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Legislators have made a lot of changes to Louisiana’s campaign finance rules over the past couple years.
But according to attorney Stephen Gelé, who has helped write some of that legislation, there’s plenty of more work to be done. Gelé has represented prominent state politicians at the Board of Ethics, including Gov. Jeff Landry.
“There were no substantial revisions to the state’s campaign finance laws for 30-plus years,” he says.
The pace of change has slowed considerably this year. For the current session, the most significant campaign spending measure is Senate Bill 495 by Senate and Governmental Affairs Chair Caleb Kleinpeter, which passed the Senate unanimously last week.
Kleinpeter said there were a lot of requests for items to be included in the bill, which at one point was some 60 pages long. Working with ethics staff, he and his counterpart, House and Governmental Affairs Chair Beau Beaullieu, trimmed it down to about one-third of that length.
Among many other changes, the bill eliminates the need to itemize many small donations.
“When you’re running a $400,000 or $600,000 campaign, that becomes a reporting nightmare, as far as trying to line item every single address and name,” Kleinpeter says.
Where donations of $50 currently need to be reported individually, the threshold has been raised to $200; the federal standard is $250. Along with making reporting easier for candidates, the change would also help protect the privacy of small donors, Gelé says.
“I don’t think there’s any real belief that someone giving $199 is going to have an outsized influence upon anyone,” he says.
Annual reports currently due at the end of February would be pushed back to March 15. The bill provides an ethics exemption for media entities that broadcast paid political ads that the broadcaster had no input into, and clarifies rules around how the political committee paying for the communication must be disclosed.
And it states that leadership committees can use campaign funds to replace, repair or clean articles of clothing soiled or damaged in connection with political business. As an example of why that change makes sense, Kleinpeter said Sen. Mike Fesi was at a conference when a waiter spilled red wine on a new seersucker suit that he had to replace. He says restrictions on spending political dollars on clothes are tougher on women, because a man can get away with wearing just a few suits while mixing up his ties.
Steven Procopio with the Public Affairs Research Council had some issues with the original version of the bill. But he said an amendment on the Senate floor to ensure that expenditures for propositions such as constitutional amendments are disclosed was able to address his last concern.
“The bill is now in a much better place than when it started,” he said by text.
Another noteworthy bill is Beaullieu’s House Bill 1036, which has passed the House without a dissenting vote and deals with party-affiliated groups that generally don’t promote specific candidates.
The Campaign Finance Disclosure Act defines “committee” as a group with the “primary purpose” of making contributions or expenditures on behalf of candidates, elected officials, campaigns or other committees. The proposed law defines “primary purpose” to mean that such contributions account for more than half of the group’s spending in a year.
Other bills of note to campaigners that have passed one of the chambers include:
— HB459 by Rep. Mandie Landry: It requires disclosure on electioneering communications when the material contains the image or likeness of a candidate that was created using artificial intelligence.
— HB540 by Rep. Alonzo Knox: It requires digital election materials to have the same disclosures as other kinds.
— HB639 by Rep. Michael Bayham: It requires the disclosure of telephone campaign communication that is created using AI.
