BATON ROUGE, La. — The secretary of Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries resigned Friday amid a developing scandal that saw a former member of the state wildlife commission plead guilty to a federal bribery charge.
Jack Montoucet, who has not been charged with wrongdoing, released a statement saying he was stepping down "to return to the private sector.” That came after Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a brief statement saying he had accepted Montoucet's resignation.
“This is a job I honorably performed, resulting in increased revenue for the department and decreased costs for our taxpayers,” Montoucet said in the statement, which makes no mention of the federal investigation.
Edwards said the department's deputy secretary, former state Rep. Robert Shadoin of Ruston, would replace Montoucet.
Montoucet took the secretary post in January 2017, appointed by Edwards, a fellow Democrat. Prior to the appointment, Montoucet was a state representative, owned an alligator farm and served as chief of the Lafayette Fire Department.
On Monday, documents unsealed in federal court in Lafayette revealed that former wildlife commissioner Dusty Guidry had pleaded guilty in a bribery case stemming from his time working for the district attorney's office in Lafayette and as a member of the state wildlife commission.
Information in the court documents, first reported by The Advocate, shows Guidry worked with others to steer contracts to a vendor in return for money “and other tangible benefits.”
Guidry, who was appointed to the wildlife and fisheries commission by Edwards in 2019, pleaded guilty to two federal counts of conspiracy to commit the solicitation of a bribe and one count of bribery.
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