All tagged Local Matters
After Mississippi lawmakers were caught reporting unitemized credit card charges to their campaign accounts, an official who pushed for reform flouted a new law and used the same maneuvers to rack up more than $100,000 in expenses, Luke Ramseth reported for the Jackson Clarion Ledger.
A county in Pennsylvania stalled almost seven months before confirming the death of an inmate in one of its jails, citing vague "legal reasons" for the delay, Jo Ciavaglia reported. Read the story at the Bucks County Courier Times.
More than a dozen top Louisiana fundraisers or other political insiders hobnobbed with the governor at his state-provided suite during the NFC Championship game, reporter Tyler Bridges found after obtaining a list of attendees. An outside interest group paid $2,000 for the event's food and alcohol.
Iowa's voter database is seriously flawed, leading some people's voting rights to be wrongly denied, Jason Clayworth reported for the Des Moines Register. And officials have known about the systemic issues for years.
Most of the drinking water that West Virginians pay to have treated never reaches a faucet. Instead, the water largely leaks out of the state's old pipes, wasting millions in public money, reporter Caity Coyne found after analyzing more than 300 local government reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
Caregivers at a New York nursing home have neglected to prevent bedsores for more than 1 in 10 of their high-risk patients, leading to a man's death from infection, Lou Michel reported for The Buffalo News.
A large Arkansas property owner regularly skirts building codes and has evicted dozens of tenants who have complained about poor conditions in their homes, Ginny Monk reported for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Phoenix health facility under fire for causing a comatose patient to become pregnant had been scrutinized years earlier by state regulators who wanted to pull patients from the premises, Robert Anglen and Stephanie Innes reported for The Arizona Republic.
Factories along the Mexican border pollute the air and water in neighboring cities at deadly rates, while government regulators fail to rein in those responsible, Ian James, writing for the (Palm Springs, CA) Desert Sun, reports.
Prison employees in Maine kept secret allegations of a supervisor who sent female guards obscene photos and sexually assaulted at least one inmate in the laundry room, Erin Rhoda and Callie Ferguson reports for the Bangor Daily News.
In Texas, children are sexually abused or killed at alarming rates inside daycare facilities with little oversight, Andrea Ball and Tony Plohetski reported. In a yearlong investigation, the team reviewed 40,000 inspection records and built a database to look for patterns.
The head of Georgia's judicial oversight body urged a tough judge to drop a case involving influential lawyers and politicians without any formal complaint or motion to recuse, Johnny Edwards reports.
