated to a political
campaign, the holding of a public office ….”
So it we are to buy Adley’s
interpretation, the $1,700 he spent in 2010 on flowers sent to bereaved
constituents and joyous graduates either is an attempt to influence his
election and/or is relevant to the holding of a public office. Certainly in the
case of the latter, all too many legislators have signed on to this travesty,
as state Sen. Norby Chabert confirms
when he claims that it’s part
of south Louisiana culture to expect financial help from legislators.
It’s difficult to hold back the tears when Chabert spins
his tale of woe on this subject: “Everyone kind of expects you to give till it
hurts. We have to come out of pocket so much. We lose so much money holding
office. We don’t make enough to support our efforts so quite often our campaign
account is used as a supplemental account to support any other type of
governmental activities you’re doing.”
Of course, on his latest
financial disclosure form Chabert defines himself as a “full-time” employee
of the Senate when legally is job is only part-time at over $32,000 a year; he
and his wife own in full two businesses where they draw less than $5,000 a year
each for each (who knew a bar could make so little money?); they have an
Individual Retirement Account distribution of between $5,000 and $24,999 a
year, a liability that exceeds $10,000, and immovable properties in excess of $200,000
in value. While this makes him better off financially than the majority of
Louisianans, no doubt they feel his pain in his having to voluntarily run for
and get elected to office and then have to dole out tokens to them because that’s
what the culture demands.
Or maybe, as the Board seems to think, the culture should
be changed and if that’s too much hardship for Chabert, he is free to serve his
community in ways other than being elected to office. Does anybody seriously
think that sending flowers has anything to do with the “holding of a public
office,” or this is not a thinly-disguised emotional bribe to voters and preferment
reward to florists as a “gift … made for the purpose of
supporting, opposing, or otherwise influencing the nomination or election of a
person to public office?”
Hopefully, the Board will
release rules that specify that expenditures should be solely for the purposes of
communications about a campaign, as in other states, and related directly to
that. In other words, you don’t have to buy tickets to sporting events on the
pretext you are campaigning during it. What ever happened to electioneering
outside of the stadium, arena, or field as catching people as they enter and
leave?
The state’s Administrative Procedure Act
might give a chance for legislators to bite back by disapproving any rules of
this kind that get forwarded, as Adley implicitly threatened when he said the
Board should go to the Legislature first to change the law’s wording. But statements
by Gov. Bobby
Jindal can reduce this possibility to close to zero. R.S. 49:969 and 49:970
gives the Legislature and governor, respectively, the ability to veto such
rule-making. Yet if Jindal announced after the rules’ promulgation in the
Louisiana Register that he will do no such thing and thinks they are good, his
backing will discourage legislative opposition and no majority will form
against the changes.
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