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.