People who fell ill after working in the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex continued to struggle with a federal compensation program beset by confusing rules and incomplete records, according to the latest official assessment of the program.

Congress created the program after it became clear that the country’s nuclear-weapons effort routinely endangered workers’ health in the name of national security. In the nearly 16 years since the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act passed, the program has been the frequent target of criticism — from former workers, survivors, advocates and elected officials who have tried to help people navigate the system.

A new report, released Friday, focuses on 2014 and comes from an ombudsman’s office created by Congress in 2004 to aid the program’s claimants. Every year the office’s staffers summarize the problems brought to their doorstep, and every year those problems are numerous.

“We receive complaints and grievances addressing practically every aspect of the ... claims process,” the report says.

The program has helped tens of thousands of sick workers or their survivors, paying out more than $12 billion in compensation and health care since 2000 for illnesses ranging from cancer to debilitating lung diseases. But advocates who help claimants say it’s often a struggle to get approved, and many never manage it. Problems can also continue afterward, as people seek the medical care they’ve been promised.

A Center for Public Integrity investigation in December detailed some of the key difficulties for ex-workers trying to get accepted into the program, including disputes over the level of their toxic exposures at top-secret facilities where records of those exposures — if they existed at all — were sometimes lost, destroyed or falsified. That issue was covered in the ombudsman’s report.

“Since Congress recognized that there were unmonitored exposures and other continuing problems, claimants question the deference that ought to be accorded to the records maintained by these facilities,” the report says.

The program is run by the U.S. Department of Labor, which declined to comment on the report because it is preparing a formal response, due to Congress July 6. But earlier, the agency’s Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation said it follows the rules and noted that the program was never intended to compensate all the ex-workers who fell ill. Approvals are higher than what was initially expected, the division says.

“We have to evaluate the likelihood that this cancer is due to work or not due to work, and … there [are] always going to be people that are going to get an answer that they don’t want to hear,” John Vance, the program’s policy chief, said last year. “It’s the perfect intersection of politics, science, human emotion and all of that. It’s a difficult, difficult situation.”

Among the other issues the report highlighted:

• Hard-to-find information. The Labor Department issues bulletins, circulars and other documents that explain aspects of the program and dictate policy. The ombudsman’s office heard from people who relied on the information in one document, “only to later discover that their claim is impacted by a relevant discussion of the same issue found in another document.” They found it “particularly frustrating” that the document they relied on made no mention of the other one.
• Inconsistencies. The program says in writing that scientific studies about the effects of a substance on animals can be helpful in some cases, given that certain “chemicals used in the production of nuclear weapons are so unique and exotic that no broad-based studies of their health effects exist.” But a man who submitted animal-exposure evidence told the ombudsman’s office that program officers denied his claim, eventually explaining that “we generally do not recognize data obtained from animal studies.”
• Lack of assistance. Claimants told the office that no one at the agency explained to them that, for instance, they can look at an online database of exposure information by facility and job to help them pull together the evidence they need. Claimants also said program information “is sometimes worded using legal, scientific, and/or medical terminology that is difficult to understand.”
• Post-approval problems. The ombudsman received calls from people with approved claims who ran into issues with their medical care. For instance, “we were made aware of instances where oxygen providers terminated service to claimants” because of Labor Department billing issues. Some doctors also refused to continue providing services “because they felt that this program required too much paperwork.”

Terrie Barrie, a founding member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, whose husband worked at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado, called the report “an honest and accurate account of the problems the claimants encounter with the program.” She was particularly glad to see it note that the law requires the Labor Department to help people with their claims.

“It is incongruent for [the department]  to require the claimants to provide evidence for each and every step of the claims process and not provide that evidence they have in their possession to the claimants,” Barrie wrote in an email. “This program ... is supposed to be claimant-friendly and non-adversarial.”

This story was reported by Sarah Barr for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

JONESBORO, Georgia — Leandra Phommavongsay began his speech to the dozen or so teenagers gathered in the back of a Clayton County courtroom by recounting his recent travels.

He had been to California, and before that to Florida and to Texas, all places he hadn’t ever expected to go when he was growing up in small-town Georgia, south of Atlanta.

“I just came from San Francisco. I’m not sure you’ve ever seen San Francisco. But San Francisco is beautiful,” he said.

He had once been like them, Phommavongsay told the teens sitting in two rows, a few parents scattered among them. He hung out with the wrong crowd, and got into trouble with the cops for petty, and sometimes not so petty, offenses.

They could go to San Francisco, too, the way he had for a job detailing cars. But only if they made the right choices during their time in the Second Chance Court program, a community-based diversion program that seeks to keep teenagers out of long-term lockup.

“Grow, man. Think, man. Forget the weed. Forget those bums on the block,” he said. He’s now 21.

He grinned at them. “Go to Miami and get crazy on the beach.”

Phommavongsay landed in Second Chance five years ago after charges that included robbery and aggravated assault. The program has a long list of requirements, including strict GPS monitoring, regular school attendance, participation in programs such as drug treatment or family therapy and meetings with court officials.

He completed the Second Chance program, went to cosmetology school and works in a print shop. He thinks he would like to open his own business someday.

Without the program, he says his life would look much different: “I’d be dead or in prison.”

Second Chance Court is the kind of program counties across Georgia have deployed as part of an ongoing juvenile justice reform effort than began in 2013. Like states across the country, Georgia wants to keep teens out of prison and in their communities, with better outcomes for families, public safety and the state’s bottom line.

The Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature passed the reforms unanimously in 2013, shortly after making major changes to the criminal justice system. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, a former juvenile court judge, has championed the changes.

The Georgia reforms, rooted in an overhaul of the juvenile justice code, included a move away from locking up status offenders and the creation of a statewide database of juvenile justice referrals and results. The state also launched the Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program to fund evidence-based programs in the counties that take their cues from programs like Second Chance Court.

Since 2013, the number of youth in secure confinement has dropped by 17 percent and youth awaiting placement has decreased by 51 percent.

Georgia’s reforms hit many of the marks for reforms rooted in evidence about what works, said Mark Lipsey, director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. Lipsey has helped the state, and many others, evaluate how well programs are working.

Lipsey pointed to the state’s decision to make the reforms in the statute, emphasize evidence-based practices and assemble strong leadership teams as signs of a very strong effort.

“I think what’s going on there is very much state of the art and quite remarkable,” he said.

Budget proposal

When lawmakers were considering the reforms three years ago, researchers at the Pew Charitable Trust said the state could save $85 million during the next five years, largely from avoiding the costs of building two new secure facilities.

Now, as the number of youth in detention facilities come down, the state has the potential to take money they would have spent on running the facilities and put the funding into additional community programming, said Joe Vignati, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice.

The latest budget proposal from Gov. Deal calls for closing one long-term youth detention facility and moving more than $5 million into community-based alternatives. For example, the budget proposal includes $2.7 million for 40 “step-down” slots that help move kids from secure detention to residential facilities.

The code overhaul is what allowed for the slots, but the money wasn’t there in the first few years for the department to make use of them. Now they can as the savings from reform become tangible.

“We’re basically taking all those funds and moving them from secure facilities into the communities. That’s a big shift,” Vignati said.

The costs of long-term and short-term lock-up still make up more than 60 percent of the state Department of Juvenile Justice’s budget, but the costs are growing more slowly than community services in the governor’s most recent proposal.

From fiscal year 2014 to the fiscal year 2017 proposal, funding for community services grew 17 percent, from $82 million to $95 million in a budget of $334 million. Meanwhile, funding for secure commitment grew 11 percent, from $85 million to $95 million and secure detention grew 12 percent from $107 million to $120 million.

Vignati said the costs of long-term and short-term confinement should continue to come down — and the savings redirected to community programs — as the state gets a handle on just how low the number of juvenile offenders they house can go.

