A new report has bad news about the accountability and transparency of state legislatures.
The Center for Public Integrity — a nonprofit news organization — released its 2015 grades for state integrity on Monday, and the results were not pretty. Alaska received the highest grade — a C. Connecticut and California each received a C-, and the rest received a D+ or lower. Eleven states received Fs.
The grades were based on nearly 250 questions about transparency and accountability. The questions fell into 13 categories, including public access to information, political financing, state budget processes, internal auditing, state civil service management and ethics enforcement agencies.
The report found that there are major exemptions for open records laws, many part-time state legislators have conflicts of interests and strong relationships with lobbyists, and ethics watchdog agencies are underfunded and inefficient.
The three categories that states scored worst in overall — public access to information, state civil service management and ethics enforcement — reflect those findings.









