The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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Governor’s tech fund has aided campaign donors
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that Governor Rick Perry has given more than $16 million from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors. The governor has denied any sort of political influence on how the tech funds are awarded.
Read MoreEmails reveal backlog of unprocessed tax returns dating to 1994
Internal emails requested by The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) showed that the North Carolina Department of Revenue had an undisclosed backlog of unprocessed tax returns going back to 1994 and, in thousands of cases, taxpayers were owed money for unknowingly overpaying their taxes. The e-mails also showed the department had quietly changed its policy…
Read MoreOvertime abundant for staff of mental health complex
An analysis by Journal Sentinel reporters Meg Kissinger, Steve Schultze and Ben Poston has found two medical directors in charge of care at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex collected overtime totaling more than $300,000 at a time when federal inspectors twice declared patients there were unsafe. Overtime for Behavioral Health Division employees rose 42%…
Read MoreSurprise inspections at oil rigs have dwindled in last decade
According to federal data analyzed by The Wall Street Journal, federal authorities had made no surprise inspections of deepwater oil rigs in the Gulf since 2004. Without surprise inspections, the chances of finding individual safety violations is greatly reduced. “In 2000, about one in nine inspections of deepwater facilities were unannounced, according to the Journal’s…
Read MoreViolations riddle Florida housing agency
After HUD reviewed the local public housing authority in Lee County, Florida, The News-Press took an in-depth look at the finances and operations of this federally funded affordable housing agency. The newspaper documented instances of employees given Section 8 rent subsidy vouchers and public housing rentals ahead of needy families, kickbacks from contractors, and a…
Read MoreToxic Landscape series
An on-going series by The (Bergen, N.J.) Record looks at the effectiveness — or lack thereof — of Superfund efforts in New Jersey’s Bergen and Passaic counties. The first story in the series focuses on errors and cutbacks that have plagued the process. “Since the program was launched 30 years ago, only three of the…
Read MoreTexas governor’s tech fund aided firms with ties to donors
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that more than $16 million from a state fund to help high tech start-up firms has been awarded to companies that have investors or officers who are large campaign donors to Gov. Rick Perry. The News reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents,…
Read MoreMany Massachusetts firms misreported executive pay
Dozens of publicly traded companies in Massachusetts misreported how much they paid their top executives to shareholders and regulators, the Boston Globe found in a review of company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 34 companies made 55 errors ranging from $20 to more than a half a million dollars. The Globe discovered the…
Read MoreInvestigation exposes child porn ring
An investigation into the child porn industry by Isaac Wolf of Scripps Howard News Service has led to hundreds of American convictions, and those running the ring are now in jails in Eastern Europe. Wolf had unprecedented access to the backers of these porn sites. The investigation identified 30,000 customers of these sites in over…
Read MoreContracts fail lift Alaskan natives from poverty while others profit
A program created by the federal government four decades ago to settle native land claims in Alaska has failed deliver on its promise to lift impoverished native Alaskans out of poverty. Though special privileges granted by Congress have launched Alaska native corporations into one of the great contracting booms in American history, a Washington Post…
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