But even as fewer beds are used, the costs of running the existing facilities won’t go away. They require staffing, heating and maintenance. Additional costs also could come from the need to update facilities built decades ago and to ensure they’re equipped to handle the highest-risk teenagers, who aren’t placed in community services, said Vignati.

“We’re going to get tougher kids, they’re going to be more resistant to treatment so it requires more intensive services,” he said.

The state also has steadily increased the amount of funding dedicated to Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program, from $6 million in the fiscal year 2014 budget to $8.8 million in fiscal year 2016. In the participating counties, 1,666 youth had access to evidence-based programming in the second year of the program, up from 1,122 in the first. The programs all are ranked “effective” or “promising” on a federal registry  to reduce criminogenic behaviors in juveniles and the counties have chosen programs rooted in individual, family or group therapy.

Overall, the counties saw out-of-home placements drop 54 percent in fiscal year 2015, compared with a 2012 baseline.

Steve Teske, the Clayton County juvenile judge who started Second Chance Court and has helped lead the charge for reform statewide, said the grants have been instrumental in his county.

The Second Chance program already was underway and showing significant decreases in secure commitment when the incentive program began.

However, the grant allowed the county to target the needs of youth who still were being committed, often for family dysfunction, Teske said. During fiscal year 2015, out-of-home placements dropped 63 percent in the county.

Mark Ferrante, a senior policy analyst at the Council on State Government’s Justice Center, said Georgia also has been aggressive about pursuing federal funding to support its work.

“They’re very thoughtful and proactive about applying for grants,” he said.

Next wave of reforms

As Georgia enters its third year of reforms, Vignati said the state has shown how to be smarter and more creative about juvenile justice. The key now is to build on the state’s progress.

“We have to keep our eye on what we set out to do and measure the changes and adjust the course as needed,” he said.

The Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform, which is charged with making recommendations  to improve both the criminal and juvenile justice systems, called for the next wave of juvenile reforms to focus on schools in its latest annual report.

Schools are one of the largest sources of referrals for the juvenile justice system. The proposed reforms aim to clarify the roles of schools and law enforcement on campuses.

A student who shouts a swear word should be disciplined at school, not accused of disorderly conduct and sent to the juvenile justice system, said Teske, who is a member of the council. Similarly, a schoolyard fight shouldn’t automatically bring assault charges.

“The overall objective is to stop criminalizing kids for what is typical adolescent behavior,” he said.

The report recommended that schools be required to develop and use a system of progressive discipline before a juvenile complaint is filed and that school systems enter into model agreements with law enforcement that clearly delineate how student behaviors will be addressed. The council also recommended measures to improve the procedural fairness of school disciplinary proceedings.

The report also calls for the state to restrict secure detention for anyone age 13 or younger, unless they are charged with a serious crime such as murder. Since the reform, the state has seen a spike in the number of younger children held in secure detention.

“By expanding the detention of younger children and exposing such youth to the trauma correlated with detention, Georgia, is, in effect, voiding the beneficial effects of juvenile reform for this most vulnerable population,” the council said.

The new policies that direct juveniles into community-based programs largely have affected teenagers ages 15 and older because they’re more likely to commit serious crimes than younger children. That has created a vacuum that has unintentionally sucked younger children into the system, said Melissa Carter, executive director of the Barton Child Law & Policy Center at the Emory University School of Law.

Carter said the state’s commitment to reform means that each round of policy recommendations can jump-start valuable conversations about what should happen next.

For example, a discussion of how the youngest adolescents in Georgia should be treated in the justice system could re-energize a debate about whether to raise the age for when teenagers are automatically treated as adults. Georgia is one of only a few states that treats teenagers as adults beginning at age 17, rather than 18.

Or, when policymakers consider the importance of restoring youth to their communities, it can prompt ideas about how to reintegrate youth who are serving long sentences, Carter said.

“I feel like we’re on solid footing. With every step forward, we start thinking about the next step,” she said.

Phommavongsay said he’s confident he can move forward as well.

He still makes mistakes, the kinds of regular growing-up moments he says feel like bumping his head, but he’s stayed out of trouble — a fact he credits in large part to Second Chance. He intends to keep it that way.

“I’ve come too far. I’ve learned too much,” he said.

A joint investigation of lawmakers’ finances by the Center for Public Integrity and The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C. has won the South Carolina Press Association prize for investigative reporting.

The award recognizes The Capitol Gains project, which detailed how state elected officials and candidates have been able to profit from public office and use nearly $100 million since 2009 in campaign cash, gifts and government reimbursements to hire their own companies, buy club memberships and even purchase a used BMW.

The Center for Public Integrity and The Post and Courier analyzed more than 100,000 expenses, gifts, travel items and reimbursements, creating a searchable database of more than 700 candidates for state office to show how they spent the money.

Other stories in the series showed that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley received more than $300,000 worth of free football tickets during her first four years as governor and revealed how part-time state lawmakers receive far more than in compensation than their $10,400 in base pay.  

The project was additionally named as a finalist for the association’s Judson Chapman Award, which honors work that addresses community concerns. The Capitol Gains series was also a finalist for the Scripps Howard Award for Community Journalism.

Congratulations to all of the winners.

Despite the Obama administration’s repeated warnings about the menace of a widespread contagion within the United States, both lawmakers and independent experts are continuing to give low marks to government initiatives designed to detect, track, and protect against those threats.

In recent years, both the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America have brought the nature of threat into sharp relief.

In the 2015 Worldwide Threat Assessment, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted that the world’s response to Ebola was too slow.

“Gaps in disease surveillance and reporting, limited health care resources, and other factors contributed to the outpacing of the international community’s response in West Africa,” Clapper wrote.

In the most recent Worldwide Threat Assessment, released in February,  Clapper issued an ominous warning in regard to the Zika virus, which he said “is projected to cause up to 4 million cases in 2016; it will probably spread to virtually every country in the hemisphere.”

Earlier this month, that assessment was amplified by researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.  In a study published in the Public Library of Science’s journal PLOS Currents: Outbreaks, they warned that at least 50 U.S. cities are at risk for a Zika Virus outbreak this summer.

 As the effects of climate change spread worldwide, experts warn more that contagions are on their way. And yet, the two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programs meant to protect Americans against these biological threats aren’t up to the task, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

One of these programs, the National Biosurveillance Integration Center, or NBIC, was created in 2007 to be a hub of information and coordination for federal agencies tracking diseases and biological threats. But the mission is suffering, a September 2015 GAO report said, because many federal agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are not sharing   information with NBIC.  Among the reasons, CDC officials said: legal restrictions that compel them to redact data from reports, a labor-intensive process.  The report said other federal agencies’ officials did not understand the purpose or value of giving resources to NBIC.

“[NBIC doesn’t] have the access to information and data, they don’t have the trust of partners,” said Chris Currie, director of the GAO’s Emergency Management and National Preparedness Team, in an interview.  “What they do provide is good but it isn’t really that useful for the partners.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment. But in its response to the GAO report, the agency noted that GAO had not surveyed state and local authorities. “DHS believes that NBIC’s products provide these stakeholders significant value,” the agency wrote, adding that NBIC is working on developing tools to facilitate better information gathering.

Nevertheless, Andrew C. Weber, former assistant defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, is among those who find the status quo unacceptable.

“I think it’s outrageous that any agency wouldn’t feel obligated to share with other agencies just as a matter of course,” he said.  “I’ve heard all of the excuses for not sharing and I think they don’t hold up in a world where early detection of biological events can save lives.”

Weber continued: “Data collection, data sharing, data management were a major impediment during the entire Ebola crisis.”

