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Karen E. Crummy of The Denver Post analyzed county data to find that “most of the inmates crammed into the Denver County Jail are accused of robbery, burglary, selling drugs and even violent assaults. Relatively few of them are the drunken drivers and petty drug users whom people often associate with county jail.” Local residents…
Read MoreJim Davis of The Fresno Bee used city expense reports to show that “Fresno Mayor Alan Autry and the City Council spent tens of thousands of dollars in the past four years on meals, hotel bills and other expenses with little oversight and less public debate.” Autry had the city pay for 422 business meals…
Read MoreMickey Ciokajlo and Todd Lighty of the Chicago Tribune used Cook County payroll data to find that “more than 100 county workers were each paid $50,000 or more in overtime last year, with one industrious nurse pulling down $187,500 in extra pay. Oak Forest Hospital nurse Usha Patel, who earned the overtime on top of…
Read MoreChris Fusco and Lori Rackl of the Chicago Sun-Times used state documents to show that sixty-one criminals on parole from the state’s prison system are living in 37 nursing homes alongside vulnerable people who have virtually no way of knowing they’re there. “The Sun-Times found an example of this in southwest suburban Bridgeview at Midway…
Read MoreMegan O’Matz and Sally Kestin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found that “government inspectors entrusted to enter disaster victims’ homes and verify damage claims include criminals with records for embezzlement, drug dealing and robbery.” The paper found the names of more than 100 inspectors for the Federal Emergency Management Agency through public and confidential sources;…
Read MorePatrick Lakamp of The Buffalo News analyzed 24,000 parking ticket hearings, finding that most Buffalo residents pay the majority of their fines, whereas as a select few city insiders get their fines dismissed. “They just write letters to the city’s parking enforcement director. Two-thirds of the time, their tickets go away.” A deputy commissioner of…
Read MoreErin Jordan of the Des Moines Register obtained salary records of foundation employees at Iowa’s three public universities. They found on average the employees made less than the national average, but the administrators were far above the average salary with “… U of I Foundation President Michael New topping out at $250,000 a year.” Despite…
Read MoreDan Tracy of the Orlando Sentinel spent more than six months investigating the Orange County Convention Center and the industry surrounding Central Florida’s largest single public-works project. “The center’s $748 million expansion, which opened in August 2003 in the midst of a tourism and travel slump, attracted only 154,317 new visitors during its first full…
Read MoreDavid E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Reports details how the White House is implementing a secret policy to intervene not just in the Muslim world, but within Islam itself, and how Washington has set up a program of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War forty years ago. The project…
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