Since 1991, NTUF has computed the legislative spending agendas of Members of Congress by analyzing the costs – and savings – of the bills that they sponsor and cosponsor as part of our BillTally research project. Our goal is to provide the public, and the media, with objective, quantifiable information on what Members would like to do with the tax dollars that are sent to Washington. To that end, taxpayers can look up their elected officials on our website, and see the cost of the bills they've supported.
Several years ago, we shared information about our BillTally database with Iowa’s Public Interest Institute (PII) to assist them with the creation of their own tracking system. They successfully got theirs up and running and now PII has just released its fifth annual Iowa Bill Tally. The report highlights the amount of total spending by the Members of the Hawkeye State’s Senate and House of Representatives during the recently completed 2012 legislative session.
As far as I know, this is the only state-level study like this. PII's Jennifer Crull notes that their goal is to inform taxpayers: “The more questions you ask, the more transparent the Legislators will want to make the government, since they will know that the public is watching.”
The 2012 report is available here, previous reports are here.