Political Pull in Pennsylvania?

by Alexandra Andrews
ProPublica, May 5, 2009, 10:13 a.m.

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Here are our editors’ picks from today’s roundup of investigative stories around the Web. Was there a story we missed? Please keep sending us your picks or include them in the comments section below.

The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s three-part investigation into the city tax board, a “jobs bank” for political insiders, found that it made backdoor deals to lower property taxes for “people with pull” and ratcheted up taxes on someone who got in the way of Vincent Fumo, the now-convicted former state senator. (The board now uses marketplace prices to value homes for tax purposes and says it no longer makes backdoor deals.)

Also, the Pentagon awarded no-bid contracts worth a total of $4 million to a firm owned by the nephew of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who heads the committee that oversees Pentagon spending and is under scrutiny for doling out defense-related earmarks to campaign donors, reports the Washington Post. Murtha’s nephew told the Post that it’s “unfortunate” that people assume his ties to the congressman prompted the contracts.