The San Diego Union-Tribune found that “San Diego’s payroll ballooned by $41 million last year, fueled by unpublicized payouts, labor settlements and costly benefits.”  Analysis of spending data  “helps put into perspective the $43 million in wage and benefit reductions that will take effect July 1 to address a budget gap. [Mayor Jerry] Sanders portrays the 6 percent reductions as historic and difficult, yet the savings are about the same as last year’s growth in payroll.” The story is the first in a three-part series that also includes an online payroll database.

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In her ongoing series “Cashing in on Kids” which has found millions of dollars in fraud within Wisconsin’s $350 million taxpayer subsidized child-care system, Raquel Rutledge writes that hundreds of convicted criminals, including those who had physically abused children, are being licensed to run day care centers. Some of them now appear to be scamming the system. The Journal Sentinel cross-checked the list of day care providers with the state’s criminal courts database to come up with 498 names of ex-cons who received money this year from the Wisconsin Shares program.

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The Panama City News Herald tallied farm subsidy data for Florida and examined the subsidies paid to U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd and other Congressional leaders with ties to agriculture.  Matt Dixon reported that in  “Boyd’s first 10 years in Congress, Boyd Family Farms has received $1.2 million in subsidy payments, ranking it 12th out of more than 5,300 farms in his district that received subsidy money over that period.”

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A USA Today analysis shows lobbyists paid $35.8 million in 2008 to honor 534 current and former lawmakers, almost 250 other federal officials and more than 100 groups, many of which count lawmakers among their members. “Despite a ban on gifts to lawmakers and limits on campaign contributions, lobbyists and groups that employ them can spend unlimited money to honor members of Congress or donate to non-profits connected to them or their relatives,” Fredreka Schouten and Paul Overberg report. The top honoree: Sen. Edward Kennedy, with $5 million. The analysis examined more than 3,600 payments reported for 2008, the first year that lobbyists were required to disclose the contributions, known as honorary expenses.

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“The Pentagon spent more than $2.7 billion on ‘miscellaneous items’ in 2008 for which the contractor was listed as ‘not available’ — a rare omission for Defense Department documentation — according to an Aerospace Daily analysis of an independent national database of government contracting data,” according to a report by Michael Fabey of Aerospace Daily and Defense Report.  The federal procurement data used in this analysis was obtained from the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR).

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“Commercial real-estate loans could generate losses of $100 billion by the end of next year at more than 900 small and midsize U.S. banks if the economy’s woes deepen, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.“  Maurice Tamman and David Enrich report that losses on commercial real-estate loans are much greater than loses related to home loans.  Their analysis reveals that stress on the banking system extends well beyond the largest financial institutions.  An interactive graphic shows how the small and midsized banks fared under the same “stress tests” the federal government used for the nation’s largest banks.

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An investigation into the handicapped accessibility of Chicago Transit Authority stations by a team of reporters from Columbia College Chicago found that “41 percent of the stations designated fully accessible were not.” Using FOIA, the students reviewed over 2,000 ADA-related complaints filed against the CTA from Jan. 1, 2004 through Feb. 28, 2009. Some of their findings included patterns of broken elevators and bus lifts, as well as CTA employees swearing at passengers and denying access to several customers with service dogs.

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“An analysis by The Associated Press, based on data collected by the U.S. Postal Service and the Housing and Urban Development Department, shows the emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit hard during the recession of the 1980s — cities such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis.” Dan Sewell and Frank Bass report that while foreclosure stories have focused on “mostly middle-class, suburban Sunbelt neighborhoods from California to Florida,” urban neighborhoods in the Rust Belt have been hardest hit.  Nearly $6 billion in federal fund have been designated to rehabilitate or demolish abandoned and foreclosed homes in some of the nation’s most troubled urban neighborhoods.

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A project by the Center for Public Integrity delved into the financial crisis by analyzing 7.2 million subprime loans made from 2005 through 2007. The analysis revealed 25 lenders responsible for nearly $1 trillion in subprime lending during that time. Their reporting uncovered “that at least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were directly or indirectly financed by the mega banks that received bailout money — through direct ownership, credit agreements, or huge purchases of loans for securitization.” The package includes detailed profiles of “The Subprime 25.”

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National Public Radio combined the Federal Aviation Administration’s wildlife-strike reports with airport activity figures to calculate airport “strike rates,” an industry measure that is not publicly available and that standardizes bird strikes according to the amount of traffic at an airport. They also provided an interactive map for Web users to find out strike rates at major airports.

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