Corruption-rocked R.I. leads public integrity list - Providence Business News
TRENTON, N.J. - Rhode Island, New Jersey and Illinois, three U.S.
states notorious for crooked politics in the past, lead a survey ranking
the soundness of their anticorruption and transparency laws.
The Better Government Association, a Chicago-based nonprofit
organization that identifies waste and inefficiency, said those states
had the toughest rules in four areas: freedom of information, public
meetings, conflict of interest and whistle-blower protection.
The results reflected a poor collective performance, with all states
averaging 55 percent on a 100-point scale. The study identified a
“reality gap” between laws and enforcement, and suggested that states
with the worst reputations simply had more room to improve. While they
scored highest, all three top-ranked states rated barely passing grades.
“Our 50 states are failing the basic test of integrity,” Andy Shaw,
president and chief executive officer of the group, said by email. “Even
the states with the highest scores are below 70 percent.”
“States with the worst reputations and sorriest histories of political
corruption face the most public pressure to clean up their acts, so they
pass new laws and strengthen old ones to create a framework of
integrity,” the group said in the report. “That doesn’t mean that all of
the public officials in those states are following the new rules or
obeying the new laws.”
Montana last
Montana ranked last, scoring 28 percent, perhaps an indication that it
and other low-ranked states may not have “experienced rampant political
corruption and, as a result, they haven’t felt the need to pass tough
laws,” according to the study.
In 2009, a federal sting called Operation Bid Rig led to the arrests of
44 defendants in New York and New Jersey, many of them elected or
appointed public officials. Among the New Jerseyans who were convicted
or pleaded guilty were two mayors and a former assemblyman.
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