A new list puts Tennessee eighth in the nation for government transparency and accountability. But that high ranking is despite a score for the state that’s hardly stellar.
The study was carried out by Global Integrity, which evaluates governments worldwide, and the investigative reporting agency Center for Public Integrity, or CPI.
It looked at what laws are on the books to prevent corruption and how states actually carry them out.
Overall, Tennessee earned just a C. But the CPI’s Nathaniel Heller says that was enough for a top ten ranking because no state did very well.
“The top of this list is just sort of a beauty pageant where not everybody is particularly pretty to start with, but it does say that something’s working.”
Tennessee did get high marks for the quality of audits performed by the Comptroller’s Office. The state was also deemed to have the nation’s best measures for making sure leaders don’t have a conflict of interest.
In 2005, legislators were caught taking bribes in Tennessee Waltz corruption sting. But the researchers say most states that did well have had exactly that sort of problem in the past. In many cases, the laws that earned high marks were enacted in response to scandals.
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