"On the weekend before Sandy thundered into New Jersey, transit officials studied a map showing bright green and orange blocks. On the map, the area where most New Jersey Transit trains were being stored showed up as orange – or dry. So keeping the trains in its centrally-located Meadows Maintenance Complex and the nearby Hoboken yards seemed prudent. And it might have been a good plan. Except the numbers New Jersey Transit used to create the map were wrong. If officials had entered the right numbers, they would have predicted what actually happened: a storm surge that engulfed hundreds of rail ...

Investigative Newsource in San Diego reports on the North County Transit District, which was overhauled and largely outsourced four years ago with significant consequences. Newsource reports that the "the turnover among upper management at North County Transit District has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and has, at times, put riders at risk."

10 News (WTSP), Tampa Bay’s CBS affiliate, exposes cracks in Florida’s zero-deductable windshield-replacement law. While the law is designed to help consumers, 10 News shows the lack of policing over fraud has lead to a proliferation of glass companies pushing unnecessary replacements.  The effect has been rising rates for all policyholders, and now, state legislators are calling for action.

Security for San Diego's rail transit is staffed by private security officers, who say they have long been ill-equipped, untrained and unprepared to respond to many railway emergencies like collisions or terrorist attacks, according to a investigation from Investigative Newsource.

The Sacramento Bee
Guns rule street in west Lemon Hill neighborhood
“Between January 2007 and November 2012, no other similarly sized area in Sacramento County had more reports of two categories of gun crimes: assault with a firearm and shooting into an occupied dwelling or vehicle.” 

The Denver Post
Denver's 911 call review shows a pattern of problems
In nearly 240 of the calls reviewed for performance, police officers never received crucial scene information from the dispatchers or call takers. This included situations where they failed to notify officers that suspects were armed and had been violent in the ...

The New Haven Register
Connecticut superintendents get many perks in addition to salaries
“Meal allowances, housing help, generous mileage reimbursements and bonuses of up to $30,000 a year are some perks Connecticut school superintendents get in addition to their annual salaries.”

The Texas Tribune
A Part-Time Legislature, but in Whose Interest?
“Wth a conflict disclosure system rife with holes, virtually toothless ethics laws often left to the interpretation of the lawmakers they are supposed to regulate, and a Legislature historically unwilling to make itself more transparent, the reality is Texans know exceedingly little about who or what influences the ...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ethics and the Legislature: Money, secrets, power rule dome
On the floor and in the committee rooms, you can identify the most powerful lawmakers simply by checking their fundraising and lobbying totals. The cost of access to a legislator rises as he does: being promoted to chair a key committee doubles his campaign contributions and lobbyist gifts.

Slate
How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?
"The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate and the Twitter feed @GunDeaths are collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive ...

“Reports of drowsy drivers, including three with multiple incidents, are just one sign that Oregon's largest transit agency is playing a game of chicken with fatigue. The newspaper's eight-month examination found that the budget-battered agency allows operators to manipulate work rules to log as many as 22 hours in a 24-hour period, filling open runs and fattening paychecks but crashing vehicles and terrifying riders along the way.”

The Kansas City Star
Beef's Raw Edges 
"The Kansas City Star, in a yearlong investigation, found that the beef industry is increasingly relying on a mechanical process to tenderize meat, exposing Americans to higher risk of E. coli poisoning. The industry then resists labeling such products, leaving consumers in the dark. The result: Beef in America is plentiful and affordable, spun out in enormous quantities at high speeds, but it's a bonanza with hidden dangers. Industry officials contend beef is safer than it's ever been."

The Los Angeles Times
Dying For Relief: Reckless prescribing, patients endangered
"By ...

A lack of industry regulation, jurisdictional confusion at the federal level and trucks in bad conditions leave armored car drivers unprotected, The Texas Observer reports. The Bureau of Labor statistics reports an average of four deaths in the armored car industry per year, but experts say they have yet to see a figure on fatalities they trust because the industry remains unregulated and not even a commercial driver’s license is needed to drive an armored car.