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Overtime a burden in N.H. town
Andrew Nelson of The (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph used city payroll records to look at overtime costs. While the city is laying off schoolteachers, it continues to pay $9 million a year in overtime and other extra pay to city employees. The investigation found that “nearly 50 city workers added at least 50 percent to their…
Read MorePoliticians use leadership PACs for campaign contributions
Deirdre Shesgreenand and Jaimi Dowdell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used campaign records to show that leadership PACs, set up separately from regular re-election accounts, are an increasingly popular tool politicians use to rake in extra campaign dollars that they then dole out to their colleagues — usually the party’s most vulnerable incumbents or top…
Read MoreStudents often call police about peers’ parties
Brian Charlton and Don Jordan of The State News at Michigan State University analyzed noise and party violations from 2004 and 2005, including 1,025 noise, 41 unlawful party and two nuisance party violations, and found student neighborhoods were saturated with violations. The most ticketed areas were student apartment complexes, a finding that surprised police who…
Read MoreFirms employ brokers who have regulatory records
Paul Foutch and Will Deener of The Dallas Morning News used state securities board data to show that four firms in the Dallas-Fort Worth brokerage industry have brokers with extensive regulatory records. The investigation used NASD data (the industry’s self-regulatory body, formerly known as the National Association of Securities Dealers) obtained from the Texas State…
Read MoreSonics’ owners are a secretive team
Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times used public records to construct the most complete roster to date of the investors of Seattle’s basketball team, the Sonics. “Some were announced when they bought the team in 2001; others were identified in public records or interviews. Several were recently confirmed by the team for the first time…
Read MoreTax breaks prove costly for Detroit
David Josar of The Detroit News used State Tax Commission data, property assessments and tax records to show that Detroit is losing more than $63 million in annual revenue because of property tax breaks given to people moving into new houses, condos and lofts. The tax breaks have cost the city and school district more…
Read MoreDrug companies sponsored FDA staff travel
Alexander Cohen of The Center for Public Integrity analyzed FDA reports of privately sponsored trips taken by agency officials between October 1999 and September 2005 that cost more than $250 and found a loophole in the agency rules that has allowed its employees to receive more than $1.3 million in sponsored travel from groups closely…
Read MoreClerk reports erroneous juror response rates
Carl Jones of the Daily Business Review in South Florida analyzed Miami-Dade County juror response rates and found the county actually had about a 25 percent response in 2004-05 — rather than 54 percent as reported by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. And its true average monthly percentage for the last six months…
Read MoreN.C. drinking water safety in doubt
In a three-part series, Pat Stith of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer shows the “state’s regulation of drinking water reveals disregard for safety of private wells, weak regulation of public water systems and widespread problems with lead testing.” The series includes an interactive map and a sidebar about how the state closely followed Stith’s…
Read MoreNev. rural emergency services face challenges
Reporters Steve Timko, Jason Hidalgo and Jim Sloan of the Reno Gazette-Journal examine rural emergency services in Nevada. Timko used data from the Department of Transportation’s Fatal Accident Reporting System to identify Nevada’s deadliest roads. Other stories in the series look at ambulance response times — finding they are the worst in the country &mdash…
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