Election Central: Councilman Washington Remains Qualified to Run

    In a court hearing Tuesday before Judge Kelly in the 19th JDC the Louisiana Ethics Administration challenged Ralph Washington's qualification to run for central City Council.  The suit brought by the Ethics Administration maintained that Washington filed qualifying documents stating that he had no outstanding ethics fines.
    After learning of the lawsuit last Friday, Washington did pay the $700 ethics fines, but too late to avoid the request for disqualification.  Washington maintained that he had gone to the Ethics Administration in 2012 to ask that the fines be reduced, but that he never heard back from them so he assumed he did not owe anything.
    Judge Kelly ruled that this was not a case of an attempt to avoid paying the fines, rather a case of Mr. Washington believing that the matter had been resolved. The judge ruled that Washington can indeed run for City Council in Central's April 5th city elections.