Julie O’Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
Posted Wednesday, June 11, 2025 12:00 am
Julie O'Donoghue | Louisiana Illuminator
An effort to eliminate confidentiality for people who provide tips to the Louisiana Board of Ethics over government misconduct has failed.
Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, said House Bill 160 won’t come up for consideration after it missed a crucial deadline for an initial vote in the Senate Monday.
“There weren’t the votes” to pass the proposal, Rep. Kellee Hennessy Dickerson, R-Denham Springs, who sponsored the legislation, said in an interview Monday night.
The bill would have required the ethics board to reveal the name of a person who provides a tip about alleged wrongdoing to whoever the person accuses of misconduct. Currently, the ethics board never shares a tipster’s identity with the target of an investigation.
The proposal would also have required ethics board tips to be either signed by a notary or delivered in person to the ethics board staff at their office in downtown Baton Rouge.
The board enforces the state’s ethics and campaign finance laws for elected officials, public employees, lobbyists and government contractors. On Friday, board members sent a letter to senators encouraging them to vote against the legislation, saying it would have a chilling effect on the public’s willingness to provide the board information.
Dickerson described the ethics board’s letter as “harassing” and said it helped kill the bill.
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