Congressional Fundraising Out of the Limelight at Super Bowl
TARP Watchdog Launches Audit of Bailout Contracts
The Treasury Department has spent more than $159 million paying financial and legal firms to help dole out TARP funds. The special inspector general for the TARP has started an audit of how the companies were chosen and whether the government is being billed fairly for the work.
Business Gears Up to Battle Obama Workplace Rule
As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the White House are trying to minimize their differences, a battle at OSHA over a workplace injury rule illustrates how tough that could become given the administration's pro-labor leanings.
New Gas Drilling Rules, More Staff for Pennsylvania’s Environmental Agency
For months, the gas drilling industry and environmentalists alike have been fixated on New York, waiting for its environmental agency to hash out final drilling regulations so companies can take advantage of the vast gas reserves buried there.
But now some of those expectations can shift to New York’s neighbor to the south, Pennsylvania, where Gov. Edward Rendell has announced that the Department of Environmental Protection will nearly double its enforcement staff, open a new office closer to the drilling action and release new drilling regulations of its own.
In December, when ProPublica surveyed all 31 drilling states, we found that Pennsylvania was part of a national trend – as gas drilling ramped up, inspection staffing levels didn’t keep pace.
In 2008, Pennsylvania had just 35 people to oversee 74,774 wells – that’s more than 2,000 wells per inspector. But unlike many states, as the industry grew in Pennsylvania, the state started to buck this trend, beefing up its enforcement staff to 76 in 2009.
Now, with the DEP expecting permits for drilling in the Marcellus Shale to more than double this year, Pennsylvania is preparing to add 68 more people to its Bureau of Oil and Gas Management.
TARP Watchdog Launches Audit of Bailout Contracts
The Treasury Department has spent more than $159 million paying financial companies and legal firms to help the government dole out TARP funds. We at ProPublica have learned that the special inspector general for the TARP (SIGTARP), Neil Barofsky, has started an audit of how Treasury chose the companies and whether the government is being billed fairly for the work.
The audit was launched at the request of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. Coburn’s spokesman, John Hart, said a particular concern was that Treasury has redacted the labor rates from the contracts it has posted online. Treasury has hired some top law firms where partners can charge as much as $1,000 an hour, according to a 2009 billing survey by the National Law Journal.
Stimulus Spending Hits $272 Billion—34 Percent of Total
The Obama administration has spent $179 billion in stimulus funds, according to the latest numbers from Recovery.gov. Combined with an estimated $93 billion in stimulus tax cuts, that means the government has now moved at least $272 billion into the economy, or 34 percent of the total amount approved by Congress last February.
You can find those numbers and more on our Stimulus Progress Bar.
Police Lose Track of Sex Offenders in Chicago Area
This is one of our editors' picks from our ongoing roundup of Investigations Elsewhere.
In Chicago and its surrounding counties, sex offenders are flouting a law that requires them to register both their home and work addresses with local authorities – and getting away with it, reports the Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune found that as of mid-January, nearly 800 sex offenders had been missing for a month or more. But warrants had been issued for just 135 of them.
Police still search for missing offenders without warrants, but the Tribune calls those efforts "hit-and-miss." A lack of manpower and the limitations of working without a warrant hobble such efforts. For instance, Chicago police enter "investigative alerts" into their computer system, but those are rarely seen by other departments. In January, an eight-week sweep for offenders netted 40 arrests, but that level of effort is apparently rare.
Cara Smith of the Illinois attorney general’s office told the Tribune: "No one would disagree that a warrant for every offender would be terrific. It's just not that easy."
According to the report, authorities say that sometimes warrants aren’t issued "because the law isn't clear on who can issue them."
But, the Tribune counters, "even in cases where the law allows warrants to be issued, they often aren't."
Agencies Open to the Public – Some Not So Much
Last Saturday was the deadline for federal departments and agencies to launch their open-government Web pages under a directive issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Our Transparency Tracker clocked the progress of some of those pages and found that while many agencies posted their new pages, there were some stragglers. We found no open-government sites for the CIA, the Federal Election Commission or the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
For those agencies that did make the deadline, the quality of pages ranged from the minimal -- “Here’s Our Open-Government Site” -- to detailed pages providing plenty of links to data and other materials.
Business Gears Up to Battle New Obama Workplace Safety Rule
This story was co-published with Politico.
As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the White House are trying to minimize their differences, a brewing battle at OSHA over a workplace injury reporting rule illustrates how tough that could become given the administration's pro-labor leanings.
While bureaucratic clashes over subtle rule changes like this one are usually waged outside the public's view, they can have big ramifications for business and workers.
At issue is a regulation that would force employers to identify when a workplace-related injury or illness is considered a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD), a term broadly used to describe ailments caused by repetitive stress, like carpal tunnel syndrome or strains from frequent heavy lifting.
