How Much Integrity Does Massachusetts Government Have?

Saturday, July 27, 2013

GoLocalWorcester News Team

A new look at government integrity has ranked Massachusetts in the top half of the country, but significantly below Louisiana, Illinois, New Jersey, and even Rhode Island.

The newly released BGA-Alper Services Integrity Index assesses each state's commitment in code and deed to "fight government corruption and compel public officials to be more open and responsive to the people," according to the report on the index. The new Massachusetts ranking for 2013 is #15.

Before the gasps of outrage on behalf of Bay State politicians overwhelm the dialogue, it should be noted that BGA's index "does not measure state corruption." Quite the contrary, it "evaluates what safeguards are in place against corruption." Four such safeguards were chosen and assessed by BGA:

Freedom of Information laws: Mandating public access to most government records and information;

Open-meeting act: Mandating public bodies meet and make most decisions in public rather than behind closed doors;

Conflict of interest laws: Mandating lawmakers publicly disclose their financial interests;

Whistleblower-protection laws: Mandating public employees be protected from retaliatory actions for exposing mismanagement, waste and fraud in their workplace.

Measuring government integrity

BGA's researchers assessed laws from June through December 2012, so any legislation passed after that isn't reflected in the index. And while the index does not measure state corruption, it measures states against BGA-researched "best practices" on a scale of 100 percent. The higher the score, the closer a state is to achieving best practice top standing.

To see how all 6 New England states fared on each of these measures, see the slides, below.

As the authors of the study point out, the more widespread and stringent application of these laws may in fact have come from a formerly corrupt state seeking to tighten up its conduct--does this explain Massachusetts's pallid performance compared to, let's say, Rhode Island, which topped the list at #1?

"The most logical answer is that the states with the worst reputation and sorriest histories of political corruption face the most public pressure to clean up their acts," said Andy Shaw, BGA President and CEO. "So they pass new laws and strengthen old ones to create a framework of integrity."

Jennifer Duffy: "Preventing history from repeating itself"

"Perhaps Rhode Island has learned from its colorful past and put laws in place in an effort to prevent history from repeating itself," said Jennifer Duffy, Senior Editor for the Cook Political Report in Washington, DC. Duffy spied the weakest link in the Massachusetts integrity picture: its lax laws regarding Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, standards.

"In looking at the metrics overall, improving Massachusetts' standing on the list is pretty simple: put better FOIA standards in place," Duffy said. Indeed, Massachusetts ranked #43 in the US for its score on Freedom of Information Act standards. But as the slides below show, Massachusetts is not the worst off in the New England--far from it. "It looks like both Vermont and Maine have a whole lot of work to do," she said. "It seems that they are in the basement when it comes to government integrity and transparency."

Holy Cross's David Schaefer: "Not terribly reliable

David L. Schaefer, Professor of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross, thought that the matrices themselves might not paint as valuable a picture. "The sheer fact, noted in the introduction to the report, that four of the six states top-ranked for 'integrity' - New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Louisiana - are commonly associated with corruption, suggests that the indices that this report uses for integrity are not terribly reliable," he said, adding that he would not "put much stock one way or the other" in Massachusetts's ranking at #15.

"Along with New York and Illinois in particular," he said, "Massachusetts has had some real corruption problems in recent years, for which it does not appear that the measures favored by the report's authors serve as reliable preventatives or remedies."

To see how each New England state performed in the BGA-Alper Index, see below.

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