No, this time it’s not about funding for education. It’s about government transparency and accountability. The Center for Public Integrity has the report here. For public access to information we’re behind Mississippi.
Ian Kullgren has more in the Oregonian, here:
… A report released in August by the Washington, D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation gave Oregon’s lobbying laws an F for weak disclosure and expenditure reporting.
The report released Monday says ethics reforms signed by Gov. Kate Brown in July lack teeth to prevent abuses. One those bills sped up the timeline for investigating complaints, expanded the ethics commission from seven members to nine and gave legislative leaders a bigger role in the appointment process.
But the report says the ethics commission doesn’t have the authority to independently investigate complaints and says it lacks the staff and technical support needed to be effective.
The study takes aim at public records laws, observing that Oregon doesn’t have an independent agency charged with compliance. Last month, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum appointed a task force to review the law and propose changes. But those probably won’t come up for a vote in the Legislature until the next long session in 2017, a year later than Brown had planned.
Brown’s spokeswoman, Kristen Grainger, recently told The Oregonian/OregonLive that some changes could come sooner through executive orders.
Well, I’ve lived in quite a few states, and there’s no way I think that Oregon is 44th worst when it comes to government corruption.
Corruption, maybe not. Transparency and accountability, probably. Maybe Oregon has just been lucky so far because it doesn’t have oil fields or big defense contractors. There’s only so much corruption mileage you can get out of track and field.
Comment of the week.
I think you mean 44th best (or 6th worst). In your item about graduate rates, the UO should be 9th best (or 3rd worst).