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Carolyn Tuft of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used Missouri’s Open Records law to obtain documents showing that “TV evangelist Joyce Meyer and her family have received millions in salary and benefits from her worldwide ministry in recent years.” The details were included in a property tax dispute involving the tax status of the ministry’s headquarters.…
Read MoreLee Davidson of The Deseret Morning News uses computer assisted-reporting to analyze nearly 10,000 restaurant inspections during 2003 and 2004. The data were obtained through a state open records request. “The analysis shows which restaurants had the most violations per inspection and the fewest, with 25 establishments averaging 13 or more critical violations per inspection,…
Read MoreJerry W. Jackson, Debbie Salamone and Sean Mussenden of The Orlando Sentinel used public records to determine that Walt Disney World represents a more than $4 billion-a-year business in Central Florida. The paper reviewed state, local and county tax records, corporate annual reports and 15 years’ worth of federal SEC filings, using computer-assisted reporting, to…
Read MoreIan Demsky of The (Nashville) Tennessean used local police data to show that “a record number of police pursuits zipped through Nashville streets last year, even as beefed-up safety measures caused officers to cancel more of the dangerous car chases than ever before.” A third of the 269 police chases in 2004 led to some…
Read MoreRob Gebeloff and Joe Malinconico of The (Newark) Star-Ledger analyzed state data to find that while New Jersey Transit’s overall on-time performance is close to 95 percent, “on-time rates for dozens of rush-hour trains are twice as bad as the overall average.” The paper’s analysis also showed that “on the Northeast Corridor, one of every…
Read MoreJames Salzer of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used state records to show that “Gov. Sonny Perdue has championed limiting the gifts that lobbyists can give legislators and other state officials, but he has accepted airplane rides, NASCAR tickets and dinners from lobbyists.” Among the gifts was a 30-mile flight to Atlanta Motor Speedway and dinner and…
Read MorePenny Brown Roberts of the Baton Rouge Advocate used public records to show that “developers of a swanky Texas golf resort have burned through nearly $30 million in a line of credit from Louisiana’s police retirement system and now say they need more money to make good on promised sales.” The pension system has contributed…
Read MoreCharles Ornstein and Tracy Weber of the Los Angeles Times used California’s Public Records Act to show that “Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center paid more than $1.3 million over the last year for the services of a radiologist who said he worked an average of 20 hours a day, seven days a week, during…
Read MoreJohn Diedrich of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that since 1994, “Milwaukee has paid more than $2.1 million in pay and benefits to 30 fired officers who were not reinstated, including six whose cases were still pending as of Friday.” Fired officers don’t have to repay wages earned while they appeal their firings. Milwaukee firefighters,…
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