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 "University of California" ...
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America's Great State Payroll Giveaway
A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.
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Wage Theft In the Fields
American farmworkers have often experienced egregious abuses, but nothing is more pervasive, nor harder to ferret out, than the wage theft that results from a practice called farm-labor contracting. Found in the fields of every handpicked crop in the country, farm-labor contractors not only provide growers with crews, but also handle wages and manage everything from verifying immigration status to providing workers' compensation. The problem is, the contractors systematically underpay the workers. “Farm labor contractors,” says writer Tracie McMillan, “give American produce growers what companies like China's Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business, often saving money in the process and creating a firewall between the brand and the working conditions under which its products are made.” And yet McMillan — a fellow with both the Knight-Wallace program at University of Michigan, and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University — found that enforcement is rare: In 2008, inspectors visited only 1,499 of the more than 2 million farms nationwide; in 2011, California inspectors found just seven minimum wage violations on the state’s 86,000 farms. Fines are minimal: “It's cheaper to violate the law than to follow the law,” says one farmworker advocate. And wage theft is tedious to prove, requiring inspectors to interview workers, analyze time cards, and collect payroll records. That's why workers and their advocates in California are counting on a lawsuit brought earlier this year on behalf of two farmworkers against the contractors who hired them—as well as the growers who outsourced the work. The suit alleges that the contractors routinely undercounted the hours worked, failed to pay minimum wage or overtime, failed to provide safe or sanitary working conditions, and housed the workers in unsafe and unsanitary living quarters. The “collective action” suit—open to anyone who can prove he or she experienced the same treatment—may cover thousands of workers and deliver awards substantial enough to deter other employers from the same practices.
Tags: Labor; farms; working conditions; wage
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Investor's Club
The story shows that the University of California had invested $2 billion into private equity funds and companies with policy making Regents that held substantial conflicts of interest. The Regents include California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his personal investment adviser, and the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
Tags: Regents; conflict of interest; University of California; investment; Arnold Schwarzenegger
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Investor's Club
The eight-month investigation found that the University of California invested $2 billion in private equity funds and companies in which several Regents held significant financial interests. The Regents include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his personal investment adviser, Paul Wachter, and Richard C. Blum, a Wall Street professional married to Senate Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
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Misdirected funds at Fresno State
Officials at California State University, Fresno, repeatedly allocated corporate contributions to athletics despite rules that limited the money to academic uses. Although the campus contends the misdirection was unintentional, it occurred for years, even after one company’s complaints spurred promises of reform.
Tags: education; university; fundraising; athletics; sports
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A Question of Oversight
Public agency First 5 Kern contracted with the Applied Research Center at California State University, Bakersfield to evaluate First 5's effectiveness in the community. During the research, money from First 5, which is a company that "doles out money from a state tobacco tax" to recipients like schools, was used to pay for items including trips and cars. Some of these gifts went to the researchers, who concluded that "First 5 Kern is making a substantive and significant difference" in people's lives.
Tags: First 5 Kern; California State University, Bakersfield; tobacco tax; distribution of tobacco tax money; illicit gifts
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Critics Question Dog-Run Expense
The investigation questioned $30,000 spent on a fenced-in play area for the new University of California Santa Cruz chancellor's two dogs. Campus officials defended the expense, saying they had promised the chancellor when they recruited her that accommodations would be provided for her pets.
Tags: animals; university expenditure; financial management; University of California Santa Cruz
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Damming the Angry River
The reporters, students at the University of California, Berkeley, investigated the effort to stop the Chinese government from building 13 dams along the NU River as part of that nation's quest for energy. Originally broadcast on KTSF, a TV station broadcasting in Cantonese and Mandarin that serves the Northern California Asian communities
Tags: Environment; hydroelectricity; China; Nu River; energy; dams
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UC pay practices
The series focused on pay practices at the University of California, the country's largest and arguably most prestigious public university system. The series found that UC paid employees $871 million in bonuses, administrative stipends, relocation allowances, severance pay and other hidden compensation last fiscal year on top of salaries and overtime. The university added hundreds of high-paid jobs at a time when it was raising tuition, increasing class sizes and freezing salaries for low-paid employees to address cuts in state funding.
Tags: UC; University of California; public spending; public funds; university spending
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"Los Alamos"
Using documents and information from a whistleblower, this report details a list of security risks and potentially lethal radioactive hazards in and around the nation's premiere nuclear weapons laboratory.
Tags: nuclear material; radioactive hazards; whistleblower; security breach; University of California; Department of Energy; DOE