MA state departments spending hundreds of thousands on bottled water

The MetroWest Daily News reports that "according to Open Checkbook, a Massachusetts state website touted by officials as a means to improve governmental transparency, state departments, little by little, have racked up almost $300,000 since July on bottles of Poland Spring and other water brands, and water coolers."

"With seven months to go in fiscal 2013, the state could potentially double that amount before the year ends."

An examination of accounts filed by 25 Amazon units in six countries show how the company has avoided paying more tax in the United States, where it's based, according to a report from Reuters. Reuters writes that Amazon, in effect, used inter-company payments to form a tax shield behind which it has accumulated $2 billion. Last year, it was announced that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was seeking $1.5 billion in back taxess, which Amazon said it would "vigorously contest."

Fair Warning reports that as governments around the world adopt stringent rules to fight the public health burdens of smoking, tobacco companies are fighting back, trumping those laws by invoking long-standing trade agreements. Anti-smoking advocates told Fair Warning those efforts, and the cost and liability governments face in fighting them, will intimidate "all but the most wealthy, sophisticated countries" into inaction.

When San Bernardino filed for bankruptcy in August, the mayor blamed the city council and the police and fire unions. The unions blamed the mayor. Yet on close examination, the city’s decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward—and alarmingly similar to the path travelled by municipalities around America’s largest state. A Reuters investigation of city data found San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers. Little by little, the salaries and retirement benefits of city workers—and especially its police and firemen—grew richer and richer, even as the city lost major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer. No single deal or decision involving benefits and wages over the years killed the city. But cumulatively, they built a pension-fueled financial time-bomb that finally exploded.

As homeowners begin to pick up the pieces following the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, their focus turns to insurance. Echoing the situation on the east coast, the Minneapolis Star Tribune investigated the topic of homeowner’s insurance premiums following natural disasters in the state of Minnesota.

The Star Tribune found that rates were steadily hiked up 10-12% over the course of 2012, although the weather trends don't necessarily justify the size of the increase.

A USA TODAY examination shows that thousands of "green" builders win tax breaks, exceed local restrictions and get expedited permitting under a system that often rewards minor, low-cost steps.

"Medicare has emerged as a potent campaign issue, with both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney vowing to tame its spending growth while protecting seniors. But there’s been little talk about some of the arcane factors that drive up costs, such as billing and coding practices, and what to do about them."

"The Center for Public Integrity's 21-month investigation documents, for the first time, how some medical professionals have billed at sharply higher rates than their peers and collected billions of dollars of questionable fees as a result." 

Daily News reporter Laura A. Bischoff fought a year-long FOIA battle to get hold of Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee's expense reports, which ultimately revealed that the unviersity spends $7.7 million on Gee's expenses -- almost has much as his $8.6 million salary. The expenses include travel, parties and $64,000 on the president's signature bow ties.

After the Missouri History Museum spent $875,000 of its $10 million in tax dollars to purchase “a shuttered restaurant site from a former mayor,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found, via documents and museum officials, that the museum commissioners, appointed by area officials to approve spending, never see purchases until after they’ve been made and never see the museum’s budget until after the fiscal year has already begun.