BR Advocate Piece: Jeff Landry didn’t report $4,000+ in travel receipts

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Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry failed to report that he received more than $4,000 in travel reimbursements last year within the time period that state public servants are required to submit such expenses to the state’s Ethics Board.

Tax forms filed Jan. 31 with the Internal Revenue Service show that the Republican Attorneys General Association, known as RAGA, reimbursed Landry for three trips in 2021. Landry got a $710 reimbursement last July, a $2,410 reimbursement last August and $910 reimbursement last October.

While the 2021 trips were the most recent, RAGA’s past tax forms show that they’ve reimbursed Landry at least $8,000 in travel expenses since 2018. Landry, the state’s top law enforcement official, has never reported the reimbursements through disclosure forms for “complimentary admission, lodging, and reasonable transportation or a reimbursement of such expenses,” according to the state’s Ethics Board online filings.

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“He is the attorney general of the state of Louisiana. If anybody is supposed to know the laws of Louisiana, including the ethics laws, it’s him,” said Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a New Orleans-based watchdog group. “While this is not necessarily a lot of money, it may have been an oversight, but he as the lawyer for the state of Louisiana, the attorney general for the state of Louisiana, has to be held to a higher standard."

Landry’s last filing with the state’s Ethics Board was in May 2021, when he submitted his personal financial disclosure forms for 2020. In all of his time working in politics, he has never submitted disclosure forms about travel, admission or lodging, based on those posted on the Ethics Board’s website.

Among his peers, that’s unusual. Landry’s predecessor as attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, submitted a disclosure in 2012, for example, for a $1,154 trip to Washington, D.C. for a seminar. And Gov. John Bel Edwards last filed one of the disclosure forms in 2018, when he reported that the Center for Planning Excellence paid $159 for his lodging during an event at the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

State Treasurer John Schroder also filed a disclosure form this January for a $1,486 trip he took last November to Florida for a national meeting of state financial officers. He also submitted a form last September for a $695 July trip to Utah for a Louisiana Firefighters Retirement System meeting.

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