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Paul von Zielbauer of The New York Times spent a year investigating Prison Health Services, a private company that provides medical care in many of New York’s state prisons. “A yearlong examination of Prison Health by The New York Times reveals repeated instances of medical care that has been flawed and sometimes lethal. The company’s…
Read MoreJayne O’Donnell from USA Today investigated teenage driving accidents across the United States and found an alarming trend. Nearly three-fourths of teenage accidents occurred when males were behind the wheel with 16-year-olds being the riskiest of them all. “Their rate of involvement in fatal crashes was nearly five times that of drivers ages 20 and…
Read MoreJason Method and James W. Prado Roberts of the Asbury Park Press looked at New Jersey’s $6 billion school construction program and found that the state authority had purchased at least 22 environmentally contaminated or possibly contaminated sites, including one radioactive Superfund site and another historic steel cable plant full of lead, beryllium, arsenic and…
Read MoreMike Hoyem of The (Fort Myers) News-Press has a new twist on Florida land deals: the use of phony deeds to sell land owned by dead people. “Forged signatures, faked notarizations, phony witnesses and easy access to land records via the Internet are robbing the dead and their relatives of land as property values in…
Read MoreVicki McClure and Tania deLuzuriaga of The Orlando Sentinel used audit records of local charter schools to find that “Imagine Schools Inc., operator of 10 schools in Central Florida, spent as much as 50 percent less per student on instruction last year but about two to six times more on administration than other public schools…
Read MoreKurt Rogahn of The (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Gazette found that teacher pay “is increasing at rates better than inflation, despite warnings from the state’s leading teacher organization that Iowa’s average teacher pay hasn’t kept pace with inflation.” One researcher says the numbers show pay has gone up quite a bit, though the averages say it…
Read MoreBrett J. Blackledge of The Birmingham News used state records to show that Alabama’s Department of Human Resources has spent millions on computer consultants, including payments to former agency employees who left DHR only to return for consulting work. “The agency responsible for helping needy children and families now is facing questions from federal officials…
Read MoreDani Dodge of the Ventura County Star used Federal Highway Administration data to show that “twenty-eight of Ventura County’s 485 bridges are considered ‘structurally deficient’ … Bringing just 15 of those bridges up to standard would cost $50 million.” A map shows the location of the troubled spans, and a sidebar describes the condition of…
Read MoreScott Dodd, Bruce Henderson and Heather Vogell of The Charlotte Observer examine railroad safety, finding that “in the Charlotte region, nearly 800,000 people live within a mile of a major rail line,” an increase of 90,000 in the past 10 years. “Yet emergency planners don’t know how much hazardous material passes daily through uptown Charlotte…
Read MoreLee Davidson of The Deseret Morning News used local records to show that “at least 443 land developers, real estate companies and construction companies owed more than a combined $5.17 million in back property taxes and penalties” as of January 2005. Ski resorts, an airline and telecommunications firm MCI are among the other tax delinquents…
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