Posts by hdcoadmin
Over 51,000 hired after state imposed hiring freeze
Using electronic payroll records, Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y) reporter Delen Goldberg found that New York state officials hired 51,000 people at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion in salaries since Gov. David Paterson ordered a “hard” hiring freeze in state government nearly two years ago. Former Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll earns $155,000 annually…
Read More2009 IRE Award winners announced
Investigations that exposed failures of government regulation, abuse of military personnel and failures of the criminal justice system are among the work honored in the 2009 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. This year there were two recipients of the top prize, the IRE Medal. The New York Times’ Charles Duhigg and a team of database…
Read MoreNanomaterials may pose serious health risk
Once confined to cutting-edge labs, nanotechnology has an increasingly pervasive place in everyday life. Its ultra-tiny engineered particles are now in as many as 10,000 products. A series by Andrew Schneider of AOL News shows a growing body of research suggests these nanomaterials pose significant and potentially fatal health risks including lung, heart and brain…
Read MoreSpecial probabtion protects dangerous drivers
Joe Mahr and Gerry Smith of the Chicago Tribune did a computer analysis of state police speeding tickets and driving records. They found that nearly two-thirds of the time, people caught going 100 mph or faster were given a special kind of probation that kept the tickets off their driving records. That included those triple-digit…
Read MorePersonnel law in North Carolina shrouds records in secrecy
Keeping Secrets, a three-part series by The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) for Sunshine Week, found North Carolina’s 35-year-old personnel law is among the most secretive in the nation, barring access to disciplinary actions, hiring decisions and employment histories. The series had plenty of examples showing how this secrecy is preventing the public from learning…
Read MoreSeismic safety repairs slow at public universities
Nearly 180 public university buildings in California used by tens of thousands of people have been judged dangerous to occupy during a major earthquake — including libraries, classroom buildings, student apartments, gyms, a hospital and even a child care center, a California Watch investigation has found.
Read MoreCAR2010: Don’t stop the learning
By Jaimi Dowdell, IRE Training Director IRE Resource Center staff have been busy adding tipsheets from the CAR conference. Handouts include information on forensic accounting, Web scraping, data on deadline, Twitter and more. In addition to this, many of the wonderful presenters and attendees have been sharing their tips, data and tutorials on the NICAR…
Read MoreSome Massachusetts companies abused job creation tax breaks
Todd Wallack of The Boston Globe reports on the misuse of the Massachusetts’ Economic Development Incentive Program which provides tax incentives to companies that invest and create jobs in the state. A review of records shows that hundreds of projects created fewer jobs than promised while others actually reduce employment while still collecting the tax…
Read MoreStimulus funds for special-education diverted for other uses
An investigation by Shannon Mullen of the Asbury (N.J.) Park Press shows that special-education stimulus funds have been diverted to other costs in Monmouth and Ocean counties, including legal fees and teacher benefits. “The redirection of funds was possible thanks to a previously little-used provision in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal statute…
Read MoreNominee’s links to TSA contractors raise ethics concerns
Last week, President Obama nominated Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding to head the Transportation Security Administration, but Harding’s ties to several TSA contractors via Harding Security, a firm he founded in 2003, have raised ethics concerns. “A review of Harding Security’s business activities by CongressDaily showed that of 21 companies listed on the firm’s…
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