Adoption deal raises concerns over surrogate program

Kevin Corcoran of The Indianapolis Star investigates a child welfare case involving a surrogate mothers program. The program granted an adoption to a 58-year-old, single, schoolteacher who was approved, despite "the absence of a legally required study of [Stephen F.] Melinger's New Jersey home or a period of preadoption supervision by an Indiana-licensed agency, court records show." The investigation includes sidebars further investigating the surrogate mother in the case, the adopted father, and a sidebar about the judge from Indianapolis who tightened the rules to disallow the adoptive father from taking the infants to New Jersey.

Julie Bell of The (Baltimore) Sun reviewed documents on the performance of Maryland General Hospital, finding that "from at least the mid-1990s until spring 2004, the hospital's board and a changing cast of top executives failed to act quickly as oversight systems designed to protect patients failed." Breakdowns at the hospital's laboratory in early 2004 scared away patients, but the paper reports that problems ran deeper than that. "Among the doctors who received and retained practicing privileges were an anesthesiologist who was asked to resign from his previous hospital after the death of a patient, and physicians who had been sued more than a dozen times, including a neurosurgeon who had been sued at least 19 times."

Laura Ungar of The (Louisville) Courier-Journal spent a year assessing the health of Kentucky's residents, finding that "Kentucky is one of the sickest states in America, a place where too many people die too soon, and many who live endure decades of illness and pain." Bad health habits ingrained in the state's culture, including high tobacco use, along with poverty, combine to make the state a "perfect storm" for health. "Poverty is at the center, tied to everything from nutrition to health habits to the medical care people receive. Kentucky has 43 of the nation's 340 persistently poor rural counties. Only Mississippi, which ranks neck and neck with Kentucky on an index of health measures, has more." The report includes loads of graphics describing the state's condition.

Ryan Keith of the Associated Press analyzed the results of a state-mandated study on Illinois traffic stops, finding that "black and Hispanic drivers in large downstate cities are pulled over by police at a rate that far exceeds their share of the local population." The state legislature had every police agency turn over data on its 2004 traffic stops to the state, which then compiled more than 2 million records.

As part of a series on gambling in Utah, Lee Davidson of The Deseret Morning News used Idaho state data to show that "the top six Idaho lottery sales sites are on the Utah border - and they sell up to 27 times as many tickets as the average Idaho lottery site." One store just north of the border sold $2.5 million worth of tickets during fiscal 2004. "The tiny Idaho border towns of Malad, Franklin, Fish Haven, Preston and Weston have a combined population of only 7,900 people. But they sell 8.5 percent of all lottery tickets in Idaho - a state with a population of 1.37 million - thanks to the help of Utahns."

Naush Boghossian and Lisa M. Sodders of the Los Angeles Daily News use data from the Los Angeles Unified School District police to investigate an increase in hate crimes in the district. "Hate crimes in Los Angeles' public schools have surged more than 300 percent over the past decade..." They found that almost all of the reported hate crimes were racially motivated.

Melissa Jenco of the Daily Herald analyzed Illinois education data to show that "racial disparities in discipline are not just a suburban trend. Statewide, during the 2002-03 school year, the expulsion and suspension rate for black students was three times higher than for white students. There were similar disparities for Latino students, too."

Susan Schulman, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck of The Buffalo News uses public records to investigate gun dealers in a four-day series. The investigation found that while street gun dealers go to jail, licensed gun merchants get a free pass. "Gun shows are a prime source of crime weapons in many states...Despite those concerns, the U.S. Justice Department shies away from gun shows and rarely prosecutes any of the 68,500 dealers licensed to sell firearms in the United States." The series includes an analysis of where the guns are exported from.

An investigation by the Charlotte Observer has found that a lot more violent and threatening behavior takes place in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools than officials disclose in the state's public report on crime. Observer reporters Lisa Hammersly Munn, Liz Chandler, Melissa Manware and Peter Smolowitz, along with database reporter Adam Bell, used school and police records and databases to reveal thousands of incidents of crime, violence and threatening acts that the state doesn't require for its report and that
aren't disclosed to parents. Also, the newspaper found that CMS failed to
disclose some crimes the state report requires. The investigation includes a downloadable school violence report and school violence charts.

Antonio Olivo, John Bebow and Darnell Little of the Chicago Tribune used local data to show that "private landlords are fast taking over government's traditional role of housing Chicago's poor. But these subsidized 'Section 8' landlords have been failing four out of every 10 inspections" during the last five years. "More than 6,000 landlords failed the majority of their inspections. Yet those landlords collectively received a quarter-billion dollars in taxpayer-funded rent subsidies in the last five years." Bebow emails that the paper's reporting "was complicated by the fact that the housing authority refused to release the addresses of any of the thousands of apartments in the Section 8 system. They cited a privacy exemption that completely contradicted the federal government's policy on release of addresses of subsidized buildings."