The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "State payroll" ...
-
America's Great State Payroll Giveaway
A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.
-
Wage Theft In the Fields
American farmworkers have often experienced egregious abuses, but nothing is more pervasive, nor harder to ferret out, than the wage theft that results from a practice called farm-labor contracting. Found in the fields of every handpicked crop in the country, farm-labor contractors not only provide growers with crews, but also handle wages and manage everything from verifying immigration status to providing workers' compensation. The problem is, the contractors systematically underpay the workers. “Farm labor contractors,” says writer Tracie McMillan, “give American produce growers what companies like China's Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business, often saving money in the process and creating a firewall between the brand and the working conditions under which its products are made.” And yet McMillan — a fellow with both the Knight-Wallace program at University of Michigan, and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University — found that enforcement is rare: In 2008, inspectors visited only 1,499 of the more than 2 million farms nationwide; in 2011, California inspectors found just seven minimum wage violations on the state’s 86,000 farms. Fines are minimal: “It's cheaper to violate the law than to follow the law,” says one farmworker advocate. And wage theft is tedious to prove, requiring inspectors to interview workers, analyze time cards, and collect payroll records. That's why workers and their advocates in California are counting on a lawsuit brought earlier this year on behalf of two farmworkers against the contractors who hired them—as well as the growers who outsourced the work. The suit alleges that the contractors routinely undercounted the hours worked, failed to pay minimum wage or overtime, failed to provide safe or sanitary working conditions, and housed the workers in unsafe and unsanitary living quarters. The “collective action” suit—open to anyone who can prove he or she experienced the same treatment—may cover thousands of workers and deliver awards substantial enough to deter other employers from the same practices.
Tags: Labor; farms; working conditions; wage
-
"Physicians on Pharma's Payroll: Educators or Marketers?"
This story focuses on doctors as industry speakers and their relationship with pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies claim to choose speakers based on expertise, but further investigation shows that many of the hired physicians have "serious transgressions on their state records." They also tend to be "high prescribers" of the company's products.
Tags: pharmacy; prescriptions; Geodon; Pfizer; antipsychotic drugs; pharmaceutical companies; Department of Health; New York; Food and Drug Administration
-
"Double Dipping"
Nearly 1,000 retired UConn professors are receiving duel payment from the state in the form of a paycheck and a pension. A law was enacted in 2007 that was designed to limit the number of retired professors who could be on the payroll and the length of time they could be hired, but as revealed by the Hartford-Courant, that law has been all but overlooked.
Tags: UConn; pensions; retirees; Connecticut Office of Policy and Management; Hugh Macgill; Ernest Marquez; Central Connecticut State University; Gov. M. Jodi Rell
-
Fighting New Jersey's Tax Crunch
The series provided a detailed analysis of New Jersey's dysfunctional property tax system, which has the highest costs in the nation. Using U.S. census data, IRS data, 10 years of local tax information, and more than 40 databases of local and state employee payrolls, we found that the system had evolved into a juggernaut that was destroying the fiscal and social fabric economy of the state.
Tags: property tax; racial disparity; assessments; tax breaks; economic segregation;
-
Corruption in Community College System
This story reveals “patronage, corruption and waste in Alabama's two-year college system. Major findings include: everyone in Chancellor Roy Johnson's immediate family was on the system payroll; campuses gave jobs to relatives of systems officials, often bypassing hiring practices; nearly a third of Alabama's legislators or their relatives received pay from the system; system contractors paid for or performed work on homes owned by Johnson and others; software company received millions of dollars in system officials and lobbying firms, despite a ban on such payments; state attorney general asked Johnson for favors while his prosecutors investigated the system.â€
Tags: nepotism; college; community college
-
Politicians on the Payroll
This investigation found that some of the most powerful Indiana state legislators are also administrators of a state-funded community college. Three of the four legislators have six figure salaries but do little work, and the fourth earns closer to $65,000 per year. The lawmakers sometimes vote on major college issues despite their conflict of interest.
Tags: community college; state legislature; conflict of interest; politicians; public employees
-
OSU Faculty and Staff Raise Program Analysis
The author examined payroll data from Oklahoma State University. He found that pay raises were distributed unequally between administrators and the rest of the university's staff. The author also found that some departments, specifically one that had a history of problems with the administration, did not receive any pay raises.
Tags: data analysis; wages; pay roll; salary; college; education; academia; FOIA; Freedom of Information
-
Public payroll series; Harper family murders; Arvin grand jury investigation
The Bakersfield Californian uses open public records to investigate government issues. State employees such as school principals were making twice the state average. Reporters uncovered these statistics using records open to the public. They also found that firefighters were raking in money as part of their overtime commitments. The second set of stories investigates the multiple murders in Bakersfield where the suspect is a elementary school vice principal. Another story covers how the newspaper has defended an unprecedented restraint attempt by the county grand jury.
Tags: FOI; Multiple murders; Harper murders; State payroll; Arvin; Grand jury investigation
-
Killed By Parolees; Did Cornejo & Sons Contribute Illegally?; BOE settlement hidden
City Hall: Mayoral candidate's hidden history of domestic violence complaints; fraud and abuse in publicly funded job training program; misuse of travel funds by city officials; City Hall contract tampering; improper donations by a major city contractor. Parollees: More than two dozen Kansans had died at the hands of parolles in the past four years. Nearly, two-thirds who were killed were on at least their second chance at parole; more than a third of the parollees had broken contact with their parole officers before their arrest; and the state made little effort to find parollees who disappeared. School District: the Wichita school district kept a teach on the payroll eight years after the first complaints about is conduct with young teenage girls, they cloaked its settlement of his rape victim's lawsuit in secrecy.
Tags: City Hall; Parolees; Board Of Education; Kansas Legislature; Department of Corrections; Ethics Commission; Sexual Harassment; Bill Warren; Campaign Finance