NBIC’s reports during the Ebola crisis did provide biosurveillance information, but those working in government during the crisis recall that it was just another resource, rather than a substantive information clearinghouse. Some experts don’t remember NBIC’s role during the crisis at all.

Recommendations in the aftermath of the crisis include former Ebola Czar Ronald Klain’s suggestion to create a Public Health Emergency Management Agency—a specialized group of people trained to deal with emerging disease outbreaks. His critics counter that another center is unnecessary; instead federal agencies need to work together.

NBIC isn’t the only DHS program facing criticism; officials are also skeptical of BioWatch, a system of about 600 air collectors in 30 cities nationwide that is meant to detect a mass biological event such as a terrorist attack.

The collectors resemble little ice boxes and are meant to “sniff” the air for an intruder such as Anthrax or smallpox. But the air samples are only retrieved once every 24 hours. A local public health official has to manually remove a filter from the ice box and take it to a lab to determine if it matches a known toxin. The entire process is estimated to take between 12 and 36 hours, which experts say is too slow.

Attempts to automate that process failed.

Between 2009 and 2014, DHS spent at least $61 million in an effort to create a more high-tech box that could both collect the sample and analyze it within 4 to 6 hours. That initiative, dubbed “Gen 3,” turned out to be science fiction. DHS cancelled the project in 2014 in the wake of a September 2012 GAO report that found it was billions of dollars over budget.

The GAO subsequently said in October2015 that it wasn’t clear the current BioWatch technology was working either, because DHS had never properly tested the existing air collectors.

“They didn’t really document all of the uncertainties with the system, which you kind of need to know,” Currie said.

DHS largely concurred with that GAO report, but took exception to GAO’s conclusion that DHS had not established proper performance requirements for the system during testing.

Despite the controversy over BioWatch’s effectiveness, the Obama administration is proposing to spend $81.9 million on the program in its fiscal year 2017 budget.

Other experts say the whole Biowatch concept is flawed.  Dr. Laura Kahn at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, an expert on biodefense and pandemics, suggested that money would be better spent tracking animal life, arguing that animals can be monitored as natural biosensors. Other experts agree that collection methods need to evolve to include more animal specimens.

But former DOD official Weber believes that a variety of detection methods must be employed, and then coordinated across the government. At the moment, bio-surveillance programs are spread across numerous federal agencies.

“If there were to be a large aerosol release of say anthrax, the earliest detection would be environmental sensors,” he said. “That’s because animals wouldn’t get sick immediately.” Air sampling, Weber said, is vital to the strategy. “We can’t afford to lose a few days.”

 “That’s why I really believe in integrated comprehensive surveillance that includes both environmental and clinical data,” Weber added. “It can’t be stove-piped; we can’t rely on just one aspect,” says Weber.

Congress has put forth a potential legislative fix. The CBRNE Defense Act of 2015 would create a new office within DHS, the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Office, which would place both NBIC and BioWatch under integrated new management.

President Obama’s 2017 budget accounts for this bureaucratic shift even though this legislation has not yet passed in the Senate: the House approved the idea on Dec. 10, 2015.

Members of Congress expressed frustration at the current state of affairs in a February 11 hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response & Communications.  

“I've grown frustrated, like many, that we seem to be having the same hearings over and over again. At least once every Congress, we ask the department to come to the committee to respond to the latest criticisms of BioWatch and NBIC,” Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in his opening statement.

And even coordinating NBIC and BioWatch within DHS may not be the answer. The GAO asserted in its testimony at the subcommittee hearing that the White House’s implementation plan and strategy for bio-surveillance falls short, because they do not establish where bio-surveillance fits into the larger biodefense strategy.  A separate Blue Ribbon Study Panel concluded in 2015 that the government’s biodefenses needed to be better organized. The panel suggested that the effort be placed under the Office of the Vice President.

March 24, 2016: This story has been clarified.

Campaign finance reform has become a major issue in the presidential race — at least on the Democratic side — but even if Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders were able to win the White House, a wholesale overhaul of the current system would take a lot more than a president alone.

"Anyone promising that the world will be completely different immediately is blowing smoke to a certain extent," said Daniel Weiner, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for campaign finance reform. "Our campaign finance infrastructure and our overall electoral infrastructure turn like an aircraft carrier — slowly and cumbersomely."

Sanders, especially, has made his push to rebuild what he frequently describes as a “corrupt campaign finance system” the centerpiece of his campaign, and he frequently repudiates assistance from super PACs as a sign of his commitment to the issue.

His chances of winning the nomination have faded as Clinton has racked up a nearly insurmountable lead of delegates. Regardless, Sanders has pushed money in politics to the fore of the battle for the Democratic nomination, and will arrive at the convention in Philadelphia with enough delegates to wield some leverage.

He and Clinton have put forth substantially similar proposals on campaign finance, both of which draw from proposals by reform groups and on proposed legislation. But making those agendas a reality will depend heavily on the new president's ability to wrangle cooperation from Congress, other executive agencies and even state legislatures. Complicating matters further, reform advocates are divided about what must be done.

A few measures, such as an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose all political spending, or appointing new commissioners to the Federal Election Commission who favor increased enforcement, are under the president’s control.

But most of the proposals in both candidates' policy agendas will be a stretch.

Lots of cooperation needed

Both candidates have proposed a public financing system that would amplify small contributions, something that Congress must approve. The impact of such a proposal would depend heavily on its details.

Both have promised to nominate Supreme Court justices who support overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. In addition, they’ve committed to push for a constitutional amendment overturning it — something that would require approval from Congress and the states.

Both have said they would prod federal agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission— which are independent, and don’t have to listen — to create new rules requiring political spending disclosure.

"I feel compelled to point out the obvious," said Paul Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group specializing in campaign finance issues, somewhat dryly. "A president cannot pass a constitutional amendment. A president cannot pass a public financing statute through Congress. A president needs lots of cooperation."

The president would also have to be willing to expend enormous amounts of political capital on changing the campaign finance system.

The new president will have to mobilize a grassroots effort and take steps to highlight the issue immediately upon taking office, said John Bonifaz, the president of Free Speech for People, a Texas-based group that advocates for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, as well as other reforms.

"It needs to be put down as a marker for what's going to be major priorities of the administration in the first 100 days," he said, via methods such as major policy speeches around the country.

"On these kinds of reforms, it requires all of the American people stepping up" to keep the pressure on, he said.

The ‘intensity gap’

While Clinton and Sanders have substantially similar proposals to reform the system, the former secretary of state is seen by some as being less committed to a campaign finance overhaul. Sanders has fueled the distinction by pointing to her willingness to accept aid from outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.

“I don’t know that there’s a lot of daylight between them on what they propose, but there’s a huge intensity gap,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine and an expert on campaign finance.

Clinton has fought back against the suggestion that she isn't committed to changes.

“Hillary Clinton has made campaign finance reform a top priority since day one and regularly talks about it on the trail, in interviews and on the debate stage,” said Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, in an email. “When she first announced her campaign, she framed her priorities as ‘four fights,’ and campaign finance reform was one of those fights.”

The Sanders campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of Clinton and Sanders’ sharpest exchanges have been over matters of money in politics.

In a March debate, for example, Sanders again referred to the nation’s “corrupt campaign finance system,” adding, “instead of standing up to that finance system, Secretary Clinton has a super PAC, which is raising huge amounts … a lot of money from Wall Street and from the fossil fuel industry. I am doing it a different way.”

For her part, in a February speech conceding to Sanders in New Hampshire, Clinton made the case that her opposition to Citizens United— the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to the creation of super PACs and "dark money" groups — was deep and personal.

“Now, Senator Sanders and I both want to get secret, unaccountable money out of politics, and let’s remember, let’s remember, Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our country’s history, was actually a case about a right-wing attack on me and my campaign,” she said. “A right-wing organization took aim at me and ended up damaging our entire democracy. So, yes, you’re not going to find anybody more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me.”

