Document-driven newsrooms -- recent stories using access laws
In conjunction with its national FOI newsroom training, the
SPJ FOI Committee is recognizing recent news stories and investigations
using access laws.
Guzzle some more gas
From homeless-outreach workers to zoning inspectors, Fairfax County,
Va., employees are driving hundreds of vehicles across the county
-- or are swapping cars with those who drive more -- simply to run up
the odometers. They know that if they don't use their cars, they could
lose them. Of all the perks of public service, few are more treasured
than the government car. So when the county established 4,500 miles as
the annual minimum to determine whether a vehicle could be weeded from
its fleet to save money, many employees and managers got creative.
Their efforts -- heightened even as gasoline prices soared this year --
are documented in hundreds of e-mails and memos obtained by The
Washington Post under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300995.html?nav=emailpage
Sex offenders living near school bus stops
Using the Illinois FOIA, The Daily Southtown compared the home
addresses of 50 sex offenders registered in five Chicago south
suburban communities as of Sept. 5 with bus route information provided
by eight elementary school districts. A total of 32 of the sex
offenders live a block or closer to a school bus stop, the documents
showed. The analysis was prompted by a "close call" in Orland School
District 135 where a kindergartner was scheduled for pick up in the
driveway of a man convicted of indecent solicitation of a child under
13 and aggravated criminal sexual assault.
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/70464,1ND1-24.article
Developers net $4.5M credit from flawed tests
Tests showing widespread soil contamination helped developers of a
sprawling downtown project land a tax credit worth millions. The tests
were wrong, though, and very little soil pollution existed at the site,
according to state records obtained by the (Traverse City, Mich.)
Record-Eagle under the state Freedom of Information Act.
http://www.record-eagle.com/2006/sep/24petoskey.htm
15 charged in driver’s license conspiracy
Operators of truck driving schools in Kansas City and southern
Missouri conspired to help more than 70 Somali and Bosnian nationals
illegally obtain commercial licenses, federal prosecutors allege.
Information obtained by The Associated Press under Missouri’s open
records law indicated that more than 300 of about 520 people who took
the test at the school between May 2004 and December 2005 but did not
train there had names that might be Middle Eastern in origin.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/15577977.htm