Recently, Governor PBJ touted the Center for Public Integrity assessment of the brand-spanking new ethics package passed by the Lege last spring on MSNBC:
"We've revamped ethics. Louisiana is now on the top of the list, according to the Center for Public Integrity"
Louisiana ain't on the top of the list, mainly because other states have also revamped their ethics packages since 2006, and the Center for Public Integrity hasn't rescored all 50 states in order to rank them. Here's what the Center for Public Integrity's blog, PaperTrail, has to say:
The Center's States of Disclosure project systematically ranked disclosure laws for state legislatures in 1999, 2004, 2005, and 2006. In these reports, our team evaluated every state's laws in order to compare them accurately. In 2008 the Center re-scored Louisiana's new ethics law when Jindal's substantial reform package made the changes a newsworthy event. The law certainly scored better on our survey than its predecessor, which ranked a dismal 44th. But other states have passed ethics reform since 2006, and since we didn't reevaluate every state's law, our report was careful to say that Louisiana's law was only among the best.
That means that it's not "the strongest law in the nation" (Jindal to his state legislature, March 9), "ranked... number one by the Center for Public Integrity." (Jindal to the Southwest Daily News, March 20) or "first in the country" (Jindal in The Wall Street Journal, August 29). Again, it's a good, strong law, Guv, and we sure appreciate you name-dropping our humble little shop. We just hope you can settle for being one of the best, just not necessarily the very, very best
Gee whiz, Guv. I wonder what would happen if Center for Public Integrity ever scored the actual implementation of Louisiana's new ethics laws ... considering that it took you nearly 9 months to have a functioning Ethics Board, Guv.