The Citizens United ruling came about after Citizens United, the conservative nonprofit group for which the case was named, produced a 90-minute documentary about Clinton that was released during the 2008 primary season. The FEC characterized the documentary as an electioneering communication subject to regulation, and Citizens United sued, precipitating the eventual Supreme Court decision.

Not a bipartisan issue, yet

Both Democrats give campaign finance and their policy proposals prime placement on their campaign websites — a sharp contrast to the three remaining Republican candidates, none of whom highlight it online at all.

That brings up another hurdle.

"The ultimate solutions will be bipartisan and it will be supported by both parties because that's the only way campaign finance reforms ever happen," said Scott Swenson, a spokesman for advocacy group Common Cause.

Although Republican front-runner Donald Trump has criticized the influence of money in politics and other Republican candidates have slammed the currentsystem, none have published detailed reform agendas.

The Republican-controlled Congress has so far opposed measures to change campaign finance laws.

But John Pudner, a former Republican political consultant who now heads a nonprofit group focused on money's role in politics, Take Back Our Republic, said he's seen some encouraging comments from Republican candidates and lawmakers, and he thinks some are considering laying out a platform.

"Campaign finance and money in politics has become such a hot issue that everyone is realizing that if one side is talking about it and the other isn't, that's going to hurt the side that isn't," he said.

Pudner said he thinks there's room for compromise proposals. For instance, Republicans might oppose public financing but support a plan for tax credits, he said.

Still, a consensus proposal isn't imminent.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, a nonpartisan group that describes its mission as promoting First Amendment rights, said the proposals laid out by Clinton and Sanders "are all bad ideas."

Keating said having agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission police political disclosure distracts from their core missions and forces them outside their expertise, leading to potential problems like the Internal Revenue Service scandal.

In that case, more than 100 groups seeking tax-exempt recognition that were deemed to be potentially political by the IRS waited more than a year for answers from the agency, according to a May 2013 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The inspector general’s report prompted multiple congressional investigations and the resignation or retirement of several IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, who led the IRS division responsible for overseeing tax-exempt organizations.

Keating also argues a public financing program that creates a match or incentive for small donations or campaign finance vouchers could be ripe for abuse.

"Anytime the government is handing out $6 for every $1, you're going to see scandals," he said. "It may even result in people having less trust in government than they do today."

Weiner and Ryan, who said they support public financing, said much of the effectiveness of such a proposal would depend on the details of how it is crafted.

Amendment ‘a dreadful idea’

Opposition to a constitutional amendment is even more widespread, with some saying it isn't practical. Others say it would lead to more problems than it solves.

Joel Gora, a Brooklyn Law School professor who, on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, worked on campaign finance cases including the landmark Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court case, called a constitutional amendment to overturn Buckley and Citizens United "a dreadful idea."

Any such amendment, “basically would cut the heart out of the First Amendment," he said.

Other groups, such as the Campaign Legal Center and the Brennan Center, strongly support public financing programs but oppose or haven't taken a position on a constitutional amendment. They say their preferred route would be overturning Citizens United via a new ruling by the Supreme Court.

Several expressed concerns about modifying First Amendment rights and the difficult path an amendment would have to take. Hasen, for example, called it "a political nonstarter."

Ryan called a constitutional amendment "impractical."

Almost everyone who works on campaign finance is skeptical of campaign promises to make money in politics a priority. A common refrain: President Obama's failure to nominate new commissioners to the Federal Election Commission — five of the agency's six commissioners are still serving despite their terms having expired — and decision to not yet issue an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose political spending.

"That's the million-dollar question. Is his successor actually going to prioritize this issue, or is it going to be a replay of this administration, where his successor pays lip service and then ignores it?" asked the Brennan Center's Weiner.

Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, another reform group, agreed.

"We would like to see commitments that, if elected, they will take this issue to the country and promote it as a national priority," he said, through steps like including it in high-profile speeches such as the new president's inaugural address and the State of the Union.

Wertheimer, who has worked on campaign finance measures for decades, says he isn't deterred by the difficulty of the task.

"The thing about campaign finance reform is, it's impossible to do until you get it done," he said. "You can't do Logic 101 and come to the conclusion why members of Congress are going to enact a new system that may be not beneficial to them, but we have done it in the past. It's hard work and it takes time, and you have to make sure that when you get reform proposals enacted, they're going to work."

John Dunbar contributed to this story.

March 24, 2016: This story was updated to restore the word "carrier" to a quote from Daniel Weiner. It now says aircraft carrier, not just aircraft.

New workplace limits for a lung-damaging and ubiquitous substance called silica are about to take effect, decades after federal health experts warned that the nation’s existing rule was dangerously lax.

Silica, found in rock and sand, poses a hazard when pulverized to a fine dust and inhaled — a problem on construction sites, during hydraulic fracturing operations and at a variety of other workplaces. The substance can trigger silicosis, a lung-scarring condition that can kill by suffocation, as well as lung cancer and kidney disease.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s new standard— announced today — replaces a rule set in 1971. It reduces the allowable exposure limit to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, five times less than the current limit for the construction and shipyard sectors and half the current level for other workplaces.

Industry groups that argued against the change call the rule a job-killer that will cost far more than OSHA anticipates. Worker-safety advocates, disputing that, say silica is a worker-killer and the standard is long overdue. OSHA estimates the rule will prevent about 640 deaths a year.

“The current OSHA standards are woefully out of date,” Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s director of safety and health for the union federation, said by email. The 1971 rule was “based on science from the 1920's, long before many of the health effects of silica exposure — like lung cancer — were known.”

Workers exposure to silica is a prime example of the country’s broken system for protecting Americans on the job, the Center for Public Integrity found in a 2015 investigation. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health urged in 1974 — 42 years ago — that OSHA substantially tighten the silica limit. But OSHA, hemmed in by court rulings, corporate resistance and procedures and that have turned the process of setting a single standard into a years-long marathon, has updated few of its 470 exposure limits since adopting them shortly after the agency’s 1971 birth.

The agency itself has warned that many of its exposure limits don’t work as intended — they’re not low enough to protect worker health. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of chemicals made or used in the country have no exposure limits at all.

OSHA proposals often prompt passionate opposition from businesses, which fear the expense or difficulty of complying. A coalition of construction-sector groups said last year that the silica rule would cost their industry $5 billion a year, 10 times more than the agency’s estimate. OSHA says its cost estimates tend to be wrong the other direction – higher than what businesses ultimately pay. It estimates the new rule will cost an average of about $1,520 per affected workplace each year.

Brian Turmail, spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America, said earlier this week that cost isn’t the only consideration. The group’s members have found that the technology to get silica levels down to the new standard does not exist, he said. A number of firms have trouble complying with the current rule, he said.

“We’ve been anxious to find a way to improve worker health and safety in a way we feel is attainable,” he said.

OSHA said it has offered construction firms a variety of ways to comply and suggested tools to get the job done. Seminario said there are “many proven control measures,” including vacuum systems on tools, enclosed cabs for equipment operations and water to suppress dust.

The proposal was controversial even before it was formally proposed. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which scrutinizes would-be rules for cost implications, sat on the silica standard for 2 ½ years — while meeting with opponents — before giving OSHA the go-ahead to officially propose it in 2013.

“Corporate lobbyists meeting with OMB officials consistently outnumbered the labor and public health advocates calling for higher standards,” consumer-rights advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement this week.

But those delays, if among the more recent, were just the latest in a string of fits and starts. The silica update took so long that New York resident Chris Johnson, born weeks after the 1974 warning that the limit wasn’t protective, grew up, became a mason and nearly died of silicosis — well before OSHA finally proposed the new limit. Johnson was profiled in the Center’s investigation.

