Price of ethics reform

• By MARSHA SHULER
• Capitol news bureau
• Published: Mar 3, 2008

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After a historic expansion of the state’s ethics laws, officials now for the first time are confronting how much it’s all going to cost.

“(After) all this talk about ethics reform, we also need to have this talk about ethics enforcement and that’s not been a part of the discussion in the past,” said Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a government watchdog group.

Erwin said it’s going to require a whole new level of staffing that nobody has talked about.

The state Legislature last week sent to Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed laws that require financial disclosure reports from thousands of state and local elected and appointed officials, detailed and more frequent lobbyist activity reports, and more ethics training for public servants.

All that means a lot more work for the Louisiana Board of Ethics. The Legislature approved no new funding.

“Clearly absent enforcement, we will have done a lot for nothing,” said Jim Brandt, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, another government watchdog group known.

State ethics administrator Richard Sherburne said he and other staffers are trying to calculate how many new employees the Board of Ethics has to hire, how much space they’ll need and what computer system is necessary to handle the heavier volume of work. The ethics agency’s lease is up at the end of April, so the board will be relocating soon.

“Where we are going, I don’t know,” said Sherburne.

Sherburne said it has been hard to even start looking for new quarters “until I know how many people I have.”

“I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of discussion about what resources are needed and what resources are not needed,” Sherburne said.

Ethics board Chairman Hank Perret said the board will review a report from its administrative staff at its next meeting and make recommendations from there.

Jindal’s Commissioner of Administration, Angèle Davis, said the governor’s executive budget for the upcoming year includes about $1.9 million in new money to implement the new ethics laws.

Today, the ethics agency has a budget of about $1.9 million. There are 20 staffers — the same number of staffers the board had nearly a decade ago when the agency had fewer responsibilities.