#state integrity

In Missouri, a lawmaker who pushed through a bill that prohibited cities from banning plastic bags in supermarkets also happened to be the director of the state's Grocer's Association. New Mexico lawmakers passed a resolution that exempted their emails from public scrutiny. The governors of Virginia and Oregon, and house or assembly speakers in Alabama, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and New York were charged or convicted of corruption. There may be lots of good government laws, but corruption, influence peddling, and lack of government accountability are in fact very difficult to prevent across all 50 states.

That's according to the State Integrity Investigation, a sweeping project released today by the nonprofit investigative reporting group the Center for Public Integrity. The Washington, DC-based Center worked with experienced journalists in every state (but not the District of Columbia) to assess state government rules and systems that were in place between January 2013 and March 2015

State integrity news for North Carolina from SII partner WFAE:

Judicial elections are non-partisan, which means voters can't pick the easy way out and vote straight Democrat or Republican. But judicial candidates are also limited in what they can say about how they would rule in cases - so that makes it hard for voters to choose.

State integrity news for New Jersey, from the Newark Star-Ledger:

A State Police trooper pulls over a South Jersey assemblyman one day in February. The lawmaker tries to get out of the ticket, and later complains the trooper targeted him as payback because the Legislature voted to make public employees pay more for health and pension benefits.

The trooper says that after he refused to throw out the lawmaker’s ticket, his own union leaders pressured him to make it disappear as a favor to a "personal friend."