Government

CPI Tracks Conflicts of Interest of State Legislators

The Center for Public Integrity has collected and released financial disclosure reports from 6,933 state legislatures nationwide, including 140 from Alabama, as part of an investigative report on lawmakers’ conflicts of interest.

The study found that at least 76 percent of state lawmakers throughout the U.S. have outside income or employment. The report includes numerous examples of lawmakers promoting their own private financial interests through legislation.

Alabama is one of 31 states that makes its legislators’ financial disclosure forms available online; the Center for Public Integrity has compiled them into a searchable library.

The CPI’s report does not include any examples of Alabama lawmakers’ conflicts of interest. But the level of detail included on these forms varies from state to state; Alabama’s form requires less detail than many other states.

For example, the form for Oliver Robinson, the former state representative from Birmingham who pled guilty to federal bribery, conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges, does not include any mention of the Oliver Robinson Foundation, through which he is charged with receiving money from the law firm Balch & Bingham. Most of Robinson’s form responses a simple “not applicable.”

You can find the financial interests of all Alabama state legislators here.