Earlier this year, the Louisiana Board of Ethics told Gov. Jeff Landry’s political action committee to stop paying for the governor’s membership at the U.S. House of Representatives fitness center.
“The Board believes the expenditures for its chairperson’s gym membership is not an appropriate expense of campaign funds,” Charles Reeves, a board attorney, wrote in a letter sent Feb. 10 to Landry’s CAJUN PAC II.
“The Board does .. caution you to make every effort in the future to make sure that your reports are made pursuant to the Code of Governmental Ethics,” Reeves said.
The Illuminator obtained the letter from a person familiar with the ethics complaint that led to the board’s response.
Campaign finance records show Landry also used his campaign in 2018 and 2019 to pay for his congressional fitness center membership, though the ethics board didn’t address those charges.
His PAC didn’t heed the board’s February directive either. Just two months after receiving the letter, it paid for the gym dues again in April, according to a PAC campaign finance report.
Landry might have anticipated a law change would soon make such expenses legal. State lawmakers approved legislation pushed by the governor a few weeks later in June that allowed his PAC to cover gym dues, regardless of the ethics board’s recent decision.
The fitness center allowance is one of five recent changes to anti-corruption laws that undo ethics board decisions which may have blocked Landry from getting what he wanted.
Stephen Gelé is the attorney who represented Landry’s PAC before the ethics board on the gym membership issue and received the letter from Reeves. At the time, Gelé was also helping to draft two bills that made dozens of changes to Louisiana ethics and campaign finance laws this year.
One new statute permits elected officials to spend their campaign or PAC funds on membership dues at a “recreational facility” as long as going to it “facilitates interactions with constituents, colleagues, or former colleagues in an elective or deliberative body.”
Landry served in Congress from 2011-13 and would presumably run into former U.S. House colleagues at the fitness center. His gym membership, which cost the PAC $190 this year, easily meets the new legal requirement.
Who benefits from the changes
Other alterations in the ethics legislation allow a few Landry’s appointees to stay in their jobs despite personal financial interests that would have been considered conflicts of interest under the old laws.
Legislators enacted privacy protections for the governor’s staff and lifted restrictions on people who work on inaugurations for governors headed into their second term, as Landry will be if he runs for governor again.
The governor declined to answer questions about the ethics and campaign finance overhaul sent to his spokesperson last month. Gelé agreed to an interview and said the changes were done for more than just the governor’s benefit.
They reflect input from a number of people, including legislators, government workers, public policy watchdog groups and the ethics board staff, Gelé said. He pointed to state lawmakers who have complained about what they consider overly aggressive ethics board enforcement in recent years.
“The bill addresses a broad range of campaign finance issues, including respecting the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and due process and inscribing well-established rules and practices into statute,” Gelé said. “The bill was not drafted to respond to criticisms of the current governor.”
Yet the longest-serving ethics board member suggested changes in state law were made in direct response to board decisions unpopular with the governor and elected officials.
“They’ve done exactly what I thought they were going to do. They were going to carve out a law that was going to accommodate and satisfy certain people,” La Koshia Roberts, a Lake Charles attorney who has served on the board since 2018, said at an ethics board meeting earlier this month.
“It’s our job to apply the law which we’ve done for years now,” she said. “But apparently, until just recently, certain people felt like they didn’t have to follow it and we should not apply it.”
Easier appointments for the governor
Two Landry appointees would have faced a difficult time taking their government jobs if an ethics overhaul, sponsored by Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, hadn’t altered the state’s conflict of interest laws last month.
Last year, the ethics board told Landry’s appointee to run the Louisiana Racing Commission he would not be able to renew the state licenses of racehorses he owns while serving in the job.
The commission director, Stephen Landry, partially owns horses with licenses the commission must issue again in 2026.
But Stephen Landry, who is not related to the governor, no longer has to be concerned with having to choose between owning a racehorse and his government position, which pays almost $100,000 annually. Beaullieu’s bill rewrote the ethics laws such that the executive director of the racing commission is not prohibited from being racehorse owner.
Stephen Landry declined to comment on the matter when contacted by a reporter.
Beallieu’s legislation also cleared that way for Sheraton New Orleans general manager Jim Cook to become the new CEO of the public Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, a position with a $357,000 salary in 2023, according to The Times-Picayune.
Cook was barred from taking the job until late June because he was one of the governor’s appointees to the board that manages the convention center. Public employees are generally prohibited from accepting executive positions with state entities where they also serve on the oversight board.
The latest exception to this rule seems specifically tailored to Cook. It allows a former Morial Convention Center commissioner to serve as the facility’s CEO, but only if they have “30 years of work experience in hotel and hospitality management” and have served as a board commissioner on Jan. 1, 2025. The exception also expires at the end of the year, so it likely can’t be used for anyone else.
