One of the brightest local politicians I’ve met in two decades of watching state and local government was Bob Janiszewski, the county executive of Hudson County, N.J., and one of the state’s top Democrats.

What I didn’t know, back when Janiszewski gave me a brilliant civics lesson in what it’s really like to run a large urban county government, was that he was on the take. In 2001, he abruptly resigned his post, disappeared for a time and then was indicted for taking more than $100,000 in bribes in exchange for county contracts, plus evading taxes. Last year, he was sentenced to 41 months in prison — a long term considering that the U.S. attorney had recommended leniency because of his “enormous cooperation” in helping to convict six other county officials and vendors.

As Washington sweats its way through the Jack Abramoff scandal, at least it can take solace in the fact that it isn’t alone. Of course, Hudson County (think Jersey City) has a rich tradition of this sort of scandal. But this has been a bad time for public ethics in every region. If you watch the stories flow in from coast to coast, you have to think that we’re in the midst of a wave of public corruption washing up and down the political food chain.

Former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland recently finished a 10-month sentence for accepting personal favors for state contracts. Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was convicted on 18 counts of corruption last April. Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, with as much of a Boy Scout image as any politician, was fined $4,000 for failing to report gifts (such as golfing fees) from people doing business with the state. Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher was indicted in May on three misdemeanor charges for hiring state employees for political purposes rather than on merit, as state law requires.

Similar charges plague Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. More than two dozen city employees have been charged in a federal investigation of patronage and bribery there. Most have pleaded guilty.

In May, a Dane County circuit judge sentenced Wisconsin’s former Assembly Speaker, Scott Jensen, to 15 months in jail for having aides do campaign work on state time.

And then there’s San Diego, which has shattered California’s pretense of clean government. Corruption in the city has been rampant. It was the congressional home district of Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who was convicted of accepting all kinds of bribes for legislative favors. One mayor resigned under duress because of a public pension scandal, only to have a successor last only hours in the job before he and a fellow councilman were charged, and eventually convicted, of helping out a strip-club operator.

Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia drew the full circle when he told the San Diego Union-Tribune: “If this were a New Jersey city, the story would be buried on page B-10, because scandal and corruption are so endemic in the Garden State. There are so many mayors and council members convicted in New Jersey, you can’t keep count.”

Well, move over Bob Janiszewski and New Jersey. San Diego has been bad, but it isn’t the only political corruption story working in the state. Just last month, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, who has developed a national reputation as a creative and progressive leader on issues such as affordable housing, was indicted on seven counts of bribery, conspiracy and misappropriation of public funds, to help out — of all things — a garbage contractor. The Garden State has nothing on the Golden State.

I could fill 10 more columns with these dismal stories. These days, Washington stinks, but the rest of the nation isn’t far behind.

So does that mean our political culture has become more corrupt? It’s a difficult question. The FBI is trying to take credit for a significant increase in prosecutions of public malfeasance, but only after adding 200 agents to the effort in the past two years. So is there really more corruption or just more diligent prosecution? If you look back a dozen years or more at, say, conviction rates, the increase hasn’t been all that impressive.

Here are some thoughts: The rules political leaders must live by are far more stringent, the prosecutors are more aggressive and there is much more at stake. All that means that public officials, because of the significant increase in outsourcing to the private sector, are making decisions that involve a lot higher stakes than trash hauling. It’s not by chance that the top procurement operative in the White House has just been convicted in the Abramoff scandal, or that the Air Force’s top procurement official went to federal prison last year for negotiating a job with the Boeing Co. from her desk at the Pentagon. It’s an inevitable consequence of the privatization of so much public activity.

What’s the lesson? “Unless and until the state, city and county learn there are victims of corruption,” warned Patrick Collins, the federal prosecutor who directed the government’s case against Ryan in Illinois, and “unless and until people who vote understand that there are important consequences in their public officials’ acts of dishonesty, this system will not change.”

Peter Harkness is editor and publisher of Governing magazine, published by Congressional Quarterly Inc.