When Al Herrera, a board member for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, asked a contractor last year to do business with his company, he was sure the deal would be above board.
As long as he didn't profit from the work the same vendor did directly for the RTA, Herrera figured he wouldnโt run afoul of state ethics laws.
However, the state Board of Ethics didn't see it that way. Such arrangements are banned under state law, the board said in December, after the contractor, Dana Pecoraro, of Laurel Outdoor Advertising, informed it of Herreraโs request.
Maybe Herrera got it wrong because he hadnโt participated, in nearly four years on the board, in ethics training courses that he and all other public servants in the state are supposed to take annually.
Herrera is one of six RTA board members โย and numerous other elected and appointed officials โย who apparently have failed to comply with a state law that is designed to prevent gaffes like the one he made in August when he approached Laurel Outdoor to solicit work for his industrial supplies company.
The law, in effect since 2012, requires officials to take at least an hour of classes each year on a wide range of ethical doโs and donโts. Those who repeatedly fail to enroll are censured or subject to fines.
But in practice, violators are disciplined only when their lapses are reported to the ethics board, even though the board keeps a massive database of class enrollment.
State Sen. Regina Ashford Barrow, of Baton Rouge, who sponsored the law in 2007, said the lackluster enforcement does little to ensure officials are warned against the kind of corruption and patronage that erodes public trust.
โIt sounds like people are just doing the honor system when it comes to letting them know,โ Barrow said. โThatโs problematic, and there has to be a better way.โ
Robert Travis Scott, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, said it's likely that the 40-employee ethics board is struggling to keep up with a rule that applied, when the law was passed, to an estimated 250,000 people, ranging from public school teachers to appointed members of city boards and agencies.
Thatโs on top of the more than 5,100 elected officials across the state who must be trained.
โSometimes, there is a knee-jerk reaction to blame the enforcement agency, and sometimes, itโs maybe more appropriate to look at, โWhy did you create this situation in the first place for them?โ โ Scott said.
Barrow's bill was championed by a coalition of businesses and other groups as a way to improve the stateโs reputation on national ethics and good-government indexes and, in turn, boost Louisianโs economic prospects.
While the ethics board previously offered at least some education, the classes were sporadic, and people were not required to take them.
The 2007 law, implemented in phases over five years, changed that. Now, elected officials and other public servants are mandated to take a one-hour ethics class annually. Some are also required to take an hour of training in campaign finance laws.
The law also provided for some methods to ensure compliance. The heads of state agencies, such as the ถถา๕h Department of Transportation and Development, have to designate at least one person to train their agency's employees on ethics rules.
Local political subdivisions, such as the New Orleans RTA, also are supposed to designate someone to give information to public servants about their responsibilities under the law.
If officials miss classes, the ethics board is supposed to mail a warning, with instructions to complete a class within 45 days. If someone is still truant, the board can assess a fine.
Ethics board Administrator Kathleen Allen said that even though the board keeps a database of class enrollment, staffers rarely go through it to check for noncompliance and instead rely on outside reports of who is current with their education.
"We are reactive, as far as notifying people with respect to their training obligations," Allen said.
The board has assessed a fine for missed courses only one time in the years the law has been on the books โ a $500 penalty to a Natchitoches public school teacher in 2017, according to board records.
While the boardโs online system is updated quickly when public servants complete internet training, records of who attended live training sessions can take as long as three months to show up, and the records are not foolproof, a notice on its website warns.
It also can be hard for Allenโs staff to find the addresses needed to mail warnings toย people who have missed classes, she said.
Scott said the ethics boardโs heavy workload as the enforcer of campaign finance, lobbying and ethics rules may make adequate enforcement difficult.
Still, he said, itโs clear the training is necessary, and without some sort of law requiring it and robust enforcement of that rule, people are unlikely to bother with it at all.
Thatโs evidenced in the records of some RTA commissioners, who apparently had no idea they were supposed to complete ethics training.
When asked recently whether members are trained on ethics, RTA Chairwoman Sharonda Williams said itโs up to the people to familiarize themselves with state laws and that the boardโs attorney, Sundiata Haley, assists them when the need arises.
At the time, she had not taken an ethics board class since 2015.
But when informed of the law, Williams said it was Haley's and board secretary Deslie Isidoreโs job to ensure that board members keep up with any relevant ethics laws.
A review of course records for some other city boards with appointed members also revealed gaps, with some members on the Housing Authority of New Orleans, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and the City Planning Commission also having missed classes in recent years.
Most Sewerage & Water Board members havenโt been on the board long enough to miss any ethics training deadlines. However, two of four longtime members have missed classes in some years.
The New Orleans Ethics Review Board, responsible locally for ethics code enforcement, had one of the best attendance records, as one might expect.
Although a specific solution to the enforcement issue did not occur to Barrow, the state lawmaker, this week, she said some sort of revisions to the original law might be needed.
โItโs been 11 years,โ she said. โThatโs a long time, and a lot of things have changed since then.โ