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Mike McGraw and Michael Mansur of The Kansas City Star report that an investigation by The Kansas City Star revealed that the taxpayer-supported home maintenance program overseen by the city’s former housing agency approved of shoddy repair work on homes leading to leaky roofs, sagging ceilings, buckling and poorly repaired foundations and dangerous furnaces and…
Read MoreThe Kentucky Press Association, The Associated Press, various newspaper and professional groups and several university student programs carried out a public records survey to determine whether public offices are allowing citizens to view government documents. "More than 100 students, volunteers and newspaper employees visited four local government offices on Oct. 21 seeking specific public records.…
Read MoreMichelle Nicolosi of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Washington state’s dental board has been slow to act and has cut generous deals with some of the state’s most complained-about dentists. The P-I investigation found that dentists were allowed to continue working in Washington with little restriction long after they lost licenses in other states, or…
Read MoreAdam Liptak of The New York Times , examined information about prisoners serving life sentences in all 50 states, finding “that about 132,000 of the nation’s prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison…
Read MoreJon W. Glass and David Gulliver of The Virginian-Pilot used city property records to show that " hundreds of homes in the highest-risk areas around Oceana Naval Air Station were built before it became an air base and before Navy flight patterns exposed some neighborhoods to potential jet crashes." A base-closing commission has recommended that…
Read MoreRussell Carollo and Larry Kaplow of the Dayton Daily News and Cox News Service used a Pentagon database to show that "dozens of soldiers have been accused of crimes against Iraqis since the first troops deployed for Iraq. But despite strong evidence and convictions in some cases, only a small percentage resulted in punishments nearing…
Read MoreWith the Virginia governor’s race just weeks away, the Virginia Public Access Project used mapping technology to create online dynamic maps of campaign contributions received by Virginia’s statewide candidates. The map shades contributions by county and city, and links to detailed data on individual donors in those localities.
Read MoreJim Galloway and Alan Judd of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution report that Ralph Reed, who has vocally condemned gambling as a "cancer on the American body politic," quietly worked five years ago to kill a proposed ban on Internet wagering on behalf of eLottery Inc., a Connecticut-based company in the online gambling industry. The defeated legislation…
Read MoreLee Davidson at Salt Lake City's The Deseret Morning News reported that Orrin Hatch, despite being a former Mormon bishop teetotaler, has received more from alcohol interests than any other U.S. Senator this year — and he’s among the top five in money from tobacco interests. The Deseret Morning News also searched Federal Election Commission…
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