A nonprofit watchdog organization Monday called for Florida to broaden its financial disclosure requirements for public officials, saying current law provides for loopholes that invite corruption.

Integrity Florida said state lawmakers and the Florida Commission on Ethics should model changes on the state of Louisiana, which drew a top ranking from the Center for Public Integrity in 2009 for disclosure standards enacted under Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. Florida ranked 26th in the same report.

For starters, Integrity Florida executive director Dan Krassner said state ethics officials should post disclosure forms filed by public officials annually on the internet, so citizens can easily find them.

“If something’s not online, it essentially does not exist,” Krassner said.

Integrity Florida’s push comes on the heels of the ethics commission last week acknowledging that it is still awaiting disclosure forms from more than 4,000 public officials who failed to file by the July 1 deadline.

The commission also is digging in and refusing to dismiss as uncollectible $87,000 in fines that goes back more than four years and is considered beyond the panel’s authority to pursue.

Commissioners said they are hoping the Legislature will approve a measure next spring that extends the commission’s power. Florida’s disclosure laws were approved with a 1976 constitutional amendment. But the reporting requirements for public officials have not changed dramatically over the years even as the potential methods for gaining favors or hiding corrupt gains have become more sophisticated.

Integrity Florida, however, also is recommending that the Legislature enhance disclosure requirements to include more detail on public officials’ outside employment, nonprofit board membership, more information on a spouse’s net worth and more details about clients for those officials exmployed by professional or consulting groups.

“We still need more disclosure to know,” Krassner said. “Otherwise, Florida has increased its corruption risk.”

Krassner said more detailed information also should be demanded of legislators who work for lobbying firms. Integrity Florida found 11 lawmakers employed by organizations that lobby the Legislature, including Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, a lawyer with Gunster Yoakley & Stewart, and Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, employed by Weiss, Handler, Angelos & Cornwell.

Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, also lists Weiss, Handler as a secondary source of income on the disclosure form she filed earlier this month, although both she and Abruzzo also disclosed clients of the firm that have business before the Legislature.

Integrity Florida also said that lawmakers should tighten the standard for lawmakers required to disclose a possible conflict-of-interest when casting a vote. Legislators have as much as 15 days after each vote to file such disclosures with House or Senate officials. Such disclosures should be made before a vote, Integrity Florida said.

Only a dozen lawmakers disclosed 33 possible voting conflicts during the 2012 session, the organization found.

Lake Worth Democratic Rep. Jeff Clemens said Wednesday that he will run for state Senate next year — likely in a central Palm Beach County district he expects to be created in once-a-decade redistricting.

Clemens, a former Lake Worth mayor elected to the House last year, has seen the voters in his current district fragmented into as many as four proposed House seats under maps drawn by that chamber. Clemens loses a sizable chunk of his district to a proposed Hispanic-oriented seat that all five of the House proposals would create in the Palm Springs-Lake Worth area.

Although the Senate’s own plan for redrawing itself does not include the central Palm Beach County Senate district in which Clemens envisions running, the lawmaker said he thinks final maps will.

“I believe these maps that have been produced are unconstitutional and that subsequent amendments and court proceedings will change them dramatically,” Clemens said. “If the final maps create a Senate district largely east of (Florida’s) Turnpike in central Palm Beach County, I intend to run for the Senate.”

The Senate’s sole redistricting plan so far actually reduces from six to five the number of Senate districts that course through Palm Beach County.  But it does turn District 34, a Broward-Miami-Dade County district held by term-limited Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston into a Palm Beach County-dominated seat.

Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, is looking to run in that seat — if it endures.

“I have no intention of running against Joe Abruzzo,” Clemens said Wednesday.

Instead, Clemens expects either the Legislature — or the courts, under expected challenges — to draw the district where he plans to be a candidate next fall.

“Obviously, there are a lot of if’s to this,” Clemens said.

A pair of Palm Beach County Democrats are teaming with a Central Florida Republican senator to sponsor legislation aimed at teaching school children about the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Reps. Lori Berman of Delray Beach and Joe Abruzzo of Wellington are sponsoring the measure (HB 1027) requiring that Florida schools provide instruction on events surrounding the attacks and their longer-term impact on the nation. Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera, plans to sponsor the proposal in the Senate.

“The best defense of our nation is through the education of our children. We must teach the history of 9/11 to avoid a recurrence of these tragic events,” Abruzzo said.

Berman said events leading up to and unspooling after that day are a key part of the nation’s history. She likened the need for school children — who were infants, or born after the attacks — to understand the day’s meaning, the way others recall Pearl Harbor, 70 years after that attack.

“It is vital that our students, representing the next generation, understand the meaning of what transpired,” Berman said.