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The Louisiana Board of Ethics has declined to waive most of the nearly $10,000 in fines state Rep. Steven Jackson, D-Shreveport, faced for not submitting his campaign finance and personal disclosure documents on time or properly.
The board voted to reduce Jackson’s fines by $3,000 at his request, but he has a remaining fee balance of $6,720 to pay.
The full reduction was also contingent on Jackson submitting some missing personal financial disclosure paperwork from 2023 by midnight Friday. Otherwise, the board said it would reinstate another $1,500 in penalties, for $8,220 in total.
Jackson accrued the fees after he filed four ethics and campaign finance reports late and failed to file one at all. He also did not correct two reports the ethics board flagged for mismatching campaign account balances, which resulted in extra penalties.
All but one of these reports was related to Jackson’s campaign for Louisiana House of Representatives in 2023. He also ran up thousands of dollars in fines previously when he ran for and served in Caddo Parish government.
By his own estimate, Jackson had already paid $10,000 to $15,000 in penalties for missing deadlines for 15 old campaign finance reports, not including those before the board Friday.
“What I will tell you is none of what you see is intentional,” Jackson told board members.
Jackson declined to talk to take additional questions from reporter after the hearing.
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Campaign finance reports and personal financial disclosure paperwork are the primary way the public knows who donates to a political campaign and what conflict officials might have. Hundreds of candidates, elected officials and public employees are required to file them each year.
As a state legislator, Jackson told the board he now has better systems in place to make sure his campaign finance and personal finance disclosure forms are filed on time.
“Now that I’m in the legislature, we have staff that comes around that reminds us. I have a staff person in my office that has a calendar set,” Jackson said. “I am now able to pay a CPA to remind me. So I get three reminders now to submit my personal financial disclosure or to file for that extension if needed.”
Ethics board members were reluctant to reduce Jackson’s fines further because of his poor track record meeting past deadlines.
“You have a history going way back of late filings, and you paid a fine numerous times. And that’s not setting a great example for your citizens, your constituents,” said board member John Crigler, a retired judge from St. Joseph.
Jackson responded by saying he tried to take responsibility for missing those deadlines by paying large penalties in the past.
“That’s me taking ownership in my part, in my role and my responsibility in that,” he responded.
Yet when Jackson had paid ethics fines in the past, his hand has often been forced to do so.
The ethics board filed a short-lived lawsuit in August 2019 to block Jackson from qualifying to run for his second term on the Caddo Parish Commission over $3,600 in late fees for his 2015 race. State law requires candidates for public office to pay their penalties in full before they enter a new election cycle. The suit was withdrawn a day later after Jackson hastily met with the board and paid some of the fines he owed.
Over a separate group of fines, the attorney general’s office in 2022 garnished more than $1,000 monthly from Jackson’s paychecks for three months.
Jackson also pushed back with the board Friday on the newer fines that were under consideration.
He said he had never received the board’s written warnings about one of them because his mail had been picked up by campaign volunteers from a shared post office box and never handed to him. Jackson now has a new mailbox he doesn’t share with others, he said.
The board has also struggled to deliver late fee notices to Jackson via certified mail, which requires a recipient’s signature. Four attempts to send penalty notices to Jackson went unsigned from August 2024 to March 2025, according to information the ethics board staff provided.
Eventually, Ethics Administrator David Bordelon personally hand delivered Jackson’s most recent late notices directly to Jackson while the representative was at the State Capitol on April 23 for the 2025 legislative session.
Jackson said he is always open to contact from the ethics board and its staff.
“What I will tell you is that I always try to make myself available,” he said.
Yet Jackson was given several months to correct problems on two campaign finance reports that would have reduced or eliminated some of his fines altogether and he didn’t, said Charles Reeves, an ethics board attorney.
“We spoke to [Jackson’s] attorney multiple times, and she assured us that [a report change] was forthcoming, and when we reviewed the investigation report, it had not been amended,” Reeves told the board.
One time, the ethics board staff reached Jackson by phone to talk about his inaccurate or late campaign finance reports, and Jackson said he could not talk because he was on his way to the gym. The state representative said he would call the staff back but never did, Reeves said.
By the end of Friday’s hearing, Jackson appeared frustrated and confused over the ethics board not further reducing his fines.
“I followed the staff’s recommendation, and I got here today only to find out that the recommendation that the staff gave me didn’t resolve the problem,” Jackson said. “I just want to be clear. What do I owe at this point and what is still outstanding?”
The board voted 10-0 to reduce two $2,500 fines by $1,500 each and 7-3 to keep the remaining five fines, totaling $4,720, the same.
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