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Atlanta fire inspectors write few citations

A review of city fire inspection records by Jill Young Miller of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shows that Atlanta nightclubs have been permitted to operate "even when legally required sprinklers were broken or hadn't been inspected." City inspectors often issued warnings to clubs but usually don't cite them for violations or close many businesses.

Fires can go undetected in Orlando-area schools

Mary Shanklin and Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel report that with school soon to be out for the summer, the risk of undetected fires jumps in local schools: "None of Orange County's public schools has a montoring system for after-hours fire alarms." Local schools have suffered "more than 70 fires since 2000, causing nearly $926,000 in damage. Many of them were arsons, almost all of them unsolved."

Foreign trade offices submitting false reports

California's 12 foreign trade offices were created to boost exports and investments in the state. But Kimberly Kindy of The Orange County Register found they often submit false or distorted accounts of success. These statements go into annual reports that legislators and the governor use to assess the value of the trade offices. And until now, no one had bothered to check the millions of dollars in benefits they list -- at least $44.2 million of which were false or overblown in the most recent annual report.

School district standards vary for bus drivers in Indiana

Ron Shawgo of The (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Journal-Gazette analyzed state data on Indiana's 21,000 current and former school bus drivers to show that "more than half have at least one traffic violation on their records. One out of 10 has five or more." Several hundred have drug- or alcohol-related charges on their driving records, while some of the offenses are even more bizarre: "24 drivers improperly passed a school bus at some time in their past," and four of them did it after becoming bus drivers themselves. "Unlike some states that set hiring standards for school bus drivers, Indiana allows school officials to use their own comfort level when deciding what constitutes a bad driving record."

Complaints, investigations don't stop neurosurgeon from operating

Chris Knap, William Heisel and Bernard Wolfson of The Orange County Register examined th e paper trail from Dr. Israel Chambi, a top neurosurgeon at one of the largest facilities in Orange County. Chambi "controls the most high-profile surgical service at Western Medical Center Santa Ana, despite 33 malpractice or wrongful-death complaints and three investigations by the Medical Board of California" since 1995. The paper's analysis of state health data shows that Chambi's department provides more than $38 million a year in revenue to the Western Medical Center Santa Ana, which critics say is why he remains in a high-profile position. Chambi replies: "This type of litigation has nothing to do with my overall performance as a neurosurgeon." Accompanying the stories are documents detailing Chambi's work history and malpractice cases.

OT policies allow patrol officers to make in excess of $60,000

Mark Pazniokas and Matt Burgard of The Hartford Courant analyzed Hartford police payroll records and found that "one in every five officers on the 377-member department made more than $90,000 in gross pay last year. Three-quarters of the force made at least $60,000." The base pay for patrol officers peaks at $56,095, and the paper calculated $5 million in overtime last year. Perhaps best was the reaction of the city's top cop. Shown a list of top overtime earners, Police Chief Bruce P. Marquis saw an unfamiliar name. "Turning to an aide, he said, 'Who the hell is Joseph Smith?'"

Kentucky's longest-serving inmate shouldn't have stood trial

Andrew Wolfson of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal requested a list of Kentucky's longest-serving inmates to find Dave Embry, who "has been behind bars since he was 18 and Harry S. Truman was president -- longer than all but five other inmates in the United States." A review of the 1952 murder case that resulted in Embry's life sentence suggests that Embry should have been ruled incompetent: "The commonwealth's own expert witness testified in 1952 that Embry was incapable of answering questions intelligently and didn't understand the seriousness of the crime."

Court appointments benefit small group of insiders

The price of court-appointed probate appraisals in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, isn't impressive on a case-by-case basis: a few hundred dollars here and there. But by compiling court records, Joel Rutchick and Timothy Heider of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer found that hundreds of thousands of dollars "is distributed to court insiders by way of a throwback system of patronage that, in stark contrast to practices elsewhere, has been jealously guarded in Cuyahoga County for decades." The paper found that a small coterie of appraisers got more than $1.4 million in the past five years, and many of them weren't licensed by the state.

Multiple mini-municipalities get state aid

Bob Shaw of the St. Paul Pioneer Press has a novel story about the number of "mini-cities" in the Twin Cities area: 192 incorporated areas, the paper found. "A total of 31 of the seven-county metro's cities have fewer than 1,000 people. Of those, 14 are next to well-developed areas and could share services or merge boundaries to save money." Some of the municipalities get more in taxpayer-funded state aid than their own residents pay in taxes, not an insignificant point for Minnesotans, "who pay the nation's sixth-highest local and state taxes per capita, according to the U.S. Census and the state Revenue Department."

