Report: States Making Limited Progress in Using the Web to Enhance Public's Right to Know

State governments are improving their transparency practices, but many still aren't taking full advantage of the Internet to inform the public, according to a report entitled The State of State Disclosure released today by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First.
Online disclosure of economic development subsidies lags behind reporting on procurement contracts and lobbying, continued the report.

"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.
  

The report concludes by offering a set of policy options:

• Enhance disclosure to include data on outcomes. Subsidy disclosure should reveal how many jobs (with what wages and benefits) were created, and contract disclosure should indicate how well the vendor carried out its responsibilities.
• Enhance subsidy and contract disclosure to include data on the past performance of companies, including their track record on environmental and workplace issues.
• Combine disclosure about subsidies, contracts and lobbying with data on campaign contributions.