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 "town budget" ...
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Gaming the System: Public Pensions the Massachusetts Way
The series reveals the “manipulations of the state public pension system by legislators, ex-legislators, and local city councilors for their own and their friends’ enrichment, and at taxpayers’ expense”. Overall, this series describes the public pension abuse and the specific findings of the series.
Tags: state government; Senate; John A. Brennan Jr.; town moderators; city council; state budget; House; legislator; politicians
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Dart Travel Spending
CBS 11 News reviewed thousands of pages of documents pertaining to travel expenses and credit card purchases by executives and staff members who manage Dallas Area Rapid Transit, AKA DART. We discovered dozens trips around the country and around the world for seminars. While traveling, executives enjoyed expensive accommodations. The station also found questionable expenditures on expensive catering, gift cards and purchases from Victoria's Secret. The expenses came at a time when the agency faced a $1,000,000,000 budget shortfall that jeopardized key transportation projects. CBS 11 producers followed a group of executives and board members to a transit junket in California where we watched as many skipped key meetings, attended steak dinners and parties thrown by companies who bid on transit projects. The station also watched as DART executives and staff members violated internal policies by using taxis and shuttles instead of local mass transit, a pattern found while reviewing dozens of other out-of-town junkets.
Tags: mass transit; Dallas; fraud; transit authority; travel expenses; questionable spending
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Health care costs soar, squeeze localities
"Health care spending for Massachusetts communities has nearly doubled since 2001, squeezing town budgets and forcing cutbacks in public safety and government services and leading to calls for property tax increases."
Tags: health; costs; health care;
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Fire Alarm
Long Island, the last densely-populated region of the country served almost exlusively by volunteer firefighters, is now paying as much for its small-town service as many U.S. cities do for fully paid departments. In their efforts to cope with waning volunteerism, fire departments here spend extraordinary sums on premium trucks and equipment,travel junkets, enormous firehouses and costly perks- and for paid staff who answer calls, but are hired under every title but firefighter. Despite all the spending, most volunteer fire departments are not getting fire crews to respond as fast as volunteer standards say they should.
Tags: firefighters; volunteer firefighters; response time; perks; fire department budgets
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Coping with a Crisis
The author investigated a budget crisis in Coburg, Oregon. He looked into the factors that led to the crisis, and the steps that the city took towards recovery. Holtz also investigated the remaining problems that resulted from the crisis, as well as the fact that the city government was not being held accountable by the state or by town residents.
Tags: money; city government; state government; finance; budget; government expenditures
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Close Connections
The Asbury Park Press' investigations of municipal officials found that politically powerful attorneys had almost free reign to double bill and over bill the agencies they were supposed to serve. An investigation of the township attorney, who is the top elected Republican in the state, found that he double billed the city by more than $8,000. He initially said the double-billing was not his responsibility, but later admitted it was an accident. The Press found that the project in which the double-billing occurred was part of an unfinished seven-year effort to rewrite the city's ordinances. The senator charged more than $100,000 for the incomplete work, although similar projects cost a quarter as much and can take months, not years, to finish. Close examination of these billing records for the ordinance re-writing project showed his bills included rewrites of ordinances that don't exist, and repeated rewrites of ordinances that were little more than a paragraph or two long.
Tags: Marlboro Township-New Jersey; Council Members; Mayor Matthew V. Scannapieco; developers; Anthony Spalliero; Senator John O. Bennett III; political contributions; double-billing; town budget; ordinances; legal invoice; Monmouth County; campaign contributions; Center for Responsive Politics Marlboro Cultural and Improvement Fund; Keansburg Board of Education; New Jersey State Commission of Investigation; reform bill; elected officials
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Town purses grow fat at the sound of the gavel
An investigation by the Star-Ledger finds that New Jersey towns, on average, are far more dependent on revenue from municipal court fines than average. Generally, municipal court revenue count for only 2.4 percent of a town's cash flow. Ten New Jersey towns use court money to fund 10 percent of their budgets, and one town uses 17 percent. Extra stories on parking and speeding tickets add an extra dimension in this look at court revenue.
Tags: speeding; fines; parking tickets; violations; municipal courts; courts
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Feeding frenzy
Riverfront Times reports on controversies surrounding the prospective development of 438 acres of prime North County land, recently bought by the Saint Louis Airport. "Two developers, three cities, the airport and the county are engaged in a dogfight ... and there's plenty of sleaze to go around," the newspaper reports. The story reveals that neither of the 400-million development game participants cares about the survival of Kinloch, a little town with inexperienced administration and small budget, which was the previous owner of the land. The reporter follows the litigation process started by Kinloch, claiming that the airport might have misrepresented the reasons for the buyout of the land to the FAA.
Tags: property; politics; St. Louis County Economic Council; Federal Aviation Administration; Kinloch; local governments; commissioners; city council; St. Clair County; St. Charles County
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Atlantis: Nonresidents just the ticket
A Palm Beach Post investigation finds that for a number of years Atlantis - a "small, wealthy, nearly crime-free South Florida" town - has been "churning out tickets to nearly everyone but its own residents." A Post computer analysis of the tickets written by city police shows that "in one year's time, 99.3 percent of all tickets ... went to out-of-town drivers," and that "collections from traffic ticket fines have jumped by 1,067 percent since 1995." The report details how Atlantis police spots local drivers - who are required to "sport green identification stickers ... on the front and the rear of their vehicles" - and gives them warnings more often than tickets. The story points to the issue as "a question of ethics," as Atlantis has broken no laws, according to the state attorney's office and American Automobile Association. The story reveals that other small towns in South Florida - including Jupiter Island, Gulf Stream and Hacienda Village - also ticket mostly nonresidents.
Tags: automobiles; traffic; fine collections; city budget; roads; highways; drivers; transportation; crime; criminal justice; speeding; ethics; CAR
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Old N.H. town catching 'smart growth' fever
USA Today tells the story of Littleton, New Hampshire. The local government and school district of Littleton, population 5,965, combined their annual budget to hire Concordia Inc., a community planning firm. Concordia advised the residents of Littleton on "smart growth" planning practices." With the help of a 100 person committee composed of Littleton residents, Concordia drew up a plan for Littleton: redesign the town's schools, fill up every building before building another one, re-design streets and neighborhoods in order to entice people to walk more. Littleton's avant-garde practices are just beginning to be considered by larger urban centers such as Pasadena, California and Saline, Michigan.
Tags: Littleton; New Hampshire; Concordia Inc.; smart growth; community planning; housing; schools; districts; residents