Combine best of disclosure rules for greater transparency

In Tennessee, the financial disclosures of officials are funneled into a single agency, accessible electronically and skimpy on details.

In Virginia, the disclosures are more robust, but accessing them requires in-person visits or requests for copies, which are not free.

Each state flunked a national transparency exam by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog organization. Virginia, which a decade ago ranked as the eighth most transparent state on the list, has slipped to 31st place; Tennessee clocked in at 34th.

Yet their proximity low on the national list belies their substantial differences. Combining the most stringent disclosure provisions of each state would yield a system that demands more specifics on income and wealth, backs up the law with an enforcement mechanism and publishes the disclosures online.

A fusion of the most transparent qualities of Virginia and Tennessee would merit a “C” on the Center for Public Integrity’s scale, vaulting into a tie for the 13th most transparent state, between Connecticut and Arkansas, according to a Bristol Herald Courier analysis of the center’s scoring.

Alone, the border states are like a yin and a yang of disclosure requirements, each accentuating the incompleteness of the other.

The Virginia lens
Some lawmakers have eschewed the center’s transparency scoring.

“I don’t understand that, I really don’t,” said Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, who is fond of touting his state’s record on transparency since he became speaker of the Senate.

“I have a real estate and auction business. I don’t know what more they would want.”

True, Ramsey’s disclosure listing his business interests is visible to anyone with an Internet connection. But glimpsed through the filter of what Virginia requires of similarly situated officials, Ramsey’s statement is bare bones.

If he were in Virginia, not only would Ramsey have to state his sources of income and list his business interests, he would have to describe each, and report how much gross income he receives annually from each business: between $10,000 and $50,000; between $50,001 and $250,000; or more than $250,000.

In Tennessee, Ramsey simply is required to name his business and list “rental properties.”

As for the professional services Ramsey provides – he lists “law, auctioneer, real estate broker” – Virginia would require him to describe his clients and report how much he is compensated: $1,000 to $10,000; $10,001 to $50,000; $50,000 to $100,000; $100,001 to $250,000; or more than $250,000. In Tennessee, there is no room for indicating such value.

Similarly, Virginia requires officials to assign rough values to their investments and debt. Officials also are required to report all real estate holdings assessed at $10,000 or more, regardless of whether they produce income.

Virginia also provides a fuller picture of an official’s financial interests, from the industries they serve to the names of their spouses and dependents.

But the full picture is not always easy to see in Virginia, where disclosures are available only in hard copy, and are filed in the cabinets of multiple state bodies and local boards across the commonwealth. Sometimes, the full picture isn’t even there.

The Tennessee Lens
If the constituents of Virginia Sen. Philip Puckett, D-Lebanon, want to review his financial disclosure statement, they must travel more than 300 miles to the state Senate offices in Richmond, or request that the clerk mail copies at 50 cent per page.

If he were in Tennessee, Puckett’s disclosure – and that of all local and state officials – would be a few clicks away on a state database archiving 7,500 forms.

Still, Puckett’s constituents can be reasonably confident that another pair of eyes has examined his statement for completeness: both the Virginia Senate and House of Representatives have a bipartisan subcommittee that scrutinizes the statement of each member in their respective chambers.

“I’m held accountable,” Puckett said. If there’s anything out of order, “the Senate clerk calls you real quick.”

So Puckett, who has never held office except in the Senate, was surprised to learn that the same scrutiny does not apply to other state and local officials in Virginia, including judges, sheriffs, prosecutors, treasurers, county supervisors and school board members.

The blank pages, unchecked boxes and contradictory statements on the disclosures forms of such officials are screened by no one, curtained off from all but those who specifically seek them out. Sometimes, an official fails to file a disclosure statement and no one notices, the Herald Courier found in a review of nearly 300 disclosure statements filed by officials in Southwest Virginia.

In Tennessee, anyone with an Internet connection can see when a public official fails to file a disclosure. And that state has penalties when an official files late: Tennessee can fine officials $25 a day after notifying them of their noncompliance; if 35 days pass after the notice and an official still has not filed a disclosure, the state can levy a $10,000 penalty.

Though 58 officials in Northeast Tennessee filed late, most filed shortly after the deadline. Not so in Southwest Virginia, where several county supervisors and seven judges and substitute judges filed at least four months after the deadline. One substitute judge did not file until July – seven months after the deadline. Another opted not to file at all, without advising anyone he planned to resign his post.

Far from full disclosure
Even the sum of the most transparent qualities of Virginia and Tennessee falls well short of the A standard. Notably lacking in both states is a uniform, functioning mechanism to ensure that officials comply with disclosure laws.

Tennessee comes closest: the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance does review each disclosure submitted by local and state officials, flagging them for glaring errors or omissions. But the bureau’s staff enters the information into a database to study compliance; it does not pass them along to the state attorney general, who can enforce violations of the law. Many Tennessee officials who filed incomplete forms assumed they were sufficient because they did not hear back from the state.

Virginia, with the exception of General Assembly members, does even less to ensure compliance. The Secretary of the Commonwealth simply collects and stores disclosure statements, without any screening for compliance or timeliness. And at the local level, the practice varies from board to board. There are no penalties for filing late, and though knowingly violating the law is a misdemeanor, that is a hefty burden for prosecutors to meet, experts say.

On the point of enforcement, Tennessee and Virginia lawmakers sometimes speak with one voice.

Tennessee House Speaker Kent Williams, R-Elizabethton, while defending the forms as going “far enough,” expressed concern on the lack of oversight.
“That’s why we have the laws and that’s why we have the commission to check on them,” he said, referring to the former Tennessee Ethics Commission, which has been folded into the new Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. “Why even have [the laws] if we don’t check? It’s no use forming special commissions if we’re not following through.”

In Virginia, Puckett echoed that sentiment, saying that all levels of government could benefit from an oversight committee that screens disclosures for compliance.

“If that’s a statutory requirement, then someone ought to be overseeing that,” he said. “If we don’t do that, why do we even have it on the books?”

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558