"The Internet makes possible unprecedented government transparency," said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy. "But many states have been slow to adopt vigorous online disclosure."
The study evaluates each state's disclosure Web sites in terms of criteria such as ease of searching and level of detail. "We see evidence that states are improving," said Philip Mattera, Research Director of Good Jobs First and principal author of the report. "Yet the average state gets only B- on contracts and C- on lobbying. On subsidies, the average grade is F. No state receives better than B across all categories."
Other findings:
- The states with the highest scores across the categories are Connecticut, Indiana, Nebraska and New York. The lowest are Wyoming, West Virginia and Alabama.
- Some states score high in certain areas but low in others. Kansas, Massachusetts and Washington get the highest score for contract disclosure and Colorado and Washington score 100 percent on lobbying disclosure, yet all five score 0 on subsidy disclosure.
- Every state offers some online lobbying disclosure and all but one offer some contract disclosure, yet there are wide discrepancies. For lobbying, disclosure ranges from mere rosters to Wisconsin's model system. For contracting, disclosure ranges from bare-bones contract award summaries to fully searchable databases in Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas and Washington.
