Following a successful race, the new governor urged his staff to draft a Code of Governmental Ethics. The initial bill, passed in 1964, was among the first of its kind in any state and was considered one of the strongest in the country for a number of years.

However, other states drafted their own ethics laws and built upon them, passing additional key reforms over the past several decades while Louisiana often failed to keep pace. Moreover, during this same period more than 100 exceptions to the Louisiana Code were passed into law, reducing the consistency and reach of our governmental ethics laws despite some important advances in areas such as campaign finance (1980) and executive branch lobbying regulation (2004). More than forty years later, our Code lacks key provisions that are now standard throughout much of the country, such as extensive personal financial disclosure for legislators. In 2003, The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) ranked Louisiana 44th in the country in this area of ethics law due to the unusually narrow scope of our disclosure requirements.

Once on the leading edge of governmental ethics, Louisiana has fallen behind, ranking 46th overall in a 2002 broad-based nationwide review by the Better Government Association (BGA). Louisiana's Code of Ethics is one of the oldest in the country, but our state has not been on the forefront of governmental ethics laws and enforcement for a long time.