Center for Public Integrity shows lobby ties in each state

This table shows the percentage of legislators in each state who reported in 2002 a financial tie—through an employer, a personal business, a stock investment or a directorship—to a business or organization registered in 2001 to lobby their state's government.

State	Legislator Only Ties	Legislator & Spouse Ties
Texas	48.9%	52.3%
Virginia	39.0%	40.7%
Florida	38.1%	38.8%
North Carolina	37.9%	40.5%
California	33.3%	35.8%
Delaware	32.8%	34.4%
New York	32.8%	40.3%
Washington	31.9%	36.1%
New Jersey	30.0%	36.0%
Ohio	28.7%	28.7%
Alaska	28.3%	38.3%
Connecticut	27.6%	33.0%
Maryland	27.4%	28.5%
Minnesota	25.4%	25.4%
Utah	24.0%	25.0%
Nevada	23.8%	31.7%
Wisconsin	23.1%	27.7%
Indiana	23.1%	26.5%
Arkansas	22.6%	25.6%
North Dakota	22.6%	26.9%
Massachusetts	22.2%	29.4%
Nebraska	21.7%	21.7%
Arizona	20.7%	26.4%
Montana	18.6%	18.6%
Colorado	18.4%	20.4%
Kansas	16.0%	18.5%
Kentucky	15.9%	18.1%
Illinois	14.7%	15.3%
Oklahoma	13.5%	14.9%
New Mexico	11.7%	17.1%
Hawaii	11.1%	11.1%
Alabama	10.4%	13.3%
Oregon	10.2%	21.6%
Pennsylvania	9.0%	9.0%
Rhode Island	9.0%	11.3%
Iowa	8.7%	8.7%
Tennessee	8.7%	15.9%
West Virginia	7.7%	7.7%
Missouri	7.4%	12.6%
Georgia	7.3%	7.3%
Wyoming	6.9%	6.9%
Maine	5.4%	6.5%
Mississippi	3.8%	5.6%
New Hampshire	2.8%	3.0%
South Carolina	2.4%	3.0%
South Dakota	1.0%	1.0%
Louisiana	0.7%	0.7%

Louisiana issues legislation on ethical standars

A bill passed during a special session of the Louisiana State Legislature makes substantial changes in the state's financial disclosure standards, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

The new law, which takes effect in January 2009, will provide more information to the public about the personal financial interests of state legislators and public officials. The law earned 99 out of a possible 100 points on a survey used by the Center to rank public disclosure requirements for state legislators and puts Louisiana's law on par with the nation's best financial disclosure laws.

Two years ago, in the same survey, Louisiana's financial disclosure law earned 43 out of 100 points, ranking it in the bottom fifth of all states for ethics standards.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who took office in January, initiated the special legislative session, which focused on ethics reform. Jindal, a Republican, made transparency in government the centerpiece of his 2007 campaign for governor. He maintains that strengthening Louisiana's ethics laws will help the state attract investment and jobs.

In pushing for reform, Jindal has pointed to the Center's survey and similar yardsticks in arguing that Louisiana must achieve the "gold standard" in ethics. During the special legislative sessions, for example, the governor's staff distributed a 16-page document to lawmakers that explained how the Center's survey awards points.

Jindal's staff relied on the Center's methodology for ranking ethics laws as a jumping-off point in the governor's ethics proposals, Camille Conaway, a policy adviser, said. "We started with the ranking, then tried to go beyond that and see what other states were doing," Conaway told the Center. "We did our best to craft a bill that would make us a model."

The new law includes provisions that do not earn points in the Center's rankings. One, for example, requires public officials to disclose loans and other liabilities of more than $10,000.

According to Conaway, the governor's office plans to use improvements in rankings such as the Center's as tool to attract investors to Louisiana.

"Louisiana thinks, and it may be rightly or wrongly, that the nation views Louisiana as incredibly corrupt and therefore untrustworthy," G. Pearson Cross, a professor of political science at University of Louisiana-Lafayette, told the Center. "They think that nationally people will notice that Louisiana has cleaned up its act."

An earlier version of the bill would have required state judges to meet the same disclosure standards as legislators and public officials. The Louisiana Supreme Court has promised that it will upgrade its disclosure rules for the state judiciary to an equivalent standard by June.

In a letter to Jindal and Joel Chaisson II, the president of the state Senate, Supreme Court Chief Justice Pascal Calogero, Jr., said that he has "already begun the process of examining financial disclosure provisions adopted by other states with an eye towards amending our Code of Judicial Conduct," according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Judicial disclosure standards vary widely from state to state, a July 2007 Center report found.

Politico.com: Senators do not want to kill the golden eggs duck

It sounds like a joke, but it is not. The good old law makers will not kill their most valuable source of money and power, is a fact. Once again, while the attention of the public is in the presidential race, "Senate traditionalists and small state senators teamed up to crush the politically popular push to attach an earmark moratorium to the congressional budget resolution." (See more on Politico.com)

For those who are not familiar with the term "earmark".....

According to wikipedia "In public finance, an earmark is a requirement that all or a portion of a certain source of revenue, such as a particular tax, be devoted to a specific public expenditure. For example, in the United Kingdom a tax on televisions (known as the television licence) is directly allocated to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Earmarking bypasses the normal procedure by which tax revenue is pooled in a general fund and then allocated among various government spending programs as opposed to a specific program"

Critics argue the ability to earmark Federal funds should not be part of the legislative appropriations process [3]. Tax money should be applied by Federal agencies according to objective findings of need and carefully constructed requests rather than being earmarked arbitrarily by elected officials. Supporters of earmarks however, feel that elected officials are better able to prioritize funding needs in their own districts and states and that it is more democratic for these officials to make discreet funding decisions than unelected civil servants. Critics counter that elected representatives have too much of a vested interest in their own districts and do not have the Nation's interests as a whole in mind when making these decisions with taxpayer money.