INFLUENCE PEDDLING RUNNING RAMPANT
Probe finds states’ ethics laws laced with loopholes
In November 2014, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure that barred the state’s elected officials from accepting lobbyists’ gifts.
That hasn’t stopped influence peddlers from continuing to provide meals to lawmakers at the luxurious Capital Hotel or in top Little Rock eateries; the prohibition doesn’t apply to “food or drink available at a planned activity to which a specific governmental body is invited,” so lobbyists can buy meals as long as they invite an entire legislative committee.
Such loopholes are a common part of statehouse culture nationwide, according to the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, a datadriven assessment of state government by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. The probe found that in state after state, open records laws are laced with exemptions, and part-time legislators and agency officials engage in conflicts of interests and cozy relationships with lobbyists while feckless, understaffed watchdogs struggle to enforce laws as porous as honeycombs.
Take the Missouri lawmaker who introduced a bill this year — which passed despite a veto by the governor — to prohibit cities from banning plastic bags at grocery stores. The state representative cited concern for shoppers, but he is also state director of the Missouri Grocers Association.
In Delaware, the Public Integrity Commission, which oversees lobbying and ethics laws for the executive branch, has two fulltime employees. A 2013 report by a special state prosecutor found that the agency was unable “to undertake any serious inquiry ... into potential wrongdoing.”
These are among the practices illuminated by the State Integrity Investigation, which measured hundreds of variables to compile transparency and accountability grades for all 50 states. The best grade in the nation, which went to Alaska, is just a C. Only two others earned better than a D+; 11 states received failing grades.
The top of the pack includes bastions of liberal government, including California (ranked 2nd with a C), and states with corrupt pasts (Connecticut, 3rd with a
C-), where scandals led to significant changes.
The bottom includes many Western states that champion limited government, such as Nevada and Wyoming, but also others, including Delaware and dead-last Michigan, that have not adopted the types of ethics and open records laws common in many other states.
The results are “disappointing but not surprising,” said Paula A. Franzese of the Seton Hall University School of Law, former chairwoman of the New Jersey State Ethics Commission. Franzese said that as many states struggle financially, ethics oversight is among the last issues to receive funding.
There has been little progress on these issues since the State Integrity Investigation was first carried out in 2012. Since then, at least 12 states have seen their legislative leaders or top Cabinetlevel officials charged, convicted or resign as a result of ethics or corruption-related scandal.
No state has outdone New York, where 14 lawmakers have left office since the beginning of 2012 because of ethical or criminal issues, according to a count by Citizens Union, an advocacy group. GRADING THE STATES
The State Integrity Investigation examines the systems that state governments use to prevent corruption and expose it when it does occur, rather than measuring corruption itself.
The 2015 grades are based on 245 questions that ask about key indicators of transparency and accountability and examine both what the laws say and how well they’re implemented.
Journalists in every state scored each of the questions, which ask, for example, whether lawmakers are required to file financial interest disclosures, and also whether they are complete.
The results are both intuitive — an F for New York’s “three men in a room” budget process — and surprising — Illinois earned the best grade in the nation for its procurement practices. DOWNWARD TREND
Overall, states scored notably worse in this second round. Some of that decline is because of changes to the project, such as the addition of questions asking about “open data” policies, which call on governments to publish information online in formats that are easy to download and analyze. The drop also reflects moves toward greater secrecy in some states.
No state saw its score fall further than New Jersey. New Jersey earned a B+, the best score in the nation, in 2012 thanks to tough ethics and anti-corruption laws that had been passed over the previous decade in response to a series of scandals.
None of that has changed. But journalists, advocates and academics have accused the administration of Gov. Chris Christie of fighting and delaying potentially damaging public records requests and meddling in the affairs of the State Ethics Commission.
That’s on top of Bridgegate, the sprawling scandal that began as a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge but has led to the indictments of one of the governor’s aides and two of his appointees — one of whom pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. New Jersey dropped to 19th place overall with a D grade.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Iowa created an independent board with authority to mediate disputes when agencies reject public records requests.
Gov. Terry Branstad cited the state’s previous grade from the center when he signed the bill, and the move helped catapult Iowa to first in the nation in the category for access to information, with a C- grade.
In Georgia, good government groups latched on to the state’s worst-in-the-nation rank in 2012 to amplify their ongoing push for changes.
