How was your NICAR26?
Alexander Cohen of The Center for Public Integrity analyzed FDA reports of privately sponsored trips taken by agency officials between October 1999 and September 2005 that cost more than $250 and found a loophole in the agency rules that has allowed its employees to receive more than $1.3 million in sponsored travel from groups closely…
Read MoreIn a three-part series, Pat Stith of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer shows the “state’s regulation of drinking water reveals disregard for safety of private wells, weak regulation of public water systems and widespread problems with lead testing.” The series includes an interactive map and a sidebar about how the state closely followed Stith’s…
Read MoreReese Dunklin of The Dallas Morning News reports that “The low-income housing builders at the heart of the FBI’s corruption investigation at City Hall created a nonprofit organization, stocked it with friends and political allies and used it to obtain more than $3 million in tax-free subsidies that earned their companies millions more in profit.”…
Read MoreMichelle Breidenbach of The (Syracuse, N.Y.) Post-Standard looks into the “high salaries and free spending of the public’s money at the New York Power Authority,” the state’s publicly owned power generator. “NYPA’s six trustees oversee a $2.2 billion budget that accommodates the patronage and pork-barrel spending that come with a state public authority as well…
Read MoreTamara Koehler of the Ventura County Star reports on the paper’s public records audit showing that 40 percent of county government agencies failed to comply with requests. “Ventura Unified School District employees feared for their lives when a young man walked into the office, asked for public records and refused to give his name.”
Read MoreReporters Steve Timko, Jason Hidalgo and Jim Sloan of the Reno Gazette-Journal examine rural emergency services in Nevada. Timko used data from the Department of Transportation’s Fatal Accident Reporting System to identify Nevada’s deadliest roads. Other stories in the series look at ambulance response times — finding they are the worst in the country &mdash…
Read MoreGeoff Dutton of The Columbus Dispatch continues to follow the predatory lending business and practices in Ohio. He finds that “leaders of the brokers association have urged lawmakers to reject new proposals designed to crack down on predatory lending and increase state oversight. The mortgage industry, they argue, can police itself without new state regulations.”…
Read MoreToxic dumping, public corruption investigations among winners Investigative stories about deceit in Cleveland’s public school district and an environmental disaster in New Jersey won the top prizes in the 2005 IRE awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors announced today. Those were among 15 prizes awarded by IRE. Other stories honored included a 17-year body of crime…
Read MoreJohn Hill of The Sacramento Bee found that the California Highway Patrol repeatedly shut down signature gathering at Department of Motor Vehicle offices across the state in response to the petition drive to recall Gov. Gray Davis in the spring of 2003. The move reversed a long-standing CHP practice of allowing local offices to routinely…
Read MoreMartha Mendoza and Christopher Sullivan of The Associated Press used federal records to show that the amount of unpaid federal fines has risen sharply in the past decade, in an investigation that examined federal financial penalty enforcement across the nation. Individuals and corporations regularly avoid large penalties for wrongdoing — sometimes through negotiations, sometimes because…
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