A new law to reduce the number of commercial truck permits the state requires might benefit the family business of the state lawmaker who pushed the measure.
Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, authored Senate Bill 260 even though her husband Jody owns a commercial trucking company that could gain from the bill. Her legislation allows truckers to purchase fewer $2,500 annual state permits for hauling heavy equipment. It takes effect Aug. 1.
Cloud said her husband’s company only has one truck that hauls heavy equipment and won’t be affected much by the new law.
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“It’s probably 5% of our business,” she said in an interview. “To say it would be a big benefit for me? It would not.”
When describing her legislation during a public hearing earlier this year, Cloud repeatedly referenced her family’s trucking company to explain why the new law would be beneficial. She told lawmakers the measure would resolve challenges her family’s business faced.
“We have trucks and this is what we do,” Cloud said at a Louisiana Senate transportation committee hearing earlier this year.
Under the current system, Louisiana’s Department of Transportation and Development typically allows the transfer of a heavy haul equipment permit from one truck to another within the same company only once per year. Cloud’s new law will allow that type of transfer to happen four times per year before a new $2,500 permit would have to be purchased.
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“Like for us, we have one designated truck. We have six to eight trucks in our fleet right now, and one designated truck that’s doing the oversized, overweight hauling,” Cloud said at the Senate hearing in March when she introduced the legislation. “If that one truck goes down, and we need to replace it with another truck in our fleet, this would allow us to be able to do that.”
In 2022, Jody Cloud Trucking LLC had a contract worth more than $500,000 with the Evangeline Parish Police Jury as well as more modest deals worth a few hundred to a few thousand dollars with Evangeline Parish Solid Waste, the Allen Parish Police Jury and the Village of Turkey Creek, where Heather Cloud previously served as mayor, according to state financial disclosure paperwork.
Her law will likely mean fewer expenses for truckers but also less money for the state. Last year, the transportation department generated $3.8 million selling more than 1,500 of heavy equipment haul permits. The money goes into the state’s transportation trust fund, which pays for road and bridge projects, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
Kimberly Fruge, a state financial analyst, wrote in a review of the bill that the proposed law will likely result in a decrease in revenue for the transportation trust fund.
Fruge couldn’t predict how many trucking companies would take advantage of the standards. In the unlikely event that every single eligible business did, it could reduce funding for the transportation trust fund by a maximum $1.9 million, she said.
That’s a small amount for the state transportation trust that was expected to collect over $600 million this year, but the truck permits serve a purpose other than generating money. They help the state track potential damage to local roads and bridges that comes from heavier loads and larger vehicles.
“Yes, in general heavier loads cause more damage to the roadway,” transportation department spokesman Rodney Mallett said in response to questions sent by a reporter. “The concept is that the cost of the permit offsets the cost of the damage to some degree.”
Ethics laws on elected officials’ family business conflicts are largely toothless
There are state laws that prohibit public servants from participating in government business where they have “personal substantial economic interest” or an immediate family member has an interest, but state courts have prevented the Louisiana Board of Ethics from enforcing them.
In 2007, the ethics board charged former state Reps. Jeff Arnold, D-New Orleans, and Alexander Heaton, D-New Orleans, with violating ethics laws by participating in legislative deliberations over the consolidation of the New Orleans Assessor’s Office. At the time, Arnold’s father and Heaton’s brother both served as elected assessors and would have been affected by the proposal to eliminate positions.
The state courts sided with Arnold and Heaton over the ethics board in 2008 and threw out the charges. Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeals said the ethics board could not reprimand a legislator for participating in such discussions. It would violate a provision in the state constitution that blocks a lawmaker from being investigated and punished “for any speech in either house,” the judges ruled.
Since that decision, the ethics board has filed no other charges against legislators who have brought forward or participated in discussion of legislation that might financially benefit them or their families.
Cloud said many of her legislative proposals, not just the trucking permit law, result from her own personal experiences and what she hears from constituents.
“Much of my legislation comes from having conversations with people in the trenches,” she said.
The legislation also had a few large business community backers including Entergy Louisiana, the Louisiana Loggers Association and the Louisiana Motor Transport Association, which represents trucking companies.
Cloud was a speaker at a Louisiana Motor Transport Association meeting on the Alabama Gulf Coast in July of last year. The organization covered her $1,000 hotel bill at The Lodge of Gulf State Park in exchange for her appearance.
Renee Amar, the trucking group’s executive director, said it’s only fair that Cloud, a person with expertise in trucking, be able to file legislation related to her family’s business like legislators who are attorneys can.
The trucking industry is currently in a battle with the state’s trial attorneys over lawsuit legislation. It often accuses the legislators who are lawyers of scuttling legislation to limit lawsuit awards, a measure they say is necessary to bring down trucking insurance costs.
“I’d love to see lawyers recuse themselves for every lawyer bill that comes up on the floor,” Amar said.
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