In New Jersey, looking up the outside financial interests of a state legislator takes less than a minute. A few states away in Maryland, the process can take hours.

The difference? New Jersey offers online access to the financial disclosure statements filed by its lawmakers. Maryland requires anyone who wants to view legislators' forms to travel to Annapolis and obtain copies in person (see number 15 on the ethics commission's frequently asked questions regarding financial disclosure).

Beginning today, financial disclosure statements filed across the country in 2006 in most states will be available online at the Center for Public Integrity's Web site.

Click on a state below to access the only warehouse of its kind. Or, select a state at www.publicintegrity.org/iys and, under the "Documents & Databases" section, click "Legislator Personal Financial Disclosures." The Center has collected these documents since 2000 — more than six thousand filings each year — and posted them online. These documents can shed light on what personal interests might influence lawmakers' votes and legislation.

Forty-seven states require legislators to file some type of financial disclosure statement, listing private employment, investments and board positions, among other details. The Center is posting reports for all but four states — Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota and Delaware.

Montana and North Carolina have filing deadlines at the end of 2006, while North Dakota requires curious citizens to go county-by-county to obtain legislator filings. Delaware's legislative filings are en route. Center researchers continue to gather forms from these states and will post them on a rolling basis.

At least seven state governments made changes in 2005 to provide more information to the public on legislators' personal financial interests, a Center for Public Integrity survey of state disclosure offices has found.

With a nod to inspiring citizen trust in government, 47 states require legislators to inform the public on their activities outside the legislature, including their jobs and investments. Three states — Idaho, Michigan, and Vermont — do not require any such disclosure.

Georgia was found to have enacted the most substantive changes to its disclosure system. In an update of the Center's nationwide rankings based on a 2004 survey of states' public disclosure practices, the state jumped from 26th place to sixth for providing more information on legislators' personal finances. The state's new rules added 20 points to its rating, lifting the state's overall score on the survey to 81 out of 100 possible points.

Georgia state Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville, says disclosure "helps keep people a little more honest and gives a breath of fresh air" to the legislative process. As chairman of the state Senate's Rules Committee and traffic cop for legislation, Balfour played a key role in ensuring that Gov. Sonny Perdue's ethics proposals were voted on before the Georgia General Assembly's 2005 session ended. Just before midnight on the session's last day, the legislature passed House Bill 48, which updated the state's Ethics in Government Act.

Though some of Georgia's watchdog groups said the final version fell short of the intentions of the governor's original bill, the law — which took effect Jan. 9, 2006 — does require more public reporting of legislators' own personal financial ties. It also requires legislators to provide more information on their real property holdings and details about their spouses' employment, investments and board positions.

Ever wonder what outside financial interests a legislator in your state might have? Now you can find out with a couple of clicks of your mouse. Putting the country's government ethics laws to work, the Center for Public Integrity today made thousands of state legislators' outside interest disclosure filings available to online users.

Researchers at the Center collected nearly 7,000 personal financial statements state lawmakers submitted in 2004 to oversight agencies in the 47 states requiring disclosure. Three states-Idaho, Michigan and Vermont-do not require disclosure at all. Click on a state below to access the only warehouse of its kind.

A few states had filing deadlines at the end of 2004. Center staff are continuing to upload forms for those states, along with North Dakota, where legislators' reports are not collected in a central office. Also, South Dakota legislators did not report in 2004. Please contact the Center with any questions.

The Center will collect and post these filings on a rolling basis as reports become available across the country throughout 2005. Find out the deadline for your legislators.

Ranging in size from one page (New Hampshire's) to 59 pages (Florida's), these often-overlooked reports can be difficult to obtain. In Maryland, citizens have to drive to the State Ethics Commission's office in Annapolis to learn more about their lawmakers' outside ties.

Fortunately, 16 states now make their financial disclosure forms available on the Internet or electronically. Another 31 states require disclosure, but then file the papers away, making them hard to access.

Q: Why should the public care about the private financial interests of state lawmakers?

A: The public should care about the private financial interests of state lawmakers because what they don't know can hurt them. Lawmakers hold our lives in their hands, voting and making decisions every day concerning our pocketbooks, health issues, telecom issues - you name it and decisions are being made about every possible thing that affects our lives. If the public doesn't have enough information, then they are in the dark about the alliances legislators have with interests that are not in the public interest. Many have jobs on the side, interests on the side that could taint their decision-making ability. And the fact is that we know more about our toasters than we do our politicians, even though sometimes we get burned by both.

Q: How does the Center define a conflict of interest?