Paulson Book: Behind the Scenes, GE’s Top Exec Confided Credit Woes
This story was co-published with The Washington Post.
As the financial crisis worsened toward the end of 2008, CEO Jeffrey Immelt and other leaders at General Electric repeatedly assured the public that there was no need to worry about the company’s ability to access credit markets and refinance its massive debts as they came due.
But in private conversations that alarmed then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Immelt laid out a different picture of GE’s credit situation, according to Paulson’s new book about the crisis.
Super Bowl Fun: Snap Your Congress Member
Are you one of the lucky folks attending the giant football fiesta set for Sunday in Miami? If so, ProPublica’s got a mission for you.
The culmination of the NFL season is also a well-oiled junket for our nation’s political big shots. We’ve been gathering intelligence on which public officials are planning to be there, yet some remain as non-committal as a bad boyfriend.
So we’re asking for your help. If you spot Big Game—lawmakers, lobbyists or other Washington power brokers—in or around the Big Game, snap their pictures and send them to us. Think Gawker Stalker meets C-SPAN.
Which Pols Are Heading to the Super Bowl and Other Results of ProPublica’s Super Bowl Blitz
While campaign finance laws may have dampened some of the political world’s Super Bowl frolicking, at least four lawmakers are going to the Super Bowl and most of them are apparently using the event to host fundraisers, where they can collect campaign contributions and party with lobbyists and big donors over mojitos or martinis.
We’re qualifying this information with the word “apparently” because we learned from our Super Bowl Blitz that politicians don’t like to talk about their Super Bowl plans. ProPublica and more than 15 news organizations, local reporters, and a bunch of die-hard constituents contacted almost three-quarters of Congress and got answers from at least half of Congress in little more than a week. We and our readers asked two simple questions: Did you go to the Super Bowl last year? Are you going this year?
Ongoing Investigations
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New Orleans: Chaos in the Streets & in Police Ranks Too
After Katrina, New Orleans cops shot 10 civilians, at least four of whom died, according to interviews and documents.
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Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat
Staffing levels at agencies that police oil and gas wells have not kept pace with the rapid expansion of drilling in 22 states.
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Contractors in Iraq Are Hidden Casualties of War
Civilian contractors face costly and protracted battles to receive care from a federally supervised insurance system.
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When Caregivers Harm: Unwatched Nurses
Nurses with serious infractions can work in new locales because states fail to tell each other what they know about them.
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Strained by Katrina, Hospital Faced Deadly Choices
A two-year investigation reveals what happened to some patients who died at Memorial Medical Center after Katrina.
- ★ U.S. Firms Want Part in Haiti Cleanup - Miami Herald
- ★ Senator Menendez Prodded Fed to Aid Ailing Lender - Wall Street Journal
- FBI Builds Its Case in Flipping Schemes - Herald Tribune
- Key Figure in Bush’s Military Commissions Set for Obama Job - Wash. Indy
- Conn. Power Plant Explosion Under Investigation - Hartford Courant
- California Bullet Train Ridership Numbers Don’t Add Up - Palo Alto Daily News
- Mortgage Mess Breeds Unlikely Allies - Wall Street Journal ($)
- No Exit in Sight for U.S. As Fannie, Freddie Flail - Wall Street Journal
- S.E.C. Enforcers Focus on Avoiding Madoff Repeat - New York Times
- Credit Unions Seek Larger Share of Business Loans - Washington Post
- Bills Stalled, Hospitals Fear Rising Unpaid Care - New York Times
Are Government Web Sites Open?
See if agencies are meeting the mandate for making open-government Web sites.
Is Your State's Unemployment System in Danger? See how your state ranks when it comes to its unemployment system.
Track the progress of the stimulus with our interactive tools:
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History of U.S. Gov't Bailouts: See How Past Gov't Bailouts Measured Up
Search for players in the foreign lobbying game in our interactive database, a joint project with the Sunlight Foundation.
What Health Care Reform Means for: ‘Young Invincibles’
What Health Care Reform Means for: Medicaid Recipients
What Health Care Reform Means for: Those Already Insured
What Health Care Reform Means for: The Underinsured
What Health Care Reform Means for: Medicare Programs
What Health Care Reform Means for: Small Businesses
What Health Care Reform Means for: The Uninsured
Read documents and information about the 41 Gitmo detainees whose lawsuits seeking freedom have been decided by federal judges. More than 150 similar lawsuits are pending.
Check out our chart of the fallen banks, the federal agency overseeing each one, and the major public enforcement that occurred against the bank prior to its collapse. It’s all sortable.
Use our ChangeTracker to keep a tab on changes made to White House Web sites. And steal our code to make your own.
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