PANAMA CITY — At a time when governments are desperately searching for ways  to attract businesses and create jobs, they might be best advised to clean house  first, according to a new government watchdog group.

“I think corruption is the No. 1 job killer in this state,” said Dan  Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida.

Integrity Florida is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that launched in January  and has since made the news with various research reports calling for statewide  ethics reform and transparency at all levels of government.

“Our goal is a Florida that is the most open, ethical accountable government  in the world,” Krassner said during an editorial board meeting at The News  Herald on Monday.

Krassner and Integrity Florida Research Director Ben Wilcox have been  traveling the state meeting with newspapers and civic groups to introduce  themselves and fuel fervor for good government.

Florida has long struggled with ethics. The State Integrity Report, a project  examining the corruption risk of every state in the country and produced by the  Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International,  recently gave Florida a C- grade and ranked the state 18th in corruption risk.  According to Integrity Florida’s own report, Florida leads the country in the  number of public officials convicted of corruption charges each year.

That statistic is disappointing, but publicly disclosed corruption has a  silver lining, Krassner said.

“It creates a window of time you can push good government reform,” he said. “They (the government) work for us. They are our employees and we need to put  them on probation.”

The first step in solving the state’s blight is to push for transparency.  Progress is being made already, Krassner said, with Project Sunburst, an  initiative by Gov. Rick Scott that posts executive staff emails online; a pledge  from the Department of Economic Opportunity that economic development incentive  awards soon will be available online; and from CFO Jeff Atwater, who is leading  the charge to have government contracts posted online.

“This is how we can restore trust between the government and all of us.  Corruption doesn’t like the sunlight,” Krassner said.

The key will be momentum, and Krassner said every Florida resident should be  demanding transparency and accountability from their political candidates this  election season. A state with 19 million people should have 19 million  watchdogs, he said.

“I think the groundswell, ground-up ethics reform is the most important,” he  said. “… I think this could be fun to have a government by of and for the people  again.”