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 "large bureaucracies" ...
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CHP Contracting
Bee reporters investigate the California Highway Patrol, reporting on topics including "favoritism in bidding practices to ongoing instances of CHP pension fraud, and efforts to crack down on it." As a result of the Bee's work, the state legislature and administration called for further investigations to discover and fix the problems.
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A Failure to Protect: Maryland's Troubled Group Homes
About 2,700 youths live in 330 privately-run group homes in Maryland. Although the state licenses, funds and supposedly regulates the homes, it fails to adequately protect the interests of children or of the taxpayers who are paying for their care. Children suffer abuse and neglect in the absence of strong state oversight. Regulators often license unqualified operators and then rely largely on them to police themselves. Some owners collect high salaries, enjoy expensive perks and reward friends and relatives with lucrative jobs or contracts, all paid for by the state.
Tags: group homes; Department of Human Resources; Evershine Residential Services; Social Services; bureaucracy; Office for Children; Youth and Families; children
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A Changing Landscape
"These stories provide a portrait of the Bush environmental policies and the largely hidden political process that produced them. They also provide a window into the secretive administration's domestic-policymaking and its impact in the West and elsewhere. The reporters penetrated the federal bureaucracy to show how the White House and political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department manipulated science, circumvented the law and marginalized or steamrolled career employees. These reports detail how, in the process, the administration adopted regulations or policies that benefited its corporate patrons at the expense of public health and the environment." Also included is an update from February, 2005, that relates the results of a study done by Nikki Tinsley, the EPA's inspector general, at the request of seven senators who read the LA Times original series. Tinsley's report confirmed the LA Times findings.
Tags: environment; pollution; mercury; national Forrest; oil drilling; Halliburton; Clean Air Act; Clear Skies initiative; EPA
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Banking on Fear
The American Bar Association Journal reports that "this is part revisionist history of the banking and savings & loan scandals of the 1980s-early-90s, but more significantly a look at how unprecedented powers subsequently given to regulators to clean up the mess created a 'Frankenstein monster' that harmed and destroyed a lot of innocent bankers and investors. This story shows that not only did Congress in large part create the problem by loosening regulation of savings & loans, its hasty attempt to fix the problem in 1989 with the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act beefed up a bureaucracy that has failed to pull back from cases even after it learns the targets are innocent...."