Rep Jackson: When Accountability Loses Proportionality

Recently, I appeared before the Louisiana Board of Ethics regarding an ongoing campaign finance and personal financial disclosure matters from 2023. I have worked with the Ethics Administration, when staff has been willing, to correct the filings at issue.

Personal Financial Disclosure

I accepted a $2,000 personal financial disclosure penalty after the Board reduced an original $5,000 fine, with $3,000 conditionally suspended. It is important to note that the 2023 personal financial disclosure contained the exact same information that had already been submitted in my February 2023 annual filing. The Legislature recently agreed to eliminate this duplicative filing requirement because if information has already been disclosed for a tax year, it does not need to be resubmitted simply because an individual seeks another office later in that same year.

Campaign Finance

I was also assessed $5,720 in campaign finance penalties stemming from a clerical carryover discrepancy of approximately $37 on a campaign balance of nearly $39,000. That error involved no unreported contributions, no unreported expenditures, no personal use of funds, and no concealment.

Commentary & Perspective

I respect the role of ethics enforcement in protecting public trust. However, when minor, non-substantive errors are met with disproportionately severe penalties, the system risks becoming unfair, punitive, and in effect weaponized against those acting in good faith. Accountability should correct wrongdoing, not impose financial punishment untethered from the nature of the mistake. Reasonable people should ask how a clerical error or a late filing can result in penalties totaling thousands of dollars. In many instances, these fines are more aggressive than penalties imposed by the IRS, late fees charged by credit card companies, and even certain criminal fines, such as speeding and DWI penalties.

There is also a broader issue that deserves honest attention. Onerous fines and rigid enforcement for technical errors have a chilling effect on public service itself. They discourage capable, well-intentioned people from running for office, serving on boards, or participating in civic life, not because they lack integrity, but because they fear navigating a system that leaves little room for human error.

Over the last several years, the Legislature, with the support of Governor Jeff Landry, has worked to reform the Board of Ethics to strike a better balance between enforcement and fairness. These reforms include capping campaign finance fines at $2,000 for state races and $1,000 for local races, capping personal financial disclosure fines at $1,000, eliminating duplicative personal financial disclosure filings, and requiring all public meetings of the Board of Ethics to be live streamed. These reforms have been achieved not to weaken ethics oversight, but to ensure it remains firm, transparent, and proportional.

James Russell Lowell wrote that “truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.” His words remind us that fairness and justice are not always aligned with power in the moment, but they still matter. An ethics system should safeguard integrity, not silence public service through excessive fines or inflexible processes.

I have challenged the Board of Ethics not out of resentment, but out of conviction. I will continue to do so because Louisiana deserves an ethics system that protects the public while remaining fair, proportional, and worthy of the people willing to serve. I will continue to challenge this system even at my own personal expense so that others who choose to serve will not have to.