It should not surprise anybody who has heard the name Rod Blagojevich that a study released Wednesday declared Illinois' government to be among the most corrupt in the nation.

The former governor, a Democrat, last year became the fourth Illinois governor or former governor to be convicted of corruption charges since 1970. Illinois trails only California and New York, states with much larger populations, in number of federal corruption convictions, according to the report published by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But because the report measures only criminal convictions, it misses all sorts of what researcher Jim Nowlan calls "legal corruption."

That would be the kind common in Missouri.

In the Show-Me State, there have been only 184 federal public corruption convictions in the past decade, compared to 492 in Illinois. But part of the reason for the disparity is that in Missouri, public corruption is practically built into the law.

Things will get worse before they get better.

That's because on Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a 2010 ethics law by ruling that it was improperly attached to an unrelated bill. It was a sound ruling, but it has negative consequences for taxpayers.

The highlight of the 2010 law was a provision that brought more transparency to campaign finance rules by limiting the shuffling of money among various political committees. It's bad enough that — unlike Illinois — Missouri politicians face no limits on campaign contributions, and no limits on lobbyists' gifts, but the pre-2010 rules also allow the sort of money laundering that makes it next to impossible to determine who is trying to buy influence.

In practical terms, that means that special interests that want to get tax breaks or otherwise influence lawmakers can spend as much money as they want on that process in Missouri, and they legally can hide their tracks.

Take former state Rep. Talibdin "T.D." El-Amin, D-St. Louis.

In September of last year, shortly after Mr. El-Amin had been released from federal prison on unrelated bribery charges, the Missouri Ethics Commission issued five scathing orders and a $500,000 fine to Mr. El-Amin over numerous violations of campaign finance law. Nobody paid much attention because Mr. El-Amin already had served his time, and ethics commission orders are worthless if no prosecutor wants to do anything about the allegations they contain.

Among the transgressions outlined in detail in the orders was that Mr. El-Amin used legislative district committees separate from his candidate committee to take donations from various sources and either move money around to conceal its original source or turn the donations into cash.

For instance, in 2007, Mr. El-Amin received a check from one legislative committee worth $11,750. A month later, he donated the identical amount to attorney general candidate Chris Koster, a fellow Democrat.

Was it the same money? That's hard to say because Mr. El-Amin received other donations, some of which he turned into a $15,000 check for himself.

Mr. Koster, now the attorney general, was quite adept in the 2008 election cycle of moving money among various political committees. Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of his chief political advisers filed the lawsuit that overturned the 2010 law.

Mr. El-Amin has faced no charges for this money laundering at the state level, in part because, under the pre-2010 law, much of it was legal, or at least quasi-legal, without a strong ethics commission and prosecutors willing to put their necks on the line.

Without the 2010 law in place, Missouri's ethics law is weaker. Lawmakers no longer will have to report within 48 hours any donations of more than $500 they receive during the legislative session. The state crime of obstructing an ethics investigation no longer exists. A candidate who owes thousands of dollars in ethics fines still can take office.

Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, on Friday rightly called for the Legislature to quickly pass a new, constitutional version of the 2010 law. We are not holding our breath.

At some point, voters in both Missouri and Illinois must take matters into their own hands. Lawmakers can't be trusted to police themselves. That's why Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, is pushing a proposal to change the state's constitution to allow voters to enact a strong ethics law through the referendum process.

Missourians already have that constitutional power, if only some well-funded and motivated group would take up the issue and clean up the state's system of legalized corruption.

Twice in Missouri's recent history, following multiple arrests of lawmakers, the Missouri Legislature passed tougher ethics laws. In both cases, of course, the final product was much weaker than what was proposed. And now, in Illinois, after the embarrassing national spectacle of Mr. Blagojevich's trial, politicians there at least appear to take ethics seriously.

"Corruption isn't funny and it is not free," noted the University of Illinois researchers in their corruption report. Various investigations cost taxpayers $500 million in the Land of Lincoln last year, and probably had a direct effect on the lowering of the state's bond rating.

"Voters may laugh at times at the antics of public officials," the researchers concluded, "but in the end, they feel powerless, lose their faith in government and vote less often because they believe the fix is in."

The solutions really aren't complicated. Money in politics corrupts. Reduce the flow of cash and make the tracking system truly transparent.

If lawmakers refuse to police themselves, voters should get the job done.