Program failing to diversify university

Erik Rodriguez and Sharon Jayson of the Austin American-Statesman studied the effects of Texas' top 10 percent law, in which the top students from state high schools gain admission to the University of Texas, and found that entrance exam scores had fallen "and the measure has failed to substantially improve ethnic diversity on campus," one of its goals when it replaced UT's affirmative action policy. "Students accepted to UT-Austin under the law are making lower SAT scores, while scores for all other students have climbed significantly. And a deluge of top 10-qualified applicants from predominantly white areas appears to offset a growing number of minority students recruited by admissions officials."

Data shows inequality among school districts

Brad Heath of The Detroit News analyzed federal education data to track the impact of Michigan's Proposal A, a 1994 initiative that aimed to narrow the gaps between rich and poor school districts. But the paper's review of money spent on teachers and textbooks "sh ows districts remain divided into haves and have-nots. That means that what a child's education is worth still depends mostly on where they live."

Bad pharmaceuticals enter market through Florida

Sally Kestin and Bob LaMendola of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel report on how fake drugs enter the supplies of pharmacies and hospitals, "many via unscrupulous brokers in South Florida." Checking state records, the paper found 18 corporate officers in three dozen wholesale drug companies licensed in Florida had criminal records. Other companies that have been shut down have reappeared under different names or employing relatives as a front. Florida has 1,400 licensed drug wholesale companies, twice as many as California.

Investigation reveals U.S. tactics in war on terror

David E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Report has a lengthy piece retracing the war on terrorism after 9/11, explaining that agents have "hacked into foreign banks, used secret prisons overseas, and spent over $20 million bankrolling friendly Muslim intelligence services. They have assassinated al Qaeda leaders, spirited prisoners to nations with brutal human-rights records, and amassed files equal to a thousand encyclopedias." Although Kaplan's review found that officials believe remaining al Qaeda operatives number about 180, the organization "has one more 9/11 in them," according to an FBI veteran.

Student's FOI request reveals patterns in grading

Jeremy Crider, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, submitted a public records request seeking information about grades at the school. The result, published and broadcast on VCU Insight, is that "over the past three years, the percentage of A's given out has remained fairly steady. Between 33-34% of all grades awarded every semester were A's. On the flip side, about 15-16% were D's & F's. However, there are fairly dramatic differences between the various colleges and schools at the university and definitely among individual instructors." The project is similar to one done by The Virginian-Pilot earlier this year.

Shuttle debris could have caused disaster on the ground

John Kelly and Todd Halvorson of Florida Today analyzed the debris trail from the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia, finding that "NASA narrowly skirted what could have been an unprecedented disaster on the ground: Raining debris on thousands of people and homes in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth." Had the craft disintegrated even a minute earlier, the paper's review of field maps and flight trajectory data showed, "nearly three times as many people and homes would have been exposed to falling wreckage." NASA has never studied re-entry debris patterns for the shuttle, even though it does so for unmanned space vehicles.

Teachers union leader's expenses examined

Manny Garcia and Joe Mozingo of The Miami Herald obtained almost two years' worth of records detailing the expenses of Miami-Dade teachers union chief Pat Tornillo. The damage: "the union paid credit-card charges totaling at least $350,000 between September 2000 and this March, with little or no scrutiny." The expenditures included stays at opulent hotels, tailored Hong Kong suits and a pair of python-print pajamas for Tornillo and his wife, Donna. "Many of the expenditures, UTD records show, came at a time when teachers were fighting for raises, facing pay cuts or trying to avoid layoffs."

Brokers with lengthy disciplinary histories still licensed

Last month, Susan Harrigan of Newsday reported on the paper's analysis of New York state records of complaints about stock brokers, finding that more than 380 brokers have lengthy records but remained licensed. "New York's top regulator said Newsday's findings show there are serious deficiencies in federal licensing procedures and this state's law governing brokers."

Staffing uneven at agency responsible for mine safety

Martha Bryson Hodel of The Associated Press reviewed staffing levels at the district offices of the federal agency responsible for mine safety, finding that the Mine Safety and Health Administration "has fewer inspectors than authorized in some regions where many underground mines -- the most dangerous -- are located." The southern West Virginia office is short 12 employees, while Western Pennsylvania has eight fewer employees than it should. "The AP's district-by-district review suggested a pattern of staff shortages in field offices where inspectors oversee large, complicated underground mines, while districts with smaller workloads reported surplus staff."

Ohio agencies misspent more than $340 million

Debra Jasper and Spencer Hunt of The Cincinnati Enquirer examined more than 400 Ohio state audits since 2000 and found "that government contractors and public agencies misspent more than $346.5 million in tax dollars." Many of the agencies employed a variety of tactics, including "state departments, local governments and private companies repeatedly used bad contracts and spent money illegally or improperly outside state or federal rules."

Amateur 'Toughman' competitions go unregulated

Fred Girard of The Detroit News investigates the "Toughman" competitions that pit amateur brawlers, finding that 12 men in Toughman fights have died since 1979 and at least five more have suffered brain damage. "Unlike other sanctioned sports in which participants face higher injury risks, Toughman fails to provide proper safety guidelines and procedures to protect its fighters."

Flaws in meat inspection system put consumers at risk

Oliver Prichard of The Philadelphia Inquirer has a two-part series on America's meat-inspection system, which he reports "discourages aggressive enforcement by government inspectors and often fails to protect consumers until it is too late." The paper details how federal inspectors lack the authority to close plants and levy fines. The Department of Agriculture also "has failed to crack down on unsafe plants after inspectors had documented repeated sanitary lapses."

Payments to N.J. retirees total nearly $1.5 billion

Dore Carroll and Robert Gebeloff of The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger analyzed summary financial statements of nearly 1,200 New Jersey local governments to find that, in the next few years, "taxpayers will shell out nearly $1.5 billion to compensate retirees from local government who banked unused sick and vacation time." The payments occur across the state, but are highest in older cities. Each county has a chart of retiree payments.

Many men who kill wives have faced domestic violence allegations before

Angela Heywood Bible and Andrea Weigl of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer report that domestic abuse can lead to murder in North Carolina, where at least 73 women died last year at the hands of their husbands. "Of the 63 men accused of the killings, 34 had been in court before to face domestic violence allegations. Many of the previous cases involving defendants who now face murder charges received scant attention from police, prosecutors and judges."

A Gannett News Service project rating nursing homes across the nation. Larry Wheeler and Robert Benincasa found that most of the "most severe and repeated nursing home patient care violations found in the past four years were concentrated in a dozen states." GNS analyzed four years of federal inspection data for 16,000 nursing homes, and posted a searchable database. Many papers localized the story, including The Arizona Republic, the Greenville News in South Carolina and Florida Today.

Boats hit bridges every other day

Last night NBC's Dateline featured a story on bridge safety as the one-year anniversary of the collapse of a bridge crossing the Arkansas River neared. While retelling that event, reporter Hoda Kotb and producer Andy Lehren also found that, on average, "a barge or boat bangs into one of the nation's bridges every other day. Coast Guard records reveal that there have been more than 2,700 reports of vessels hitting bridges in 34 states in a recent 10-year period." Dateline's site also has an online database of bridge inspection reports. The National Bridge Inventory Survey, a database of bridge maintenance information collected by the Federal Highway Administration is available from IRE and NICAR.

N.J. Dems get $2.3 million from state contractors

Even as New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey seeks to restrict political contributions from state contractors, the state Democratic Party has "raised at least $2.3 million from state contractors -- one of every five dollars it collected" since McGreevey took office, report Jeff Whelan and Joe Donohue of The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger. State contractors can now contribute up to $25,000 a year to state parties and even more to county parties. A spokesman for the governor says he's simply playing by the existing rules.

Unrestricted ambulance rides cost city, threaten response times

Jane Prendergast of The Cincinnati Enquirer found that Cincinnati's policy of providing ambulance rides to anyone who needs it, regardless of their medical condition, "costs the city millions and could threaten rapid response to life-or-death needs." Firefighters, in particular, are handling more non-fire-related calls, which accounted for more than 60 percent of their runs last year. No one tracks the number of non-life-threatening calls, but one union official estimates it at one in three.

