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Carl Jones of the Daily Business Review in South Florida analyzed Miami-Dade County juror response rates and found the county actually had about a 25 percent response in 2004-05 — rather than 54 percent as reported by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. And its true average monthly percentage for the last six months…
Read MoreMichael Fabey of the DefenseNews looks into the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office’s fading imaging- and signals-intelligence program that reportedly has an annual budget of about $7 billion. “A satellite communications technology called spot beaming might help the NRO regain some of its fading signals-intelligence relevance, but imagery’s place as an intel centerpiece may have gone…
Read MoreTony Saavedra, Kimberly Kindy and Brian Joseph of The Orange County Register used voter records to show that more than 100 Orange County residents who thought they were simply signing petitions to cure breast cancer, punish child molesters or build schools were duped into registering as Republicans. The petition circulators were paid as much as…
Read MoreAlexander 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.”…
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