Gov. John Bel Edwards budget chief Jay Dardenne (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Illuminator)
The Louisiana Board of Ethics assessed Jay Dardenne, a longtime elected official who was also Gov. John Bel Edwards’ commissioner of administration, a $3,000 fine for filing four campaign finance reports months after their deadlines passed.
Dardenne, who also served as Louisiana’s lieutenant governor and secretary of state, initially faced a much larger fine. The penalty for his four tardy reports was $12,000, but the board voted to reduce it to $3,000 after Dardenne personally apologized at its Friday meeting. “I do not have any excuse I can make for failing to timely file those reports,” he told board members. “In those previous years that I filed, I had gotten in the habit only annually.”
The four reports in question were connected to Dardenne’s political action committee, JAY PAC, and should have been submitted during the fall and winter of 2023. He made a few small campaign contributions out of that account for state elections at the time.
Dardenne, who is a Republican, donated between $250 and $500 to a small group of candidates, including Baton Rouge state Reps. Dixon McMakin and Barbara Freiberg, Secretary of State Nancy Landry and former state Rep. John Stefanski, who ran for attorney general last year.
The fine for missing a PAC campaign reporting deadline was $200 per day for up to 15 days, at which point it reached a maximum of $3,000. Dardenne’s four reports were between 75 and 162 days late, according to information the ethics board provided.
Dardenne set up JAY PAC during his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2015 and said Friday he hasn’t used it much in recent years. It contained no more than $7,600 total last year, according to publicly available campaign finance reports.
He said he recently drained the PAC by making a few charitable donations with its remaining funds and intends to close out the account by the end of the year.
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The ethics board also assessed two state senators fines for failing to submit their own PAC campaign finance reports on time.
Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, was assessed a $1,000 fine for failing to file a campaign finance report for Kirk PAC 33 days late in 2019.
The board chose to reduce Talbot’s penalty from $3,000 to $1,000 after Talbot’s former accountant told the board Friday he was responsible for the overdue submission. Phillip Rebowe said he was locked out of his files, including the PAC’s paperwork, when he left an accounting firm and wasn’t able to file the paperwork by the deadline. Sen. Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria, was assessed a $500 fine for filing his LA PAC campaign finance report 15 days late in the fall of 2023.
The board voted to cut Luneau’s fine from $3,000 to $500 after Luneau appeared Friday and said his accountant had only recently taken over the PAC’s paperwork from the accountant’s dying father. Steven McKay didn’t file the report on time because he was newly assigned to Luneau’s accounts and not familiar with PAC deadlines yet. Plus McKay was caring for a sick parent who was also his business partner, the senator said.
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