[Dick Cinnamon]

Prison, where Illinois governors go to retire.

[WashingtonSource]

This is idiotic. New York is the most corrupt state. Period. California is next. Illinois is next. Massachusetts in next. Louisiana is next. It’s all a matter of common sense.

[Cyman]

California. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[BBell]

I live in Louisiana and the state and the federal government have been hard at it the last decade or so going after corrupt officials. Jim Letten was so effective even the Obama administration did not release him. Mary Landrieu(D) even wrote to Obama asking the Justice Department to keep Letten on. Letten put away a lot of crooked politicians.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

By my measurement, this make LA the least corrupt, since they actually prosecute corrupt officials.

[Chickensoup]

Maine is one of those legally corrupt states. Run by plutocrats from out of state with trust funds and family monies, most of the state is owned by leftist trust babies. For Pete’s sake the largest paper is owned by a leftist’s boyfriend/husband chellie pingree. Her daughter is now working herself up the power ladder to grace our fair state with more totalitarian regulation.

[ptsal]

....clearly uninformed... look at California’s ranking....

[Alex Murphy]

Forbes recently published an article with their ranking for 2014. It has a similar (but differently ordered) list, based on different research. I've bolded the states which occupy top ten positions on both lists:

The researchers studied more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008 as well as patterns in state spending to develop a corruption index that estimates the most and least corrupt states in the union. Based on this method, the the most corrupt states are:

1. Mississippi [#7 on the Business Insider list]
2. Louisiana [#1 on the Business Insider list]
3. Tennessee [#17 on the Business Insider list]
4. Illinois [#16 on the Business Insider list]
5. Pennsylvania [#14 on the Business Insider list]
6. Alabama [#8 on the Business Insider list]
7. Alaska [#5 on the Business Insider list]
8. South Dakota [#3 on the Business Insider list]
9. Kentucky [#4 on the Business Insider list]
10. Florida [#19 on the Business Insider list]

....spending in these states was different than their less corrupt counterparts. According to the report, “states with higher levels of corruption are likely to favor construction, salaries, borrowing, correction, and police protection at the expense of social sectors such as education, health and hospitals.”