Republican state Sen. Jay Morris has been getting a little too effective in countering the left’s agenda in Louisiana, drawing a transparent hatchet job from its far left media.
Morris has had a busy session authoring several high-profile bills that end up making it easier to remove wayward elected officials, reducing the size of overstaffed courts, and the just-signed law reapportioning the state’s congressional districts by replacing an unconstitutional map containing two majority-minority districts with a plan having just one. These have drawn the left’s ire, and so it wishes to discourage legislators from undertaking future reform efforts by trying to drag Morris through the mud.
The leftist Floodlight, Verite, and Louisiana Illuminator websites combined forces recently to publish a piece about the dealings of Morris and a long-standing business partner related to land near the Hyperion data center project. It breathlessly proclaims that Morris “used his political position to advance the project … [while] buying and selling the land around it over the past 15 months,” making him appear as a kind of grifter more commonly associated with political leftists concerning government.
It makes the assertion that these actions of his “may violate state ethics laws … which prohibit government officials from participating in official actions that benefit them financially, require them to recuse themselves from voting when a conflict exists and prohibit the use of public office for private gain.” Morris did not take this charge lying down, telling the publications that “[i]t makes a nice story if you can try to show that I have some sort of conflict. But under Louisiana's ethics laws, I don't…. You can find some pundits and lawyers to say bad things about politicians…. But I haven't done anything wrong.”
And he’s right. For one thing, Morris, a longtime landholder in the area, was entirely uninvolved in the deal that brought Hyperion to Richland Parish, not far outside of his district. And once the deal became public knowledge, he and his partner did buy more land in the hope it might appreciate from the good news – but this was an option open to anyone.
He did vote for legislation that would encourage the project to expand, increasing the possibility that his land could become more valuable. But these changes weren’t isolated to Hyperion, instead applying to any economic development deal.
The article floats that that Morris as an official with a substantial financial interest in a governmental proceeding should have recused himself from voting and disclosed his interest upon continuing to participate in discussions about the matter. It also drags out a Democrat former Gov. John BelEdwards flunky, Lo Keisha Roberts, still on the state’s Ethics Board – who once on social media said she “understood” why people physically would attack a GOP politician for his views and likely is very unhappy about Morris’ legislative agenda – who tut-tutted Morris.
Of course, the financial interest of Morris was highly speculative, whether even substantial, in the outcome of the bill in question with no guarantee of appreciation. Perhaps he should have taken those steps out of extreme caution, but it seems reasonable enough to conclude that he did not have to.
The piece also gigs him for interaction with GOP Public Service Commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan regarding a PSC vote needed favorably to move ahead the project when he already was dealing with Hyperion’s power supplier Entergy, in his conveying opinion about whether to accept Entergy’s power plan without disclosing his dealings. But the law states disclosure is necessary only “in the discharge of a duty or responsibility of his office,” and a conversation between men described as friends doesn’t seem to serve as Morris acting in an official capacity.
Morris in the article vainly hoped that “you'd write a fair story.” It didn’t happen because he needed to be made an example of anyone who tries so vigorously to oppose the left’s agenda. When the session closed, leftists lost on most of Morris’ agenda, so trying to make him look unscrupulous signals to others in the future they better not cross them or they’ll have to endure similar attempted reputational damage.
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