Lt. Gov. Proud of State's Transparency; Yet State Earns 'F' Grade from Watchdog

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey is proud of the work the Tennessee General Assembly has done to make its legislative process transparent and open to the public since he took the state Senate’s highest office three years ago.

“Every committee meeting we have is video streamed,” Ramsey said.

This technology gives people with Internet access the chance to watch the legislative process both live and through an extensive video archive on the state Legislature’s Web site, he said. The video streaming is also about to gain the state some recognition.

Ramsey said the National Conference of State Legislatures is scheduled to honor the Tennessee General Assembly with an award for having “one of the best, if not the best” Web sites among state legislatures.

But one facet of the legislature’s transparency work is woefully lacking, according to The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group. The center gave the Tennessee Legislature’s financial disclosure process an “F” in a report released in June.

The Volunteer State got only 57.5 out of 100 possible points on the center’s review, ranking 34th out of 50 states studied in the report. The worst three states – Vermont, Michigan and Idaho – have no financial disclosure process at all.

“I don’t understand that, I really don’t,” Ramsey said when he heard about his state’s failing grade. “I don’t know what more they would want.”

They want more details, center spokesman Steve Carpinelli said in an interview last week. Specifically, Carpinelli said, the center wants Tennessee’s financial disclosure forms to contain more specific questions, like those common to disclosure forms from other states.

The Bristol Herald Courier and News Channel 11 Connects spent four months looking over the disclosure forms submitted by Northeast Tennessee’s state legislators and an almost identical set of questionnaires submitted by the region’s local officials.

The review yielded several examples of what can happen when disclosure form questions lack specific details and the body responsible for ensuring they are filled out properly lacks the staff to enforce the law.

For instance, Elizabethton School Board Member Rita Booher answered “Employer” when asked to list her and her spouse’s sources of income.

That was a far cry from Carter County Property Assessor Ronnie Taylor’s disclosure form, where he listed an exact dollar amount for the income he and his
spouse respectively get from Raytheon and Rainbow Realty.

Several other officials used the phrase “rental income” to describe the money they receive from property they own. Very few specified whether the rent was from a house or a business, and only one – state Rep. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol – provided an address for the rental property.

State officials admit they could do more to ensure local and state officials do a better job when filling out their disclosure forms.

Their biggest obstacle, they say, is they simply don’t have enough manpower to plow through the 7,500 forms coming their way each year, said Drew Rawlins, executive director of the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance.

Even if the bureau had the needed staff, the state’s disclosure forms would still fall short of The Center for Public Integrity’s goals.

Tennessee got 17.5 out of a possible 29 points on its employment section because the disclosure forms ask people to say only where they work and not what their position is, what their employment involves and how much they earn at their jobs. The state also missed points for failing to ask people to provide
their spouse’s names, list their real estate holdings and provide an approximate dollar amount for their investments.

While the content of Tennessee’s disclosure forms might be lacking, Carpinelli said, the Volunteer State does get points for making their content accessible to the general public, especially through the state’s use of the Internet as well as the database of disclosure form information managed through the ethics commission’s Web site at https://www.tennesseeanytime.org/conflict-app/search.htm.

“It’s a lot easier to go online rather than going to the Capitol,” Carpinelli said.

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518