The result was a modest law the following year that created a $75 cap on the value of lobbyists’ gifts to public officials. The change helped boost the state’s score in the category of legislative accountability to a C-, sixth-best in the nation.
States continued to score relatively well in the categories for auditing practices — 29 earned Bor better — and for budget transparency — 16 got a B- or above.
Unfortunately, such bright spots are the exceptions. ACCESS DENIED
In 2013, George LeVines submitted a request for records to the Massachusetts State Police asking for controlled substance seizure reports at state prisons dating back seven years. LeVines, who at the time was assistant editor at Muckrock, a news website and records-request repository, soon received a response from the agency saying he could have copies of the reports, but they would cost him $130,000. Though LeVines is quick to admit that his request was extremely broad, the figure shocked him nonetheless.
“I wouldn’t have ever expected getting that just scot-free,” he said. But $130,000? “It’s insane.”
LeVines withdrew his request. The Massachusetts State Police has become a notorious steel trap of information — it has charged tens of thousands of dollars or even, in one case, $2.7 million to produce documents.
Dave Procopio, a spokesman for the State Police, said in an email that the department is committed to transparency but that its records are laced with sensitive information that’s ex- empt from disclosure and that reviewing the material is time-consuming and expensive. “We will not cut corners for the purpose of expediency or economy if doing so” could release information such as medical or criminal records, he wrote.
In Massachusetts, the Legislature and the judicial branch are at least partly exempt from state public records law. The Bay State earned an F for public access to information. So did 43 other states.
Though every state in the nation has open records and meetings laws, they’re typically shot through with holes and exemptions and usually have essentially no enforcement mechanisms, beyond the court system, when agencies refuse to comply.
Public officials charge excessive fees to discourage requesters. Often, citizens are unable to quickly and affordably resolve appeals.
“We’re seeing increased secrecy throughout the country at the state and federal level,” said David Cuillier, director of the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism and an expert on open records laws. “It’s getting worse every year.”
In January, The Wichita Eagle reported that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director had used his private email address to send details of a proposed budget to the private email accounts of fellow staff members and to a pair of lobbyists.
He later said he did so because he and the rest of the staff were home for the holidays. In May, Brownback acknowledged that he, too, used a private email account to communicate with staff, meaning his correspondence was not subject to the state’s public records laws. A state council is studying how to close the loophole. WEAK OVERSIGHT
Governments write ethics laws for a reason; public officials can’t always be trusted to do the right thing. The trouble is, a law is only as good as its enforcement, and the entities responsible for overseeing ethics are often impotent and ineffective.
In many states, a complex mix of legislative committees, standalone commissions and law enforcement agencies police the ethics laws. More often than not, the State Integrity Investigation shows, those entities are underfunded, subject to political interference or are simply unable or unwilling to initiate investigations and issue sanctions when rules are broken. Or at least that’s as far as the public can tell: Many operate largely in secret.
The Tennessee Ethics Commission, for example, rose in 2006 out of the ashes of an FBI bribery probe. In its decade of operation, the commission has never issued a penalty as a result of an ethics complaint against a public official (it did issue one to a lobbyist).
The dearth of actions is impossible to assess because the complaints become public only if four of six commissioners decide they warrant investigation. Of 17 complaints received in 2013 and 2014, only two are public.
“There just haven’t been that many valid complaints alleging wrongdoing,” said Drew Rawlins, executive director of the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, which includes the commission.
In Kansas, staff shortages mean the state’s Governmental Ethics Commission is unable to fully audit lawmakers’ financial disclosures, according to Executive Director Carol Williams.
The State Integrity Investigation found that in two-thirds of all states, ethics agencies or committees routinely fail to initiate investigations or impose sanctions when necessary, often because they’re unable to do so without first receiving a complaint.
“Many of these laws are out of date. They need to be revised,” said Robert Stern, who spent decades as president of the Center for Governmental Studies, which worked with local and state governments to improve ethics, campaign-finance and lobbying laws until it shut in 2011.
Stern, who is helping to write a ballot initiative that would update California’s ethics statutes, said that although he thinks the State Integrity Investigation grades are unrealistically harsh, they do reflect the fact that state lawmakers have neglected their responsibilities when it comes to ethics and transparency.
“It’s very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they don’t want these laws, they don’t want to enforce them, and they don’t want to fund the people enforcing them,” Stern said.