A: A conflict of interest happens when a lawmaker takes action to benefit a personal financial interest that might not be the same as the broad public interest. It's when legislators do the public's business and their personal business simultaneously while in office. Are they working in the public interest? If they are benefiting financially from their public actions as lawmakers, chances are it is a conflict.

Q: What is the difference between a potential conflict of interest and an actual conflict of interest?

"Our Private Legislatures" is a two-part project aimed at providing the public with detailed information on the private financial interests of the more than 7,400 lawmakers who control our state legislatures. The Center's State Projects began laying the groundwork for this project with the initial publication of its first-ever ranking of personal financial disclosure laws, "Hidden Agendas," in 1999.

The first part of "Our Private Legislatures" is a searchable database detailing state lawmakers' outside jobs, investments, directorships and closely held business interests in all 50 states. The site allows anyone in any part of the country to search by name, zip code, outside tie or industry to determine what interests their lawmakers hold and the potential conflicts those special interests present.

The second component of the project is an analysis of personal financial disclosure laws in all 50 states. The Center methodically evaluated financial disclosure laws nationwide and ranked the states using a survey based on filing requirements, content, access and enforcement. 

Constructing the database

Collecting state lawmakers' financial disclosure forms 
In the summer of 2002, Center researchers began collecting financial disclosure statements filed by almost 7,000 state lawmakers in the 47 states that require disclosure; Idaho, Michigan and Vermont do not. This process lasted almost one year, due to the various filing deadlines for forms covering the 2001 calendar year.

What should a lawmaker with personal stakes in a bill do when the time comes to vote on it?

The answer varies widely among the states and even differs between the House and the Senate in some, the Center for Public Integrity found in a survey of procedures for handling conflicts of interest during legislative votes.

Most states apply one of three rules when lawmakers face conflicts of interest.

The most common is simply to require that they abstain from voting.

The second most popular: Granting conflicted lawmakers explicit permission to abstain if that is their preference. Explicit permission is important because many states prohibit lawmakers from abstaining except in exceptional circumstances.

The third and least common approach is to require lawmakers to vote despite conflicts of interest.

To make things even more complicated, legislative chambers vary widely in the procedures by which they implement these rules. For example, in some chambers a lawmaker must request the formal permission of his or her colleagues to abstain, even when it is required by law. The purpose is often to review the reported conflict to make sure it is subject to the law.

Of course, a legislator can always avoid these dilemmas by not showing up for work on the day of the vote.

The Center also reviewed whether states require legislators to make a public report when they have a conflict of interest in a bill. All but three states require legislators to file general disclosures of their incomes once a year, but announcing a conflict in a particular issue as it comes up is a separate matter. In many states, legislators disclose the existence of a conflict but don't explain exactly what is causing it. Others require more detailed reports.

A two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found startling conflicts of interest and other flaws in the system of state government, affecting policy decisions on everything from education to nuclear waste, taxes to health care.

In 1999, state governments introduced 139,097 bills and enacted 25,031, according to StateNet, and collected more than $470 billion in taxes. All the while they operate under disclosure laws much less stringent than those that govern members of Congress.

Despite the power and money that flows through statehouses, 41 out of the 50 legislatures are run by part-timers who meet a few months each year, and draw salaries that average about $18,000 annually. (Full-time salaries are much higher, averaging about $57,000.) In the end, even some of the most populous states leave the public interest to career lawyers, bankers, farmers, lobbyists and insurance brokers in the legislature.

According to an analysis of financial disclosure reports filed in 1999 by 5,716 state legislators:

• More than one in five sat on a legislative committee that regulated their professional or business interest.
• At least 18 percent had financial ties to businesses or organizations that lobby state government.
• Nearly one in four received income from a government agency other than the state legislature, in many cases working for agencies the legislature funds.

The report is the culmination of an unprecedented study by the Center, a non-profit, non-partisan government watchdog group. Funding for this report came from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Deer Creek Foundation, Ford Foundation, Joyce Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Alida R. Messinger, and the Open Society Institute.

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed financial disclosure forms filed by state lawmakers in 1999. Because information filed in 1999 was for the calendar year 1998, we focused on the 5716 state lawmakers who were in office in 1998 for our examination of their and/or their family’s outside interests and activities.

Lawmakers holding the interests listed below may not necessarily have a conflict of interest. This exercise was intended to measure the potential for conflict in each state legislature.

State representatives and senators are elected to carry out the will of the public. But all across the country, lawmakers time and again are looking out for their own interests. Here are some examples of the most common ways this is achieved: