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Children most likely to suffer fatal accidents in summer

Mara H. Gottfried and Janet Roberts of the St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed Minnesota health department records to find that "from 1988 to 2002, almost 1,000 children 12 or younger died accidentally in Minnesota. Of those, more than 370 died in June, July or August." The paper didn't include car accidents in which occupants of the vehicle died in its analysis, which found that "getting hit by vehicles while walking or bike riding; drowning; suffocating or choking; and fires" were among the leading causes of death.

Military officials choose administrative discipline

Miles Moffeit and Arthur Kane of The Denver Post obtained Pentagon records, some via the Freedom of Information Act, showing that "by more than a 2-to-1 ratio, military officials have handed down administrative discipline rather than pursue criminal punishments for service members accused of prisoner abuse or sexual-assault crimes in war zones." The cases involve beatings, manslaughter and rape by former service members during the Iraq war. "From the start of the Iraq war in February 2003 through the middle of this year, 66 service members accused of prisoner abuse or sex assault were given administrative punishments, including fines and reprimands, compared with 29 sent to courts-martial."

Records reveal disputes at Mich. agency

Steve Neavling of the Bay City Times in Michigan used state public records laws to show that "a local agency that handles millions of tax dollars for senior citizen programs in the Bay area has been tangled in personnel disputes under the tenure of its latest director." The episodes at the Agency on Aging in Bay City include the settlement of sexual harassment lawsuit, the hiring of two women who wrote recommendation letters for the director and payments made to two of the director's sons, according to documents.

Thousands registered to vote in both N.Y. and Fla.

Russ Buettner of the New York Daily News checked voter registration records in New York and Florida, finding that "some 46,000 New Yorkers are registered to vote in both the city and Florida, a shocking finding that exposes both states to potential abuses that could alter the outcome of elections." Double registrations are not permitted in either state. "Computer records analyzed by The News don't allow for an exact count of how many people vote in both places, because millions of names are regularly purged between elections. But The News found that between 400 and 1,000 registered voters have voted twice in at least one election, a federal offense punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine."

School bond program suffers from poor management

Jennifer Autrey of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigated the local school district's bond program, finding that "many individual projects were saddled with additional costs or were significantly late. Although the bond program had some successes, it was undermined by ineptitude, mismanagement, waste and abuse." At least $1.5 million in projects was abandoned at a handful of schools visited by the paper, and two planned elementary schools were scrapped. "For a long time, though, trustees did not realize how far things had gone wrong. The district didn't have the right people in the right places to watch the work and follow the spending. The wake-up call came just weeks ago when trustees learned that an expected $9 million bond surplus was all but gone."

Legislators pass money to candidates

Paul Carrier of the Portland (Maine) Press Herald used state campaign finance records to show that "twenty state legislators using taxpayer dollars to pay for their re-election campaigns are accepting private contributions from special-interest groups to help finance the campaigns of other political candidates." The 20 leadership PACs raised more than $350,000 through mid-July, "even though the same lawmakers are prohibited by law from accepting private money for their own campaigns." Maine's Clean Election Act permits the use of privately financed PACs by publicly funded candidates.

Ill. politician has legal trouble

Steve Warmbir, Tim Novak and Frank Main of the Chicago Sun-Times profiled Illinois state Rep. Edward Acevedo, "the highest-ranking Hispanic politician in the Illinois House and a key member of Mayor Daley's Hispanic Democratic Organization, a controversial political army that rewards its supporters with jobs and contracts." Although Acevedo is a Chicago policeman, he had a run-in with a fellow officer "when Acevedo showed up drunk at a city auto pound to get his secretary's car out," an incident that previously went unreported because the charges were dropped and Acevedo's record erased. Acevedo also "has been paid about $25,000 from an electrical contractor that has won millions of dollars in government work — a deal Acevedo has never reported on his ethics statements."

Regulators allow poor care to continue

Jennifer Levitz of The Providence (R.I.) Journal investigated Rhode Island's regulation of nursing homes, finding a system "in which regulators are reluctant to close poorly performing nursing homes, and where fines are frequently threatened, then forgiven." The paper focused on care at Hillside Health Center, where a patient visited by state inspectors waited 117 days after her first bedsore was discovered before she was removed from the facility by the state. "It is a system in which regulators are afraid of alienating the nursing home interests, and where public access to inspection reports is delayed."

Conservative radio hosts get administration interviews

Brian C. Mooney of The Boston Globe studied a White House list of radio interviews featuring Bush administration officials to find that "of 61 interviews featured on the White House website since April in which the interviewer and station or network is identified, 54 were conducted either by conservative commentators or by hosts in markets located in battleground states." One North Dakota talk show host has interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney, First Lady Laura Bush and two cabinet secretaries this summer.

Last chance for Vegas hotel rooms

The MGM has granted a final extension to reserve a hotel room for IRE's regional conference in Las Vegas, Sept. 10-12. You must make a reservation by Friday, Aug. 27; there will not be any more extensions. The conference will combine the best of IRE's broadcast journalism sessions and Better Watchdog Workshops and feature some of the best journalists in the country sharing their knowledge in sessions that range from doing investigative pieces while covering a beat to following the money in campaign finance to effective Internet searches on deadline. Please help us get the word out by printing and posting this flier (PDF) in your newsroom.

Ethics failures by Yonkers' officials go unnoticed

Rich Calder of The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News used New York's Freedom of Information law to find that "not a single Yonkers employee or board member submitted annual financial-disclosure statements on time for at least four years, and dozens never filed at all." Those that did file sometimes failed to list interests in businesses that won city contracts. The city's Ethics Board, which is responsible for overseeing the forms, has been "virtually dormant for more than four years."

Calif. lax in regulation of vocational schools

Michael Louie, Laila Weir and Lisa P. White, graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, writing in The Sacramento Bee, found that oversight of California's vocational and technical schools is lax: "An examination of bureau operations reveals a passive consumer-protection agency that does little to monitor schools," including not following up on complaints and not checking whether schools meet minimum standards. "A computer analysis of the 1,177 complaints to the bureau during the past two fiscal years shows computer schools generated the most complaints, followed by cosmetology and health care schools. Of the complaints, 521 alleged deficiencies in educational quality, 293 claimed false advertising and other types of fraud, and 289 alleged failure to make proper refunds. A state audit in 2000 concluded that staff routinely marked complaint files closed after simply notifying schools about the allegations."

S.C. soldiers bearing high burden of war

Chuck Crumbo of The (Columbia, S.C.) State analyzed casualties from the Iraq war to find that the Palmetto State is bearing a high burden: The paper's study "shows the war's death rate for South Carolina — the 26th-largest state — is eighth in the United States at almost one death per 200,000 residents. That's 50 percent above the national average." Twenty of the more than 950 U.S. soldiers killed came from South Carolina, and 11 were African-Americans.

Union control of fire districts pays off

Susan Weich and Elizabethe Holland of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigated St. Louis area fire districts, finding that some are "spending millions of tax dollars on six-figure pay for firefighters, pricey perks for part-time board members and questionable equipment spending." One battalion chief earned nearly $166,000 last year, more than the head of New York City's fire department. The union representing fire district employees virtually controls the local districts, the paper reports. The reporters attended public meetings of fire districts, with one being told that "she was the first outsider to attend a meeting in at least seven years." Included are graphics showing the top paying districts and a comparison of police and firefighter salaries in several areas.

Whistleblower calls IRS deal into question

In The New York Times, David Cay Johnston reports on a secret deal worked out by Internal Revenue Service officials that a whistleblower says will "allow a Silicon Valley company and its top executives to escape at least $51 million in additional taxes that she was convinced they should have paid." In addition, Remy Welling, a senior auditor for the IRS, says the agreement requires the agency to cooperate with the company to keep "its shareholders uninformed on some basic terms of its stock-option plan, which Ms. Welling said enriched the four top executives by as much as $20 million in total." The company, Micrel, a semiconductor maker, refutes the allegation. The IRS is in the process of firing Welling on the ground that contacting the FBI violated Micrel's confidentiality.

U.S. News & World Report issues clarification

A story in the Aug. 9, 2004, issue of U.S. News & World Report titled "Secrets behind the mask" claimed to find "evidence that 3M respiratory masks failed to protect wearers from lung-damaging particles in their work environments for more than two decades." The story was posted on Extra! Extra! on Aug. 18, 2004. A clarification in the Sept. 20, 2004, issue of the magazine says "A subsequent review of the article by the editors of the magazine, requested by 3M, disclosed several significant shortcomings and inaccuracies." Among issues cited in the clarification: the magazine failed to properly characterize results of tests of the mask's fit, the article's subhead was insupportable and unfair, and it did not identify people in the article who criticized the mask as having served as paid advisers to plaintiffs' counsel in litigation against 3M. The clarification says the story "failed to meet U.S. News's acknowledged high standards of journalistic fairness and balance."

Businesses target those with few resources

In a three-part series, Ron Nixon, Terry Collins and Dee Depass of the Star Tribune look into financial businesses that profit by "catering to people who live paycheck to paycheck or have been shut out of mainstream financial institutions." The first part looks at payday loans, the fastest-growing such business in Minnesota. The second part examines rapid tax refund loans and the third is about high-interest mortgages granted to borrowers who with heavy debt or damaged credit.

Money to clean up old mines diverted for other uses

Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston (W.V.) Gazette reports that the U.S. coal industry pays taxes — more than $7 billion since 1978 — intended to reclaim old mines. "But today, more than $3 billion of mine sites that threaten public safety remain unreclaimed. The federal Abandoned Mine Land program has not met its goals in large part because regulators diverted more than $1.3 billion in AML money to other projects."

Nonprofit, company share CEO, business

Randy Ludlow of The Columbus Dispatch looked into the relationship between the nonprofit Ohio Association of County Boards of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities and the privately owned Leadership First Academy for Executive Development. The training and consulting company is owned by the nonprofit's CEO, Charles H. Arndt. "A two-month investigation by The Dispatch found that Arndt's company has received more than $1.4 million in state and county tax funds since 2001 while the nonprofit organization shouldered many of the company's expenses." After The Dispatch detailed the nonprofit association's dealings with a business owned by CEO Charles H. Arndt, the organization's board revoked the authority of its chief executive officer to sign checks.

Officials delay, deny access in public records audit

Thomas Peele, Denis Cuff, Liz Tascio and Ashley Surdin of the Contra Costa Times in the San Francisco Bay Area conducted a public records audit of more than 100 government agencies in the Bay Area, finding "numerous impediments to seeing routine public records such as employment contracts and elected officials' economic disclosure forms." Over a six-week period, the paper sent 20 reporters and editors to school, government and police agencies to ask for records. "When asked for immediate access to the records as state law requires, government workers sometimes demanded the reporters' identities and their reasons for wanting to see public documents. One official who denied access said she did so partly because she is 'told to always watch over my shoulder for terrorists.'" The Times will host a workshop for government officials and the public on Aug. 6.

A third of drunken driving cases end in acquittals

In a three-day series, a team of reporters including Ames Alexander, Ted Mellnik and Gary Wright of The Charlotte Observer finds that many DWI trials end in not guilty verdicts even though suspects have an illegal blood-alcohol level. The package includes a "How we did the story" sidebar.

Questionable donations made to Calif. official's campaign

Vanessa Hua and Christian Berthelsen of the San Francisco Chronicle report that a "nonprofit group paid $108,000 from a state grant to two individuals and two companies who then made donations of nearly identical amounts to Kevin Shelley's successful 2002 campaign for California secretary of state." The money was intended to build a community center, but the center was never built. Following publication of the story, Shelley called for an investigation and said he would put the money into an escrow account until the investigation is complete.

