While national debate in the United States continues over financial disclosure practices for federal officials, personal financial disclosure for state and local officials remains an under-studied area also in need of more sunlight and scrutiny.

This research project scores each U.S. state based on relevant disclosure policies and practices. This score is also integrated with other related measures to assess overall transparency around potential conflicts of interest by public officials. We also compute levels of corruption in each state to situate the transparency data in meaningful context, providing a unique, data-driven perspective on the current ethical climate in each state.

The project is a collaboration of IDV’s faculty Pedro Cruz, Graduate student Irene De La Torre, and the department of journalism faculty John Wihbey, Mike Beaudet.