By Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica
Additional reporting provided by Nick Reynolds and Anna Wilder, The Post and Courier; Yasmeen Khan, The Maine Monitor; Lauren Dake, Oregon Public Broadcasting; Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth; Louis Hansen, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO; Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor; Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune; Alyse Pfeil, The Advocate | The Times-Picayune; and Shauna Sowersby, The Seattle Times.
In Virginia this year, a legislative committee killed a bill that would have required lawmakers to disclose any crypto holdings. In New Mexico, the Democratic governor vetoed legislation that would have required lobbyists to be more transparent about what bills they were trying to kill or pass. And in North Dakota, where voters who were galvanized by a group called BadAss Grandmas for Democracy established a state ethics commission nearly seven years ago, lawmakers continued a pattern of limiting the panel’s power.
At a time when the bounds of government ethics are being stretched in Washington, D.C., hundreds of ethics-related bills were introduced this year in state legislatures, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures’ ethics legislation database. While legislation strengthening ethics oversight did pass in some places, a ProPublica analysis found lawmakers across multiple states targeted or thwarted reforms designed to keep the public and elected officials accountable to the people they serve.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers tried to push through bills to tighten gift limits, toughen conflict-of-interest provisions or expand financial disclosure reporting requirements. Time and again, the bills were derailed.
With the help of local newsrooms, many of which have been part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, we reviewed a range of legislation that sought to weaken or stymie ethics regulations in 2025. We also spoke to experts for an overview of trends nationwide. Their take: The threats to ethics standards and their enforcement have been growing.
“Donald Trump has been ushering a new cultural standard, in which ethics is no longer significant,” said Craig Holman, a veteran government ethics specialist with the progressive watchdog nonprofit Public Citizen. He pointed to Trump’s private dinner with top buyers of his cryptocurrency and the administration’s tariff deal with Vietnam after it greenlit the Trump Organization’s $1.5 billion golf resort complex; and he said in an email it was “most revealing” that the White House “for the first time in over 16 years has no ethics policy. Trump 2.0 simply repealed Biden’s ethics Executive Order and replaced it with nothing.”
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit that pushes for ethics enforcement, documented the risks and challenges that specifically confront state ethics commissions across the country. Such commissions have a range of mandates, but they often enforce lobbying, campaign finance and conflicts of interest laws. In the center’s 2024 Threat Assessment report, it warned that “those who want to weaken ethics commissions are becoming more creative with how they approach their attacks, and all commissions should be battle ready.”
Delaney Marsco, the center’s director of ethics and the report’s lead author, told ProPublica, “Any attempts to chip away at ethics commission authority is actually just chipping away at the public’s right to know what’s actually going on in their government.”
Louisiana passed a law significantly weakening ethics standards by making it harder for the state Board of Ethics to launch and conduct investigations. The law raised the bar on when the 15-member board could launch its own investigation from “reason to believe” to “probable cause.” And where the board had been required to investigate any sworn complaint it received, now two-thirds of its members must agree probable cause exists before opening an inquiry.
The law, which had overwhelming bipartisan support, targets the processes that resulted in ethics charges against then-Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now the governor; the private lawyer defending him against those charges helped craft the legislation. The ethics commission dropped the charges last month as part of a settlement deal.
Sponsoring Rep. Beau Beaullieu, a Republican, said that checks on the board’s power were needed in response to overzealous enforcement actions.
But more often, legislators stood in the way of ethics reforms.
In South Carolina, a sweeping Statehouse corruption probe during the 2010s led to the convictions of several legislative leaders and to the passage of a number of ethics reforms. “It’s been radio silent ever since,” Sen. Sean Bennett, a Summerville Republican who chairs the chamber’s Ethics Committee, told The Post and Courier. “There’s been attempts to do things, but they just have not gotten a lot of traction.”
And this year, legislators there moved in the other direction, introducing a bill that would have exempted government appointees from having to file statements of economic interest. These statements, required for all elected officials, most candidates for elected office and certain high-profile public figures like commission members or school district employees, include the disclosure of everything from an individual’s income sources and gifts received from special interests to any property or business interests in their name.
Sponsoring Rep. Mike Burns, a conservative Republican from the college town of Tigerville, argued the bill would help protect nonpaid appointees, who he said end up with fines because they often don’t know how to correctly file.
But in an interview with The Post and Courier, Rep. Roger Kirby, a Democrat from Lake City, pushed back. “Transparency is what the goal is, right? Why would we try to back away from that?”
South Carolina has two-year sessions, and the bill remains stalled in committee.
And in another example of legislation that sought to weaken reform, the leader of Oregon’s Senate Republicans at the time, Daniel Bonham, made a Hail-Mary effort and introduced a measure to dissolve the state’s ethics commission and allow state agencies to police themselves. The measure didn’t get out of committee, which, Bonham acknowledged in an interview with Oregon Public Radio, was what he expected. Still, Bonham said he believes the ethics commission is “feckless” and its effectiveness and purpose merit “robust public debate.”