The rule will be published in the Federal Register Friday and will take effect 90 days later. Implementation will be staggered with most requirements kicking in within two years.

Celeste Monforton, a lecturer at George Washington University and a former U.S. Department of Labor analyst and adviser, is glad to see a new standard in place. But she worries about the state of the country’s worker-safety efforts.

“Our system for protecting workers is just so stagnant that new regulations to protect workers are such a rare occurrence,” she said. “And yet at the same time, we have new hazards that workers are exposed to, and many of these old ones for which there are no regulations.”

The two brothers who detonated suicide bombs at an airport and subway station in Brussels this week, killing at least 31 and injuring hundreds more, had spied on a senior Belgian nuclear official in the Islamic State’s quest to get radioactive materials for a dirty bomb, NBC News reported Thursday.

Last month, in a story pointing out the historic vulnerabilities of Belgium’s nuclear facilities, The Center for Public Integrity reported on two men caught on camera secretly recording the Belgian nuclear official.

NBC News reported that the two brothers who exploded the bombs — Khalid el-Bakraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui — were the ones doing the taping. Their source was Claude Moniquet, a former intelligence official from France who was hired to investigate terrorist threats to nuclear targets in Europe.

The brothers saw the nuclear official as a way to gain the materials necessary to carry out an unprecedented act of terror.

Instead, they carried out a more conventional attack. Authorities have said Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 29, detonated one of the two bombs that rocked the airport, and an hour later Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, set off the lone bomb at a subway station.

The footage was discovered in a home rented by Mohamed Bakkali, who was arrested on suspicion of helping to plot the Nov. 13, 2015, terrorist siege on Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more. The hours of clandestine video footage focused on a Belgian nuclear official’s home in Flanders.

As the investigation progressed, surveillance cameras in the nuclear official’s neighborhood showed two shadowy figures in the night retrieving a video camera hidden in a bush near the nuclear official’s home before driving away in a car with its headlights off. Moniquet’s remarks suggest that the men shown fetching the camera were the el-Bakraoui brothers.

“The terrorist cell … naively believed they could use [the nuclear official] to penetrate a lab to obtain nuclear material to make a dirty bomb,” Moniquet, chief executive officer of the consulting firm European Strategic Intelligence and Security, told NBC News.

In an email to the Center for Public Integrity, Eric Van der Sijpt, a spokesman for the Belgian prosecutor’s office, wrote, “This information can not [sic] be confirmed.”

The official featured on the cell’s secret video works at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, known as SCK-CEN, in Mol, about an hour’s drive northeast of Brussels. He held clearance that gave him extensive access to nuclear materials and radioisotopes for medical and industrial purposes which readily lend themselves for use in a dirty bomb.

That raised concern among leaders of Belgium’s nuclear program that terrorists might have seen the official they targeted as possible leverage to obtain nuclear or radiological materials.

“We can imagine that the terrorists might want to kidnap someone or kidnap his family,” Nele Scheerlinck, a spokeswoman for Belgium’s nuclear regulatory body, told The Center for Public Integrity in February.

On April 4, the Belgian government for the first time deployed armed soldiers to guard nuclear reactors and power stations. The unarmed contract security force that historically had guarded the seven nuclear reactors and two power plants in Belgium had worried President George W. Bush’s administration in 2004, diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks showed.

The U.S. supplies Belgium with highly-enriched uranium, a vital element for nuclear weapons that Belgian plants use to make radioisotopes. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell privately warned his Belgian counterpart in 2004 that U.S. leaders were uneasy about the weak security at Belgium’s nuclear sites.

Besides physical security, there has been cause for alarm about insider threats at Belgium’s nuclear sites. In 2014, an act of sabotage caused millions of dollars of damage to a nuclear reactor in Doel, 56 miles west of the research center in Mol. The saboteur has not been caught, and terrorism has neither been identified nor ruled out as the motive, according to Van der Sijpt.

That same year, Belgian intelligence officials learned that 26-year-old Moroccan Ilyass Boughalab was killed in Syria fighting for the Islamic State. From 2009 to 2012, he had worked as an inspector of welding at the Doel plant. Boughalab’s job gave him access to highly sensitive and vulnerable areas of the reactor.

Moniquet told NBC News the terrorists’ bid to access the materials necessary to create a dirty bomb failed. A bomb containing radiological materials, though far less deadly than a nuclear weapon, could trigger panic and cause billions of dollars in damage to a major city.

“We know that the threat of nuclear radiological terrorism is not a theoretical risk,” Miles Pomper, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation said Wednesday.

Pomper was part of an expert panel from the Fissile Materials Working Group, a consortium of 80 nongovernmental organizations working to secure nuclear materials globally, that held a briefing for reporters at the National Press Club ahead of next week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C.

More than 50 heads of state are expected to attend, but Russia will not be represented. It will be the fourth and presumably final meeting between world leaders with the express purpose of keeping nuclear and radiological materials safe from terrorists.

“The reality is, every country has an interest in making sure the countries that have these stocks protect them effectively, because the stuff could be lifted off from one place and used on the other side of the planet,” Matt Bunn, a professor at Harvard University who’s written more than 20 books and more than 100 articles on topics including nuclear security and terrorism. “Insecure nuclear material anywhere is a threat to everyone everywhere.”

The panelists were in consensus that the summits initiated by President Barack Obama have led to improved security of nuclear and radiological material around the world. But much work remains to be done, and they worry that with the end of the summits, international cooperation will lose momentum.

They also agreed that the possibility of terrorists using a dirty bomb is less a question of if, than of when.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that we haven’t yet seen a dirty bomb in a terrorist attack,” nuclear terrorism expert Andrew Bieniawski, vice president for material security and minimization at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said. “And so what happened recently in Brussels is really a warning and a wakeup call.”

Tobacco companies have won legislative language in at least 19 states that protects e-cigarettes from tobacco control programs and cigarette taxes. At least 11 of those pull nearly verbatim from template language written by Reynolds American Inc., which sells the VUSE e-cigarette. Below is an excerpt from Reynolds' template, which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, together with matching excerpts from the state laws, all of which ban sales of e-cigarettes to minors. Click on the bill titles to see larger versions.

Drew Sikkink contributed to this story.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. ­— In the Golden State, home to healthy living, progressive politics and one of the lowest smoking rates in the nation, cigarettes can seem like a relic of the past, barred long ago from restaurants, bars and even some city parks.

And yet within the walls of California’s high-domed capitol, tobacco companies continue to wield surprising power. After a recent loss on a slate of tobacco control bills headed to the governor’s desk, they are gearing up for a bigger test looming at the ballot this fall. With money to spend, they have threatened to sabotage a planned ballot measure to raise the cigarette tax.

The battles aren’t just here. Despite the tobacco industry’s tarnished public image, it is operating a powerful and massive influence machine in statehouses from Salt Lake City to Topeka. With a playbook crafted nearly 20 years ago, the tobacco firms use direct lobbying, third-party allies and “grassroots” advocacy campaigns to spread model legislation and mobilize smokers against proposed regulations and tax hikes across the country. And they are taking up the mantle to defend a burgeoning electronic cigarette market as well.

Today, tobacco companies maintain some of the most extensive state lobbying networks in the country, totaling hundreds of lobbyists. Altria Group Inc. and Reynolds American Inc., which control the vast majority of the American tobacco market, are among just 21 entities that had registered lobbyists in every state at one point from 2010 through 2014, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of lobbyist registrations collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

They’ve also given at least $63 million to state candidates, committees and ballot initiatives nationwide over the past five years.

Their chief opponents, the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association, also have similarly broad lobbying networks, but the health associations have given hardly any money to state politicians.

