The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Sunshine laws" ...
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Digital Footprint & Sunshine Law
Our investigation led to a politician's resignation and criminal charges using social network search engines, traditional online databases and open records requests to identify his criminal past and as many as seven females who were pictured in nude photos, harassed, stalked or suffered cyber identity theft.
Tags: broadcast; criminal past; politician; resignation
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Your Right to Know
A reporter for the Columbus Dispatch began publishing a blog designed to educate Ohioans about their rights to access public records and meetings. The blog is also used as a bully pulpit to point out government abuses in withholding records from the public and news media.
Tags: blog; open records; Sunshine Laws; FOIA; Freedom of Information Act; public records
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State Law Specific on Meeting Agendas
The Caller-Times finds that an overwhelming majority of local governments in Texas that have public meetings are not following state open records laws.
Tags: open records; meetings; public record; Sunshine Act
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Contract Sunshine
This story reveals that state agencies in Wisconsin were not following a four-year-old transparency law requiring them to post contract data online for public review, and that Wisconsin ranked among the worst in the nation at providing such information. Agency directors blamed each other, a lack of enforcement power, technical glitches and a shortage of money.
Tags: Wisconsin; Contract Sunshine; transparency; law; public records; state; online; data;
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Gov. Matt Blunt Email Scandal
An email sent by Gov. Matt Blunt's chief of staff urged political groups to speak against the man who was running for Blunt's seat, Attorney General Jay Nixon. In the email it was implied that state resources were being used for political purposes.
Tags: memo; sunshine law; public record; Henry Herschel; taxpayer;
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Master's Degree of a Mess; TCC's Money Machine; Illegal to Erase
These stories were part of a year-long investigation of the Tarrant County College District's four-year mismanaged project to build a long-awaited downtown campus in Fort Worth, Texas. In includes investigation into the roles of the chancellor and the board of trustees in the debacle.
Tags: Higher education; mismanagement of funds; Texas; construction projects; urban planning; sunshine laws
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Do you know when and where your City Council is meeting?
"The report investigated how well Jacksonville City Council members followed Florida's Sunshine Law, which requires public officials to provide advance notice and access to meetings of two or more officials from the same board and commission. After the meeting, someone must record written minutes of the session." However in Jacksonville "dozen of meetings about public business [were] held without public notice or written minutes and several meetings that took place in private locations, which violated the city's ethics code and numerous Florida Attorney General opinions."
Tags: sunshine law; city council; Florida; editorials
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Project Access
The reporters, with the help of 18 journalism students, set out to find out how public were public records. The students were sent out to request data from a range of public departments and rate their experience, the idea being that they were more representative of the general public rather than experienced journalists would be.
Tags: FOIA; public records; local government; open records; Sunshine laws
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Cash Cow
The author investigated the use of public funds going to political insiders, conflicts of interest, cronyism, nepotism and a reluctance for transparency in the little- scrutinized town of Southwest Ranches, Florida. The investigation showed how a "contract" form of government could spin out of control and defy all tenets of good public policy.
Tags: Southwest Ranches; public funds; conflicts of interest; cronyism; nepotism; contract government; public disclosure; Sunshine laws
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Little Court of Horrors
This investigation examined how well juvenile courts handle child protection matters and how the children, whose plight has just recently become a matter of public record, are faring. The investigation found that the reform intended to strengthen the state's child protection system has dramatically increased the rate at which children are being taken from their parents ---permanently. The law was intended to fast-track cases, but it does not allow the time or provide the services families need to address the matters that landed them in court to begin with.
Tags: child abuse; child court; foster care; sunshine law; open records; social services