The state disclosure requirements are well intentioned, but they allow officeholders and candidates to report their financial interests vaguely enough to hide conflicts.
His financial disclosure form filed in Arkansas in May as part of the governor's race says only that in 2005 he made more than $12,500 — the maximum amount available to check off on the state disclosure form — from at least four different domestic-security-related ventures, not including the department itself.
Environmentalists in the United States argue that the states' disclosure requirements, while welcome, are inadequate.
Ms. Bondi, the Florida attorney general, for example, received nearly $25,000 worth of airfare, hotels and meals in the past two years just from events sponsored by the Republican Attorneys General Association, state disclosure reports show.
Though it's not clear how much of those penalties will ever be collected, or even who many of the original donors were, the effort demonstrates the importance of state disclosure laws and aggressive enforcement, particularly since Congress has refused to pay attention to abuses on a national level.
The Texas Public Utility Commission has been in the spotlight recently because of questions of whether its chairman, Max Yzaguirre, a former Enron executive appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, misrepresented his connections to the company on state disclosure forms.
That's an issue that could be important in determining whether the governor complied with state disclosure laws.
One thing that the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling did protect was disclosure provisions for all political spending, a decision that is leading lower courts to reject the multiple attempts to gut state disclosure requirements.
The net result was a halfhearted ethics overhaul that strengthened and expanded the reach of the state's disclosure rules but did not fundamentally threaten Albany's pervasive culture of influence-peddling.
Herring subsequently cleared Cuccinelli of violating the state's disclosure laws.
This legislative session, a new proposal by Sen. Hill would expand the state's disclosure law on stingrays to all surveillance devices, including facial recognition software, drones and social media monitors.