With such extensive reach, tobacco companies have continued to fight off the simplest means of cutting smoking rates: higher taxes. Out of 24 states to propose higher cigarette taxes last year just eight passed increases, according to a tobacco industry group. And only Nevada, with a $1-per-pack hike, raised them by more than 50 cents. Health groups say incremental tax hikes of less than $1 are much less effective at cutting smoking rates because tobacco companies can easily counteract them with rebates and discounts.

E-cigarettes are the newest front in this multi-faceted war. While the Food and Drug Administration has announced plans to regulate e-cigarettes, for now it remains up to states to impose any regulations or taxes on the emerging products. So far, e-cigarette taxes have passed in only four states, while proposals have been defeated in at least 21 others. The tobacco industry, which is increasing its share of the new market, has also won language in at least 19 states in recent years making it harder to regulate and tax e-cigarettes under existing anti-smoking laws.

David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, said his firm is generally opposed to taxes on its products and becomes politically active where necessary. Reynolds declined to answer specific questions for this article, pointing instead to its website, which says the company engages in lobbying and makes lawful political contributions to protect the interests of its business.

“The tobacco companies never give up,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “They’re like the Borg,” the indomitable alien horde of “Star Trek” lore.

‘Where tobacco bills go to die’

Nowhere has the tobacco fight been bigger, or more expensive, than in California, which has attracted at least two-thirds of tobacco companies’ state-level political donations since 2011. Public health advocates here say tobacco companies have used a potent combination of campaign contributions and behind-the-scenes lobbying to win enough friends in key places.

The strategy is most apparent on the Assembly’s Governmental Organization Committee, which oversees an odd combination of issues, including public records, state holidays, gambling, alcohol and tobacco.

Its chairman, Assembly member Adam C. Gray, a Democrat from Merced who has served on the committee since 2013, has accepted $88,100 in political contributions from Altria and Reynolds since he began campaigning for office in 2011, far more than any other member of the Legislature.

The two companies have directed some $390,000 in total to members who sat on that Assembly committee, a quarter of the money they’ve given to all legislative candidates and their committees in California over that period.

The large amount of money given to its members has prompted some to call it the “Juice Committee.” Health advocates call it “the committee where tobacco bills go to die.”

The committee has watered down or killed nearly every major tobacco bill that’s come through it in recent years, anti-smoking advocates say, including a recent attempt in July to regulate e-cigarettes.

In an unusual move, an identical e-cigarette bill and five other tobacco measures were reintroduced in a special session the following month to allow the legislation to sidestep Gray’s committee. They passed the Legislature this month, the first significant tobacco control bills to pass since the 1990s, a marked blow to the usually successful tobacco industry.

“Money has no influence on what goes on with policy. It just doesn’t,” Gray said. “Raising money to get into elected office is a component of what we have to do… And frankly, I’m a pretty aggressive fundraiser.”

Lawmakers and other Sacramento insiders point out that the direct contributions, which are subject to strict limits, are minimal compared to the money spent by independent political groups, which can raise and spend unlimited sums to support or oppose candidates as long as they do not coordinate with the candidates. Tobacco companies have given some $4.8 million to such independent political committees and parties in California since 2011, nearly three times as much as they gave directly to candidates.

“We provide contributions to candidates and elected officials who, in their work legislatively are at work on issues that have an impact on our business,” said Sutton, the Altria spokesman.

Altria and Reynolds have also spent some $5.4 million on lobbying in California since 2011. By comparison, the health groups that supported stronger tobacco regulation have spent some $2.7 million over the same period, though they lobby on many other issues as well.

“There’s a reason people spend money on that,” said Gary Winuk, who served for six years as the state’s lobbying and campaign finance enforcement officer before leaving for private practice last year. Winuk began his career working for a lawmaker on the Governmental Organization Committee decades ago, and said it was the behind-the-scenes maneuvering and power plays he saw there that made him want to work for the state ethics agency.

Preserving tobacco’s role

In 1999, R.J. Reynolds, now a division of Reynolds American, produced a memo describing a strategy to “preserve the company’s role and participation in U.S. commerce.” The document, archived at the University of California, San Francisco, included the company’s state lobbying objectives, chief among which was a plan to hire lobbyists in “as many states as possible,” as the company’s first “line of defense.”

Next was a commitment to make “appropriate political contributions and support key trade groups and allies,” adding, “there is an old saying in politics. ‘Money talks and bullshit walks’… It is especially true when dealing with tobacco issues.”

The third component of the lobbying strategy was to “execute grassroots mobilization of trade groups, smokers and other allies.”

Nearly two decades later, the company is still using the same roadmap. And smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable deaths, killing nearly half a million Americans every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Reynolds and Altria employed a team of more than 450 state lobbyists in 2014, together retaining representatives everywhere but Nevada, according to an analysis of state records and data collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. They’ve also continued to work through trade organizations and advocacy groups.

When Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback proposed an increase of $1.50 per pack for traditional cigarettes last year to help fill a budget gap, Reynolds hired David Kensinger, who had served as the Republican governor’s chief of staff until leaving to work as a lobbyist in 2012. Weeks earlier, Kensinger was among a select group of insiders who received advance copies of Brownback’s proposed budget, which included the tax hike, before lawmakers did, according to The Wichita Eagle. Both Kensinger and Reynolds declined to comment on what happened.

Reynolds reported buying more than 350 meals for public officials and giving e-cigarettes to four House members in Kansas last year, according to state lobbying records, while Altria spent $283,000 on advertising and other outreach.

Meanwhile, a group called Citizens for Tobacco Rights, an advocacy campaign run by Altria, blasted emails to its members, in one instance urging them to fight the tax by posting messages on the Facebook pages of their lawmakers. It’s a standard tactic of the group, which claimed to have generated more than 33,000 phone calls and 52,000 emails and letters to legislators in 2014.

Lawmakers eventually approved a tax increase of only 50 cents, a third of the original proposal. Kansas continues to struggle with a $46 million budget deficit this fiscal year.

Protecting a smokeless future

Reynolds, too, has its own “grassroots” advocacy campaign, called Transform Tobacco.  And as the name suggests, a new product is increasingly drawing the company’s focus.

The e-cigarette was invented in 2003 in China and started appearing in this country not long after. It’s gained an enthusiastic community of users, and by 2013 some 20 million adult Americans reported trying e-cigarettes, which vaporize a liquid such as propylene glycol mixed with flavorings and usually nicotine, the key addictive chemical in cigarettes that is generally derived from tobacco.

E-cigarettes come in a huge range of varieties. One major brand charges about $10 for a disposable sleek black pen-like device that lasts about as long as two packs of cigarettes. But many “vapers” use so-called mods or tanks, bulkier refillable devices that can cost anywhere from $30 to well over $100. Users then buy separate vials of “e-juice,” with names like Cinnamon Crumble and Unicorn Milk, which typically sell for about $20 per 30-milliliter vial.

Sales of e-cigarettes reached $3.3 billion last year, according to Wells Fargo Securities, and may surpass those of traditional cigarettes within a decade. While tobacco companies still control less than half of this market, they’ve begun buying up or starting their own e-cigarette brands in recent years, rapidly increasing their share.

Reynolds, a leader in the e-cigarette market, has promoted model legislation that says explicitly that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products. The Center for Public Integrity obtained a template copy of the model language that was circulated at one of dozens of youth tobacco prevention “dialogues” that Reynolds has held around the country in recent years for local health officials and advocates. The company offered to pay as much as $1,000, plus lodging, to those who attended, according to invitations the Center obtained.

So far, such model language has passed in at least 19 states, written into laws banning sales to minors. At least 11 of those passed laws that pull nearly verbatim from the Reynolds template, while at least eight others have enacted similar language that health groups say was promoted by Lorillard Tobacco, which Reynolds bought last year.

