Ethics Board asks court to review dismissal of charges on legislator
by MARSHA SHULER - Advocate (excerpt)

The Louisiana Board of Ethics decided Wednesday to go to court to try to keep alive conflict-of-interest charges against a key Jindal administration floorleader on ethics issues. The board voted to ask the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal to review an ethics adjudicatory panel’s decision to throw out charges against state Rep. Rick Gallot.

The Ruston Democrat is chairman of the House and Governmental Affairs Committee. He took the lead on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s ethics law package in 2008. “It’s the ‘time issue’ and the impact it (the decision) has on pending cases and in the long run too,” Ethics Board Chairman Frank Simoneaux, of Baton Rouge, said after the unanimous vote to appeal.

The Ethics Board disagreed with how the adjudicatory panel measured the two-year deadline on filing charges. “It adversely impacts the ethics program,” Simoneaux said of the adjudicatory panel’s decision.