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Steve Myers of the Mobile Register reveals the existence of hundreds of court cases where convictions were removed from the public record. “The practice of expunging records came to the forefront recently due to the case of Mobile County school board President David Thomas, who was arrested for drunken driving in 1998. Before he was…
Read MoreJennifer Talhelm of The (Columbia) State reviewed campaign contributions to South Carolina state lawmakers during the final six months of 2004, finding that “36 cents of every dollar … given to House and Senate lawmakers in the last two reporting periods of 2004 was tied to businesses, PACs or other special interest groups. During that…
Read MoreGregory Korte of The Cincinnati Enquirer analyzed nearly 100,000 parking tickets issued in Cincinnati last year, finding that “Kentucky violators rarely pay anything at all, because the office responsible for collecting fines doesn’t trace out-of-state license plates. That resulted in an out-of-state collection rate of just 2.5 percent, compared to 87.9 percent overall.” Fines for…
Read MorePaul Goodsell and Lynn Safranek of the Omaha World-Herald examined 911 calls between 2000 and 2004 to find that “police took longest to respond to west Omaha calls. East of I-680, it took an average of 6 minutes and 31 seconds last year for the first officer to arrive on the highest priority calls. West…
Read MoreSusan Vinella of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer used state reports to show that “Ohio’s largest Head Start agency has repeatedly failed to enroll the number of children it has been paid to serve and has erroneously reported children eligible for the program.” The paper also found that top officials at the Council for Economic Opportunities…
Read MoreMarc Topkin, Damian Cristodero and Louis Hau of the St. Petersburg Times examines the ten-year history of Tampa Bay’s major league baseball franchise, finding that the Devil Rays’ lack of success can be attributed to a number of factors: * Major League Baseball put the new owners in a financial hole before the team ever…
Read MoreRon Menchaca and Glenn Smith of the Charleston Post and Courier investigated South Carolina’s agency that oversees law enforcement, finding “endemic failures in the state’s system for tracking police officers that allow problem cops to keep their badges despite histories of misconduct and even criminal behavior… Until three years ago, the state turned a blind…
Read MoreMichael Moss of the New York Times used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents showing that “the Pentagon’s difficulties in shielding troops and their vehicles with armor have been far more extensive and intractable than officials have acknowledged.” The paper used a Department of Defense inspector general’s report that outlined the problems in…
Read MoreMatthew Hirsch of the San Francisco Bay Guardian investigated nonprofit city contracts and found that San Francisco is spending billions on nonprofit contracts without adequate oversight. “Since 2002 … the city has distributed more than $1.5 billion to nonprofit organizations …” The nonprofits receiving the contracts, unlike city agencies, do not have to comply with…
Read MoreKeith Matheny of the Traverse City Record-Eagle used state and federal records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act to show that while the public learned about deadly toxins present in the Bay Harbor gated community last fall, “regulators knew of contamination from cement kiln dust piles as far back as the 1980s.” The documents…
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