Cook did not respond to a request for comment left at his Sheraton office, but the convention center’s spokesman, Tim Hemphill, said the board is excited to see Cook in the role.
A third change was also made to codify an ethics board advisory opinion issued last year to Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois’ husband.
At the time, Mace Bourgeois was co-owner and president of Fire & Safety Commodities, which had two state contracts to provide fire extinguishers and suppression services to public entities across Louisiana. Bourgeois wanted to know if his company could accept a one-year contract extension in 2024 after his wife became part of the Landry administration.
His agreements with the state were open-ended, meaning there was no maximum or minimum amount the state had to spend with his company, according to a review of the contracts. The items it supplied were mostly fire extinguishers and ranged in price from $20 to nearly $670.
The ethics board told him last year the contract extension did not violate ethics laws because Mace Bourgeois’ agreement wasn’t with his wife’s agency, and his financial terms hadn’t changed from the contract his company received before she took the job.
Beaullieu’s bill essentially placed language from the board’s advisory opinion directly into state law. Susan Bourgeois said the new statute also no longer applies to her family because her husband sold his interest in the business earlier this year.
“While Secretary Bourgeois and her husband were completely unaware of this bill, these provisions no longer impact them, as of April 4, 2025, Mr. Bourgeois no longer owns the company,” said Kevin Litten, spokesman for the economic development agency.
New inauguration rules
A campaign finance overhaul sponsored by Rep. Mark Wright, R-Covington, also loosened restrictions on paid workers and people who volunteer for inaugurations and transition teams for governors headed into their second term in office.
The new law states these people will not be considered “public servants” who face restrictions outlined in the Government Code of Ethics. Under the old law, people who volunteered for a sitting governor’s inauguration may have faced limits placed on public employees, such as what type of private compensation they receive.
Concern from the Landry camp appears to stem, in part, from an ethics board advisory opinion issued in 1987. At the time, the board indicated that anyone who was part of a transition or inauguration committee for a sitting governor who wins a second term would be subjected to public employee restrictions.
New privacy protections
The Beaullieu bill also removed requirements that statewide elected officials, higher education leaders, governor’s cabinet members and a handful of the governor’s executive staff provide their home addresses and spouse’s business address on financial disclosure forms available to the public online.
The changes brought an end to a year-long debate over whether the ethics board could black out the home addresses of Landry staff members that are legally required on disclosure forms.
The disclosures were initially written into state law as part of a larger anti-corruption effort during former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration. They were supposed to help hold public officials accountable and guard against public leaders making government decisions that enrich themselves or their families.
The governor’s team had pressed the ethics board for months to obscure their home addresses, saying it was a security concern that put their families at risk. But two ethics board members were adamant that they couldn’t do so without breaking government transparency laws.
The new statute, backed by Landry, applies to far more people than what had been discussed over the past year. It removes the requirement to list home addresses and spouses’ business addresses for 33 state officials, beyond the original five in the governor’s office with concerns.
Public charges rare in ethics investigations
The Beaullieu and Wright bills make dozens of other changes, but it is not clear whether they also relate to decisions the ethics board made about Landry or other elected officials.
Most ethics investigations are kept confidential, and the board only discloses its decisions in a few cases each year, such as when its members vote to bring public charges against someone.
Of the 900 complaints the board received from 2020-23, the board investigated 244 and brought charges in just 14 cases. By contrast, the board issued 53 “warning letters” as a result of investigations during the same time period, according to a report from the ethics board late last year.
These “warning letters” can convey that the board believes the person being investigated committed wrongdoing, even if it has decided not to bring charges. They are kept confidential and allow the board and the accused to keep the matter from going public.
The Illuminator has verified that Landry has received at least two such letters from the ethics board.
The board’s guidance surrounding the congressional gym membership came in the form of a warning letter. The PAC staff and the ethics board are legally prohibited from talking about the matter publicly.
“There have been no public charges made for spending on a gym,” Gelé said in response to a question about the board’s decision on the health club.
Back in 2022, the ethics board sent one of Landry’s attorneys a “warning letter” concerning his use of campaign money to cover thousands of dollars on his car loan payment. The letter, which was also intended to be confidential, was first reported on by The Times-Picayune nearly three years ago and independently confirmed by the Illuminator earlier this year.
Landry also faces public charges from the board over his failure to disclose flights he took on a campaign donor’s private plane to and from Hawaii for a professional conference while he was attorney general.
First brought in 2023, the case is still lingering because the governor and ethics board haven’t reached an agreement on what Landry’s punishment should be. Gelé is Landry’s lawyer in the case.