USOC allowed athletes to compete despite failed drug tests

Continuin g their investigation into the United States' Olympic program, Scott M. Reid, William Heisel and Tony Saavedra of The Orange County Register report that American Olympic officials "for more than a decade allowed athletes who failed drug tests in qualifying events to compete in the Olympic Games and other world-class competitions." The reporters found more than 100 instances of failed drug tests that American officials classified as "inadvertent use" in order to permit the athletes to compete. "While the rulings may have been within the letter of the law, critics question whether elite athletes could honestly have been unaware they were taking banned substances. And in the cases examined by the Register, the officials in charge appear to have granted appeals after cursory investigations and limited deliberations"

James Bruggers and Mark Schavers of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal find that "Louisville-area residents are being exposed to toxic chemicals in concentrations up to hundreds of times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe." The paper obtained air monitoring data from the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District and presented its analysis to several experts. A sidebar shows how Louisville air readings would be illegal in Louisiana, one of the few states with actual ambient air standards for toxic chemicals.

Tax subsidy program benefiting developers

John Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News has a four-part series on the city's tax increment financing program, which "quietly has become the subsidy of choice in a city that's gun-shy about outright tax abatements." The paper asks whether the idea, once considered a way to promote development, has run its course. "A review of thousands of public records and scores of interviews depict a city TIF program that began in 1998 with good intentions but is veering off track. In the name of progress, developers are poised to receive millions of dollars in tax subsidies for hot real estate ventures."

N.J. conflict-of-interest law doesn't stop legislators

Dunstan McNichol of The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger catalogues conflicts of interest among New Jersey state legislators, who "frequently sponsor or vote on bills that stand to benefit them, their family members or their employers." Even the author of the state's weak conflict-of-interest law admits it doesn't do much to deter such actions, and oversight is scant. "In its 31 years of existence, the Joint Committee on Ethical Standards has never found a single incident in which a lawmaker violated the conflict-of-interest rules."

Oystermen could benefit from suit against environmental project

Jeffrey Meitrodt and Aaron Kuriloff of The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune have a four-part series on Louisiana oystermen who could receive $2 billion through class-action lawsuits against an environmental project designed to improve the habitat for oysters. The initial story, on May 4, points out that "the awards are worth more than the total value of all oysters harvested in Louisiana since the state created its leasing program in 1902." The second explains how the oystermen found cause to sue the state for dumping fresh water in marshes containing oyster reefs.

Some foundations spend more for salaries than for donations

Kate Shatzkin of The (Baltimore) Sun reviewed tax records of local foundations to find that many paid their trustees "to do what many of their peers consider volunteer work." Six of the state's ten largest paid their trustees in 2001, a practice that occasionally has attracted IRS attention. Several Maryland foundations spend more on salaries and other expenses than they do in donations to charities.

FOIA request reveals lost, stolen military weapons

Sydney P. Freedberg and Connie Humburg of the St. Petersburg Times report that "since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, thousands of pounds of explosives, hundreds of mines, mortars, grenades and firearms and dozens of rockets and artillery rounds have been lost or stolen from U.S. stockpiles, government documents show." The Times used a FOIA request to obtain details on 242 cases of lost or stolen munitions, mostly from Army installations. "More than half of the roughly 150 thefts were inside jobs involving military personnel, National Guardsmen or civilian employees of the military."

Credit reporting system seriously flawed

In a four-month investigation, Kenneth R. Gosselin and Matthew Kauffman of The Hartford Courant "found that the nation's credit reporting business is built on a system so seriously flawed that costly errors are inevitable. A much-heralded congressional reform effort seven years ago has done little to repair the broken system or to hold credit bureaus accountable." They paint a picture of massive databases filled with errors, as a results of a matching system that credit companies admit is flawed.

Bonus program rewards employees who stay with city

Adam Klawonn of the Arizona Republic finds that an employee bonus program instituted by the city of Mesa to retain public servants "has cost Mesa taxpayers $22 million since 1999 alone," enough to pay for 150 police officers for five years. "The bonus, known as "stability pay," was set up to reward employees for staying with Mesa and is paid regardless of performance."

Kansas parole violators commit serious crimes

Hurst Laviana of the Wichita Eagle analyzed Kansas Department of Corrections records to find that "in the past four years, more than two dozen Kansans have died at the hands of people being supervised by state parole officers. In addition, murder charges are pending against parolees in eight other homicides." The maximum prison sentence for parole violations is 180 days, and many violators are released in half that time.