Pennsylvania and Michigan, the only states that do not prohibit sales to minors, have two bills pending with similar language.

Although Reynolds’ model language asserts that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products, the company’s own website describes its VUSE e-cigarette as exactly that.

The most immediate effect of the bills is to protect e-cigarettes from existing tobacco control programs and taxes. E-cigarette proponents say the alternate definitions are warranted because the products do not burn tobacco. But health groups warn that the definitions pushed by the industry will harm the public.

“You build this infrastructure for regulating e-cigarettes on a faulty promise that they’re somehow a healthy product,” said Timothy Gibbs, a lobbyist for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network in California and a chief shepherd of the tobacco control bills there. “While the scientific consensus is that they may be safer than traditional cigarettes, that doesn’t mean they’re safe.”

It seems likely that “vaping” is less harmful than smoking. The question is by how much. The Centers for Disease Control says e-cigarettes “generally emit lower levels of dangerous toxins” than cigarettes, but can also release carcinogenic compounds and heavy metals. The agency says that e-cigarettes could provide a public health benefit if they lead smokers to quit. But it suggests that isn’t happening — about three-quarters of e-cigarette users also smoke cigarettes — and the products may be harmful if they prolong smokers’ addiction.

State Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat who sponsored the recently approved California bill that defines e-cigarettes as tobacco products, said their popularity among youth — some 2.4 million middle and high school students were using e-cigarettes nationally in 2014 — means the devices present a new health crisis. He likens today’s fight to what happened with smoking in the mid-20th century, when tobacco companies began a decades-long campaign to discredit the emerging science showing the lethal and addictive qualities of cigarettes.

“They knew 50 years ago what they were doing,” Leno said. “And they’re doing it again today.”

Reynolds declined to answer questions about the model legislation or the dialogues, pointing instead to a company webpage that explains its “transforming tobacco” initiative, which promotes youth prevention programs and argues that smoke-free products, including e-cigarettes, can reduce “the death and disease caused by cigarettes.” Health advocates say the company has insidiously used this campaign in its efforts to win legislation protecting e-cigarettes from harsher regulation.

Altria declined to answer whether it has lobbied in favor of the language.

Vapers fight back

In California, the full weight of state government has gotten behind a campaign to rein in e-cigarette use. Last year, the state public health department warned of the dangers of the product and recommended strict regulations, launching a website and ad campaign called Still Blowing Smoke. This month, with passage of Leno’s bill, the Legislature took a big step in that direction.

Yet the state has met formidable resistance not just from the tobacco industry but also from a fledgling industry of smaller e-cigarette manufacturers and retailers backed by a passionate movement of vapers. Mobilized around the country, these e-cig aficionados have protested in Salt Lake, circulated petitions in Washington state and flown to the nation’s capital to push their position with congressional leaders.

Within hours of the launch of the state’s Still Blowing Smoke campaign last March, for example, another website called NOT Blowing Smoke popped up, using a similar font and logo but blasting the department for peddling misinformation.

Stefan Didak, a 44-year-old software engineer and co-president of the Northern California chapter of the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, a vaping industry group, had learned that the health department was planning the campaign and spent 36 hours holed up in his home office, a dark room with an array of 12 monitors, 14 computers and a plastic rack holding dozens of e-cigarettes. In a savvy guerrilla tactic, he beat the department to registering social media accounts, so the Still Blowing Smoke Facebook page and Twitter handle lead to content by NOT Blowing Smoke.

“Yeah, that was fun,” Didak said from his split-level home in Oakley, a city on the eastern edge of the Bay Area. Didak, dressed all in black, wore a NOT Blowing Smoke T-shirt and held a black mod e-cigarette, the type preferred by hard-core vapers. The blinds were drawn and the air held the faint sweet odor emitted by his mod, which he sucked on periodically, blowing out thick clouds of “ripe strawberry shortcake” flavored vapor.

SFATA Executive Director Cynthia Cabrera says her group was not affiliated with the counter-campaign. The association hired lobbyists in Sacramento to oppose Leno's bill and has urged Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, to issue a veto.

Didak said that bill would drive small vape shops and liquids manufacturers out of the state — or out of business — by applying the various licensure and regulatory requirements that apply to tobacco. As someone who quit cigarettes thanks to vaping, he said that restricting the industry would harm public health. 

Didak and other vapers stress that they are not “big tobacco” and that SFATA does not receive money from tobacco companies. “We don’t regard them as part of us,” Didak said.

In coming months, however, they’ll be on the same side.

A bold threat

Whether Brown signs Leno’s e-cigarette bill, part of the package of six tobacco measures the Legislature passed this month, an expensive fight looms in California’s freewheeling ballot initiative process.

A coalition of health and labor groups, with support from liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, is currently gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would hike the state’s cigarette tax by $2 and levy an equivalent tax on e-cigarettes. At 87 cents, California’s current tax is well below the national average.

Yet that effort may be in jeopardy.

This month, a lobbyist for Altria sent a bold threat in an email first published by The Sacramento Bee: the company plans to try to repeal some of the tobacco bills it had opposed by putting them before voters in a referendum on this fall’s ballot. In a calculating political move, it also threatened to corner the all-important ballot measure market of professional signature gatherers by paying top dollar. That could price out the health groups from their cigarette tax campaign and imperil all other measures trying to make the ballot, including an extension of a key tax increase known as Proposition 30.

“When we hit the street with referendum paying $10 per signature, Prop 30 is dead as well as $2 a pack tax,” warned Altria lobbyist George Miller IV, son of the former Democratic California congressman. “We will have every signature gatherer on an exclusive. Just letting you know so you can’t say you were not warned.”

The health groups say they could be forced to either up their own prices, which are now about $4 per signature, or rally volunteers instead.

“We’re appalled but not surprised,” said Gibbs, the Cancer Society lobbyist, adding that tobacco companies have a history of particularly ruthless tactics. “They seem to be throwing a fit.”

Miller did not respond to requests for comment. Sutton, Altria’s spokesman, called Miller’s message “simply a friendly heads-up email between long-time colleagues.”

No matter whether Altria follows through on its threat, the coming months are sure to see many millions of dollars spent on all sides. Health groups have already raised $4 million for their campaign. During two previous attempts to raise cigarette taxes at the ballot, in 2006 and 2012, Reynolds and Altria spent more than $113 million and defeated both measures.

This story was co-published with Vice.

A coalition of outside groups paid for more than 4,300 anti-Donald Trump ads during the week before Tuesday’s primary election in Florida — all to no avail as the real estate mogul sailed to an easy victory.

In winning, Trump, whose own campaign aired 1,801 ads in the Sunshine State, dealt a death blow to Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential hopes, and in Rubio’s home state, no less. Rubio announced his exit from the race as Trump basked in victory.

The Florida battle was notable in that Rubio’s campaign committee did not pay for a single TV ad in Florida, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of preliminary data compiled by Kantar Media/CMAG, a political advertising data firm.

Instead, Rubio outsourced it: Conservative Solutions PAC sponsored all ads promoting Rubio, which also sometimes served the dual purpose of attacking Trump. As a super PAC established to support Florida’s junior U.S. senator, Conservative Solutions PAC can raise and spend money without limits.

Also leading the anti-Trump barrage was Our Principles PAC, formed in January to block Trump’s nomination. The super PAC has spent more than $14 million since forming, attacking Trump via TV ads, mailers and voter calls, according to Federal Election Commission records.

There is currently one known megadonor to Our Principles PAC: Marlene Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs. She is wife of Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade.

Our Principles PAC paid for 1,560 ads. “Dark money” nonprofit American Future Fund aired 1,991 ads while Club for Growth Action aired 793 ads.

