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 "mismanagement of funds" ...
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Pasco County Housing Authority
WSTP-TV discovered that Pasco Housing Authority was being severely mismanaged. The residents living in the housing projects were being ignored and abused because of incompetence and willful misuse of state and federal funds. They were also being retaliated against for bringing up problems at their homes to the board. Not only was the executive director having sex at the office with people who worked for her, but she was also padding her paramour's overtime sheets.
Tags: Housing Projects
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Rotten to the Core (McKay Scholarship Series)
The story exposes fraud, mismanagement, and dangerous abuses in Florida's $150-million-a-year scholarship program. The story showed that the Florida Department of Education has almost no oversight over the schools receiving funds.
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Failure of Justice
The failed investigation of a police imposter who sexually assaulted at least 15 Apache teenagers serves as a window into the breakdown of law enforcement in Indian country. Native Americans suffer from disproportionate crime rates - especially sexual assaults - largely because of a dysfunctional criminal justice system. In this case, two men were falsely arrested and jailed; the real criminal got away and victims saw no justice. The government's own records, obtained through a federal lawsuit, demonstrate that the problem is systemic - a result of overlapping jurisdictions, mismanagement, lack of funding inadequate training and multiple other flaws.
Tags: Law Enforcement; Native American; Justice; Jurisdiction; Sexual Assault; Rape; Police; Imposter; Apache; Whiteriver; Indian Reservation
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Positive
"The state of Illinois has increased its HIV spending by tens of millions of dollars-creating two new grant programs designed to combat the epidemic among African Americans. One of the grant programs was mismanaged and much of the funding does not target the highest risk population." Furthermore, the health department and non-profits were either understaffed or waiting for the funds to be received before they could treat anyone.
Tags: Illinois; AIDS; African Americans; Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV); Grant programs
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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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New Jersey's Pension Peril
This four-part series investigates the state of New Jersey's beleaguered pension system. The authors discovered a concerted effort by government insiders to cripple the public pension system through generous giveaways, financial gimmickry and outright abuse. Gross mismanagement cost the fund $18 billion dollars in less than 2 years.
Tags: pension; pension reform; fraud; state government; pension system; Open Public Records Law; pension payments; corruption
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School Bus Bloat 2005
For over fourteen months the reporters investigated the Cleveland Municipal School District's transportation department, producing 25 stories. The reports examined extensive waste of resources, mismanagement, and fraudulent use of inflated data. Reporter Tom Merriman used records, surveillance video, and interviews with ex-employees to document the district was inflating rider numbers to get more funding. School administrators blamed the mid-level bureaucrat they fired, but Merriman used internal documents to show he was ordered to inflate the numbers. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of dollars were being spend on luxury coaches for athletes. The investigation lead to the resignation of a top official in the organization.
Tags: Cleveland Municipal School District; transportation; fraud; school buses; Ohio Board of Education; Barbara Byrd Bennett; state transportation funding
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Political Questions - James J. Chavez
This report asked a lot of questions about James J. Chavez, a local politician who ran for a seat on the board of the Maricopa County Special Health Care District. The investigators found that Chavez lived outside of the district, that the address he provided inside the district was fake, and that both his college degree and MBA were not valid. Furthermore, the investigation found that he mismanaged funds in a non-profit organization that he worked for.
Tags: politics; politicians; election fraud; votes; Latinos; local elections; deep backgrounding
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Wrongdoing in Wilmer-Hutchins
Using a hidden camera and the unpaid help of a mold remediation expert, reporters at KDFW exposed severe problems with the Wilmer-Hutchins district high school. News cameras also caught the district using illegal immigrants instead of mold remediation specialists to repair building problems. The investigation also lead to the discovery of mismanagement and fraud in the school district's leadership and its financial records. As a result of this report, a state education agency audit followed, along with investigations by the FBI, IRS, U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour division, and the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Throughout the investigation, district officials denied any wrongdoing, refused to hand over documents, and were eventually charged with tampering with evidence in the federal investigations.
Tags: standardized testing; bonds; mismanagement of funds; Wilmer-Hutchins school district
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Financial Fiasco at the Oklahoma Public Schools
Public schools in Oklahoma noticed that the maintenance of accounts in the district was in complete disarray. Investigations by The Oklahoman found that the district owed $3 million in overdue bills and had not paid up because they did not know if they had the funds. The investigation also found that the district had spent over $600,000 on a new telephone system only to scrap it a year later.
Tags: Oklahoma City Public Schools; District financial records; public school funding; debts incurred by the district; mismanagement of financial records