Study Finds That Majority of US States Are Hotbeds of CronyismBy Joshua Krause The study gave each state a letter grade based on their assessment of the existence, effectiveness, and accessibility (i.e. citizen access) of key governance and anti-corruption mechanisms through a qualitative and indicator-based research process. Only three states scored above 70%, including Alaska which scored the highest with 76%. The state of government transparency was found to be abysmal across the board, with several states even allowing entire branches of government to be exempt from open record laws. Even states that did have transparency laws, often failed to investigate ethics violations. 70% of the states have a clear conflict of interest on the matter, because their legislatures can vote on bills that involve their own transparency. In many cases, that alone appears to be the root cause of systemic corruption and limited accountability. According to Robert Stern, former president of the Center for Governmental Studies, Its very, very difficult for legislatures to focus on these things and improve them because they dont want these laws, they dont want to enforce them, and they dont want to fund the people enforcing them. Image Credit Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshuas reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshuas website is Strange Danger. The study gave each state a letter grade .. Only three states scored 70% is a letter grade? 