N.J. legislators employ relatives

Herb Jackson, Jeff Pillets and John Dyer of The (Bergen, N.J.) Record report on New Jersey state legislators' practice of hiring relatives for staff positions. "Though banned by Congress, 19 states, and even the judicial branch of state government, nepotism in New Jersey legislative offices is a time-honored tradition practiced by Republicans and Democrats, including Governor McGreevey, who once hired his father, Jack, for $10,000 a year when he was a state senator." One lawmaker who gave his son a $3,000 internship told the paper he wouldn't hire a relative full-time because doing so "would clearly cross the line."

Post looks at D.C. police staffing

While the Washington Post series on the Nature Conservancy has garnered plenty of attention, there was another investigative piece last Sunday about the staffing levels of D.C. police patrols, written by David A. Fahrenthold, Craig Timberg and Clarence Williams. "Of the department's 3,625 officers, only one in six were on community patrols in either of two recent 24-hour periods for which The Washington Post examined roll call sheets. That is the same ratio as in 1997, when a landmark consultant's study found that the department failed to deploy its workforce effectively."

Nonresidents exploit program intended for disabled veterans

A California program to steer government contracts to businesses run by disabled war veterans "is exploited by out-of-state operators who get in through loose residency requirements and by companies in which veterans appear to be little more than figureheads," according to an investigation by John Hill of the Sacramento Bee. An order by Gov. Gray Davis in 2001 to improve the performance of state agencies has resulted in state officials seeking out firms that barely meet requirements by setting up "front" companies. The residency requirement can be met simply by having a California address.

Contributions from law firms to Sen. John Edwards investigated Sam Dealy, a reporter for The Hill, examined Sen. John Edwards' campaign finance records and found a pattern of giving by low-level employees at law firms, a number of whom appear to have limited financial resources and no prior record of political donations. The story follows reports that the Justice Department is investigating possible campaign violations after a legal assistant in an Arkansas personal injury law firm that gave heavily to Edwards told The Washington Post last month she expected to be reimbursed by the firm for a $2,000 donation she made. Dealy's story notes that no one in any of the firms The Hill talked to said they expected to be reimbursed for contributions.

Mapping shows most Boise residents have access to parks

Joe Kolman and Emily Simnitt of The Idaho Statesman used mapping software to find that 80 percent of Boiseans live within walking distance of a developed park. The city has increased parkland in the past 10 years by charging impact fees on new development as well as using general tax dollars to pay for parks but continuing to acquire parkland to meet future needs will likely be a difficult task. Kolman suggests that the subject is a "good idea for anyone who covers local government and wants to do an enterpriser using mapping and Census."

Toronto officials rarely investigate gas line ruptures

A week after an explosion caused by a worker who hit an underground gas line killed seven people in Toronto, a Toronto Star investigation finds that while "more than 21,000 incidents have occurred between 1997 and 2001" involving Ontario pipelines, only a fraction are ever investigated. Robert Cribb writes: "Authorities investigated only 1,013 ruptures in the past six years, incidents which, like last week's explosion, were considered serious due to personal injuries or extensive damage to property or the environment, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information request." Most of those accidents were caused by construction workers doing excavation similar to what caused the latest episode. And just eight of the 1,013 cases have resulted in prosecutions. With a map of pipeline incidents (pdf).

Manhattan restaurants not turning over sales taxes

Jim Hoffer of WABC-New York searched state tax records to discover that many Manhattan restaurants owe thousands in back taxes. "From fast food to some of the city's finest restaurants, our investigation found nearly 200 establishments that have collected from their customers a combined total of about $10 million. It's money collected through the eight and one quarter percent sales tax. But instead of passing it on to the city and state, these restaurants kept it." One restaurant owner admitted that he essentially borrowed against his tax payments after Sept. 11, "knowing full well that I'd be paying a lot of penalties and a lot of interest on that, yes."

Road repairs delayed for years, causing serious accidents

Heather Lourie and Natalya Shulyakovskaya of The Orange County Register investigated high way repair projects in Orange County, finding that the California Department of Transportation's "recommended improvements are taking an average of seven years, 10 months to complete after engineers are first notified by the state's computers about out-of-whack accident rates." During that time, the paper reports, "at least 375 people were injured and four killed on stretches of highway" that often took years to repair. The series includes an intera ctive map of road projects and state documents that show CalTrans was aware of high accident rates in some areas. Several state legislators are asking for a review of CalTrans' efforts.