Across the country, even when some legislators did attempt to push forward ethics reforms, their efforts were largely blocked:
Virginia: Office holders would have been required to disclose digital assets, specifically defined as cryptocurrency, on their state ethics submissions. The disclosure would have been mandatory for any employee or elected official required to file a statement of economic interests with the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council. Among those covered: the governor, cabinet members, General Assembly members, state officers and employees, judges and constitutional officers. The bill’s sponsor argued that without public disclosure, Virginia lawmakers, cabinet officials and judges who own digital currency could have potential conflicts of interest in creating new laws and regulating the industry. But the bill failed amid bipartisan opposition. Several lawmakers questioned whether it would open the door to further disclosure requirements.
Texas: Multiple state lawmakers filed legislation to combat misinformation and disinformation in political ads and to make it clearer who was paying for ads that might contain altered images or audio. The legislation followed a bruising 2024 primary campaign in which former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, faced a barrage of false and misleading ads. One featured Phelan’s face superimposed over that of U.S. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was shown hugging former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Related bills failed in both the House and Senate, where opponents dismissed arguments that voters were struggling to determine fact from misinformation. Conservative critics of the measure cited free speech concerns, among others.
North Dakota: Legislators stopped efforts to give more power and resources to the state’s ethics commission, which a successful ballot initiative created nearly seven years ago. The commission sought more freedom over how and when it conducts investigations, including the ability to carry out investigations even when no formal complaint was filed. Commission staff said the requirement for formal complaints dissuades some people from coming forward. But opposing lawmakers, nearly all of them Republican, said the measure lacked sufficient checks and balances on the commission’s power, echoing strong opposition from the governor and attorney general.
New Mexico: Democratic legislators made two runs at transparency. The first required lobbyists to disclose bills and their position on those bills within 48 hours of starting that lobbying or changing position. The legislation passed but was vetoed by the Democratic governor, who said the bill lacked clarity and the reporting window was too restrictive. Another ethics bill aimed to prevent nonprofits making independent political expenditures from exploiting a loophole in a 2019 campaign finance law requiring them to publicly disclose donor names, addresses and contribution amounts. That bill was ultimately killed under pressure from nonprofits that feared its effects.
Connecticut: The Office of State Ethics sought to expand conflict-of-interest provisions to prevent state officials and employees from taking official actions, such as awarding contracts, that would benefit their private employers or the private employers of their spouses. The bill also would have required public officials to recuse themselves if they have “actual knowledge” that the companies for which they or their spouses work would benefit. The legislation stalled, as it has repeatedly over the last decade and a half. This time, the office’s executive director, Peter Lewandowski, said objections came from those who argued that requiring lawmakers to recuse themselves because a vote might benefit a spouse’s private employer was too punitive.
Maine: A bill died in committee that would have required state legislators to disclose donations made to an organization by lobbyists or lobbyist associates on behalf of a legislator. Supporters, including sponsoring Sen. David Haggan, a Republican, said the bill would have increased transparency and also would have allowed the public to determine how prevalent the practice is. Critics called it impractical and questioned its necessity. The bill “adds a level of complexity that is not warranted by any behavior that anyone has been able to cite specifically,” said Sen. Jill Duson, a Democrat, who voted against it.
But ProPublica’s analysis did find some states, both red and blue, that had successfully enacted reforms. For example, in Maine, a bipartisan push for a waiting period of one year for legislative staff who want to become lobbyists won overwhelming support. Rhode Island’s Democratic legislative supermajority and its Democratic governor agreed on a prohibition against bid-rigging for state contracts. And in Oklahoma, lawmakers went so far as to overturn the governor’s veto to make self-dealing by government officials a felony offense, punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to five years in prison. The governor said in his veto message the legislation would “create excessive bureaucracy with little meaningful impact.”
In Washington, legislators put into law a preexisting state requirement that lawmakers report on their financial disclosure forms any interest greater than 10% in a company or property. Though the bill was framed as a cleanup measure, critics pointed out that local officials are held to a much stricter standard. Local officials must disclose any financial interest greater than 1% when voting on a public contract and must recuse themselves.
What if “a real estate company offers a legislator a 5% interest in property that might benefit from a state project such as a highway interchange?” Rep. Gerry Pollet, a Seattle Democrat, asked in an example reported by The Seattle Times.
The 10% standard, he said, “undermines trust in the Legislature.”
This story was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. New Mexico In Depth is part of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network and collaborated on this story. It was republished with permission.
Transparency Denied
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham vetoed a bill in April that would have helped New Mexicans keep track of what bills lobbyists were trying to kill or pass.
House Bill 143, sponsored by Rep. Sarah Silva and Sen. Jeff Steinborn, both Democrats from Las Cruces, proposed a law making lobbyists publicly report the bills they worked to support or defeat during the session.
Lujan Grisham wrote in her veto message that HB143 needed work and that she looks forward to “working with the Legislature in the next session on a bill that really adds transparency and accountability.”
It’s unclear how many lobbyists asked Lujan Grisham to veto the bill, because currently, New Mexico does not require lobbyists or the governor to file such reports. What bills lobbyists are trying to influence or their positions on them are largely unknown to the public.
“It’s ironic that HB143 would have given us information about who lobbied the governor to veto this bill—and without it, we have no way to know,” Silva said in a statement last April. “Her veto demonstrates the need for the very legislation she killed today.”
Lujan Grisham, in her veto message, said the bill would be “onerous” on lobbyists because of the 48-hour requirement “irrespective of weekends and holidays.”
Lujan Grisham concluded by saying she thought that elected officials with a “donor base” — like legislators and governors — should also disclose when their positions change.
Dave Cathey
