Retooling Louisiana's image as a place to do business without shakedowns
by EDITOR - Advocate (excerpt)

After much legislative gamesmanship, lawmakers ought to have an up-or-down vote on an important ethics bill this year. We don’t see any good excuses for a last-minute effort to kill a bill to provide for disclosure of the financial interests of legislators.

The games played with House Bill 730 have been numerous, with the House loading the original bill with amendments. One of them added local officials to the disclosure requirements. The Senate also kept those provisions in the bill, and a joint conference committee should be reporting a final version of the bill in the last hours of the session.

We agree that it is an important part of retooling Louisiana’s image as a place to do business without shakedowns. Louisiana cannot afford, in what we believe will be a long and difficult recovery period from the 2005 hurricanes, to be viewed as a place where government ethics are captive to political expedience. The original bill’s provisions have been improved through the legislative process, although we’re still not sold on the local-officials amendment. The bill deserves to pass this year.