Whites approved three times as often for mortgages

Sheila Wissner of The Tennessean analyzed mortgage records from the Nashville area and reports that African Americans "were turned down for mortgage loans up to three times more often than whites with similar incomes over an eight-year period," even when seeking to borrow similar amounts. The paper reviewed more than 200,000 loan applications in eight counties to reach its conclusions.

Analysis allows in-depth look at causes of car accidents

Jo Craven McGinty of Newsday studied nearly 270 fatal crashes on Long Island in 2000 to find that "many were caused by problem drivers." Suffolk County's traffic-fatality rate is among the worst for large urban areas, and other parts of the series explore drivers' histories and the roles alcohol and speed play. A searchable database of accidents is among the elements of a rich multimedia presentation of the project (requires Flash).

Accused priests worked in nearly half of Phoenix's parishes

Joseph A. Reaves and Kelly Ettenborough of The Arizona Republic report that "prie sts accused of sexual abuse or harassment worked in nearly half of all parishes in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix during the past three decades." As a result of practices that began decades ago, some repeat offenders were reassigned to mostly Hispanic parishes in the state. Staffer Ryan Konig compiled a database of more than 700 priests since 1969 and cross-referenced them with public records on sex-related crimes.

Federal informant offered unorthodox deals to drug traffickers

David Adams of the St. Petersburg Times looks at the intersection of Colombian drug dealers, American agents and Baruch Vega, a fashion photographer who served as an intermediary between them. "For a fee, Vega told his trafficker contacts, he could get his U.S. law enforcement friends to, shall we say, smooth out their legal problems. They would get out of prison after a few years, most of their fortunes intact, their books cleared. In the drug trade, Vega's deals were so popular, what he was offering came to be known as the 'Colombian Traffickers Rehabilitation Program.'" Part 2 tells the story of a Columbian family and its relationship to Vega.

In the first of a three-part series on the Nature Conservancy, David B. Ottaway and Joe Stephens of The Washington Post report that even as the environmental group has amassed $3 billion in assets, it has "logged forests, engineered a $64 million deal paving the way for opulent houses on fragile grasslands and drilled for natural gas under the last breeding ground of an endangered bird species." The charity acknowledged making mistakes in several of its ventures, but defends its philosophy of "compatible development." A sidebar explores the compensation package for Steven J. McCormick, the group's president.

Bills for state contract apparently altered

Eddie Curran of the Mobile Register has been looking into the University of Alabama's contracts with a Montgomery advertising agency that appears to have pocketed federal money by altering bills submitted to the university. "As a result, the university -- chosen by the Alabama Department of Transportation to oversee the federally funded contract -- reimbursed the higher sums to Kim & Co. And each time, the one-woman firm owned by former Montgomery television reporter Kim Davis pocketed the $2,137.50, records show." Last year, the state ordered the agency to refund $122,339 it had overbilled on two other contracts.

Wisconsin legislators pay less taxes than average residents

Steven Walters of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analyzed the financial records of state legislators to find that nine lawmakers "paid less than $1,000 in state income taxes in both 2000 and 2001, and five of them paid no state taxes in either year." The paper's review included top officials in the executive branch and compared their taxes to the average resident, who paid $1,724 in 2001 and $1,790 in 2000. "Overall, most of the 158 state officials whose tax liabilities were reviewed by the Journal Sentinel paid much more in income taxes than the statewide average in 2001 and 2000." Most of those who paid no taxes cited economic troubles or medical issues in their families. With a chart showing what officials paid in taxes.

Lax enforcement contributed to sniper shootings

Mike Carter, Steve Miletich and Justin Mayo of The Seattle Times delve into the history of Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, the gun store that previously had the rifle used in the Washington, DC-area sniper shootings last fall. "Long before last fall's sniper slayings, Bull's Eye was among a minuscule group of problem gun dealers that, willingly or not, 'supply the suppliers' who funnel guns to the nation's criminals, the ATF says." Using ATF records, the paper reports that the store displayed all the warning signs. "An analysis of records obtained by The Seattle Times through a freedom-of-information lawsuit against the ATF shows that between 1997 and 2001, guns sold by Bull's Eye were involved in 52 crimes, including homicides, kidnappings and assaults -- a rate the ATF considers alarming."