School officials cut programs but spend thousands on travel

Mc Nelly Torres of the San Antonio Express-News found that while school administrators have limited each grade to one field trip per year to save money, "the board did not slash its own travel." The trustees and top administrators, meanwhile, have considered eliminating computer and online programs offered to students. "Since 1999, trustees and top administrators have spent almost $72,800 on convention trips and car rentals." The story includes a spreadsheet showing each trip.

Judges deleting disclosure data

The Washington Post reports that nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges. The committee decided that the information removed might tend to endanger a particular judge or put his or her financial investments at risk, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office.

Police downgraded crime to improve image

Noah Bierman and Wanda J. DeMarzo of The Miami Herald, assisted by Jeannette Rivera-Lyles and database editor Jason Grotto, reviewed police records to show that the Broward Sheriff's Office "downgraded" crime reports in order to present a better picture of crime. The paper's analysis "suggests that downgrading was common, and that many who reported thefts and assaults to deputies were wasting their time. Their complaints went on the books as 'lost or missing property,' suspicious incidents or 'information calls.'" The story was based on crime log reports and interviews.

Wisc. law hasn't affected fatal drunken driving crashes

Robert Imrie of The Associated Press analyzed state transportation data to find that "Wisconsin's new lower drunken driving limit did nothing to reduce the number of drivers who were drunk and involved in fatal crashes during the first three months the law was on the books." The number of drivers who were legally drunk in fatal accidents last October through December remained about the same as monthly averages during the previous five years.

Homeless man may have been used in baby food tainting case

Eric Leonard of KFI-AM in Los Angeles reports that local investigators believe numerous jars of baby food were contaminated and carefully resealed by someone who enlisted the help of a homeless man to place the tainted jars on a grocery store's shelves sometime in May.

School leaders earning outside money

Scott Parks of The Dallas Morning News writes about school superintendents who moonlight or consult for companies, some of which have contracts with their school districts. The paper found "that trustees in at least 22 of Texas's 30 largest school districts have agreed to put consulting clauses into their superintendent's employment contract." The leader of Dallas' school district has earned "tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees while simultaneously billing the district for more than $700,000 in legal fees" and one Houston-area superintendent is a paid consultant for an energy conservation company that contracts with her district.

Local nonprofit salaries increase 7 percent

Laura Lorek examines the pay of local nonprofit executives for the San Antonio Express-News and finds the average wage at $386,759. That's more than triple the $119,580 average annual wage for chief executives in both private and public industries in the metropolitan area.

Mo. governor routes money through parties

Virginia Young of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes about a method of campaign fundraising that permitted Gov. Bob Holden to raise about $400,000 in July by routing contributions through local parties. "Holden asks unions and other supporters to donate unlimited amounts to various local party committees. After donors send checks, Holden asks the committees to contribute to him. They either send him checks or pay some of his campaign expenses. Often, the money goes to Holden for Governor the same day the party receives the donation. But as long as contributors don't earmark their party donations for a specific candidate, it is all legal, according to the ethics commission." The limit on candidate contributions in Missouri is $1,200.

Cash-strapped town goes on spending spree

Kollin Kosmicki of the Hollister, Calif., Free Lance used California's Public Record Act to show that that "during a four-year span when Hollister exhausted nearly half of its rainy day reserve, the city bought 82 new vehicles for $2.4 million and spent a total of $7.1 million on capital improvements from the deficit-ridden general fund." More than $1 million spent between 2000 and 2003 went to buy vehicles for the city's fleet.

Global trade not only factor in collapse

Charlotte Observer reporters Adam Bell and Tony Mecia examined the reasons behind last year's collapse of Pillowtex, a once prominent textile company whose closing led to the largest mass layoffs in the history of North Carolina and the textile industry. Some 7,650 lost their jobs, including 4,800 in North Carolina. The company was quick to blame global trade and low-cost imports. But the Observer found that imports were only part of the story. For the series, the Observer interviewed more than 75 people, including three of the past four leaders, as well as reviewed dozens of securities filings, state records and bankruptcy documents.