But the top ad buyer was Conservative Solutions PAC, which inundated Florida with nearly 4,300 ads, about half of which positively touted Rubio’s biography. Some of the ads ran in Spanish.

Trump acknowledged the negative ad blitz at an election night press conference, calling the ads attacking him “vicious.”

“Nobody has ever, ever in the history of politics received the kind of negative advertising that I have,” Trump said on Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. John Kasich won his home state with relative ease. Kasich’s campaign aired 1,690 ads in Ohio compared to Trump’s 1,930 in the final week leading up to the primary.

But Kasich got help from outside groups. New Day for America, a super PAC formed to help the governor, paid for 724 ads. The anti-Trump super PAC Our Principles PAC aired 442 ads, Kantar Media/CMAG data show.

Super PACs were made possible by the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision and a lower court case later that year. Together, they allowed outside spending groups to collect and spend unlimited sums of money — including from corporations, unions and certain nonprofits — to support or oppose a candidate.

Trump is largely financing his own campaign and has no significant backing from super PACs. What he does have is almost nonstop media coverage that essentially dwarfs any ad campaign that can be mounted against his candidacy.

It’s not wise to generalize about Trump because “he’s such a media phenomenon — who else has gotten so much free time?” asks campaign finance expert Rick Hasen,  law and political science professor at the University of California at Irvine.

“One of the reasons super PACs have not been so influential at the presidential level is there’s so much other money and media interest,” he said, in an interview prior to the Tuesday night’s results. Once you move farther down the ballot, super PACs become far more influential, he added.

But despite Rubio’s poor showing, super PACs have played a critical role. Were it not for these benefactors, he would in all likelihood not still be a candidate.

Meanwhile Trump cleaned up in the other primaries, winning Illinois and North Carolina. Trump appeared to barely inch out Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in Missouri.

Looking ahead, with Rubio out, the Republican contest becomes a three-way race, although though Trump is clearly in the driver’s seat.

He leads by more than 200 delegates, having reached the halfway mark to the delegate threshold needed to earn the GOP nomination.

Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this report

The Pentagon dashed any hopes that it might soon be able to pass a simple audit, when it provided a surprisingly unhelpful response late last month to a simple question about how many widgets of a particular kind that it had in stock.

Understanding the worrying significance of the Pentagon’s statement that it essentially had no idea what the number is requires a bit of detail.

The widget that was being asked about has a narrow purpose: It’s basically a portable power station that looks like a small, plastic toolbox. Dubbed the HotPlug, it was crafted to allow government investigators to transfer suspects’ computers to their laboratories for forensic analysis, without first shutting the computers down. And so an Oregon-based software developer, Martin Peck, who worries about privacy issues and government secrecy, in July 2015 sent the Defense Department a Freedom of Information Act request, asking how many such devices it had in its possession.

Answering this simple question, the Pentagon said, would take the department — hold your breath now — 15 million labor hours. Doing so would cost — no, don’t breathe yet — $660 million, the Pentagon said.

While this sum is essentially chump change at the Pentagon — a bit more than one-tenth of one percent of its annual budget — in the world outside the five-sided building it’s enough to buy the Washington Nationals baseball team, a 600-acre island off the coast of Australia, twelve of the most expensive Ferrari racecars, or about as much as the Pentagon is currently spending to train Iraqi soldiers in combat.

Critics, including those who study modern business practices, say the reply spoke volumes about how poorly the Pentagon keeps track of its own purchasing and contracting. That issue lies at the core of persistent criticisms that the department cannot meet modern accounting standards, a circumstance that critics say opens the door widely for waste, fraud, and abuse in military expenditures.

Why does the Pentagon have so much trouble determining how many specific widgets it has in its possession?

In a two-page response to Peck, the department's FOIA office said Robert Jarrett, the Pentagon’s Director of Operations, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy, had explained that although the Pentagon maintains a database of all its contracts — in something called the Electronic Documents Access (EDA) system — it cannot be comprehensively searched.

The Electronic Documents Access system was switched on eighteen years ago after being constructed at a cost of millions of dollars, and it now includes an estimated 30 million contracts. But the FOIA officer, signing the letter to Peck on behalf of FOIA chief Stephanie L. Carr, wrote in the response: “No method exists for a complete text search of EDA, as some documents are scans of paper copies.” The estimate that someone would need 15 million hours, or about 1,712 years, to come up with an answer -- including any redactions required to keep company secrets out of the public domain --  was based on the department's presumption that the person doing the searching would have to read all of the contracts, and spend 20 minutes on each one.

 “It makes me want to cry as a taxpayer and a citizen that DOD still doesn’t have working accounting systems,” says Rafael DeGennaro, a former congressional staff member who now directs the nonprofit Audit the Pentagon initiative, which presses for legislation to force better accounting of how the military spends its $580 billion annual budget. “They need this information to manage the place and they need this information to justify the burden of taxes we pay into the black box that is Pentagon accounting.”

It’s not the first time that the Pentagon’s inability to say what it’s got in its possession has been under a spotlight. It’s clear — even to top Pentagon officials — that one consequence is that a lot of money gets wasted buying things the Pentagon does not actually need to buy.

Because the Pentagon did not know how many spare parts it already had for a military transport airplane, called the C-130, it spent $6.6 million between July 2012 and June 2014 on parts that it did not need, according to a June 2015 Department of Defense Inspector General’s report. Similarly, partly because the Pentagon didn’t know how many useful spare parts it had on hand for its V-22 Osprey military helicopter, it spent $8.7 million between August 2014 and May 2015 on parts it did not need, according to a separate Inspector General report. It predicted that storing those extra parts would cost $700,000 over the next five years.

Paul Bracken, a professor of management at Yale University, said in an interview that nearly all successful organizations have searchable parts databases. “All businesses keep meticulous control of inventory, what the product is, what it costs, how long it’s been on the shelf,” he said. “A private corporation would have that information literally at their fingertips because they have relational databases to store it all. A relational database means you can search by any criteria you want.”

A 1990 law requires federal agencies to pass an annual audit, which requires among other things that they be able to account for all their possessions. But the Pentagon has never complied — it is the sole outlier, responsible for roughly half of all federal discretionary spending — and its deadline for passing such an audit keeps extending.

When Peck made a similar FOIA request to the Drug Enforcement Agency, for example, asking how many Harris Kingfish systems it had bought to track phone calls, the DEA replied within a month that it had two. A press spokesperson for the DEA, Barbara Carreno, said in an emailed statement that the agency uses a Department of Justice database called the Unified Financial Management System to track “contracts and accountable property.” The database has a search function.

Presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders don’t agree on much, but bringing the Pentagon’s self-awareness up to modern accounting standards is one topic they both feel is urgent.

 A bill they have co-sponsored with six other Senators would impose a series of graduated punishments if the Pentagon fails to pass an audit soon. These punishments include changing financial management positions if the Department fails to pass an audit for fiscal year 2016, and blocking the Defense Department from upgrading or acquiring certain new weapons if it fails to obtain an audit for fiscal year 2017. The bill has been referred to a committee, but no hearing about it has been scheduled.

Lauren Chadwick is a Scoville fellow at the Center for Public Integrity.

This story was co-published with Slate.

After National Newspaper Publishers Association President Benjamin Chavis Jr. visited Reynolds American’s headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., he left impressed — and with hopes of big money from the tobacco giant.

Ultimately, Reynolds American last year gave $250,000 to the organization, which from its Washington, D.C., headquarters represents the interests of more than 200 African-American-owned community newspapers across the nation.

The donation — listed in a new Reynolds American corporate governance document reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity— represented the largest contribution Reynolds American made in 2015 to nearly three-dozen nonprofit organizations, many of which are politically active and typically keep their funders secret.

Other small, but notable Reynolds Americans’ contributions in 2015 helped Americans for Prosperity, a “social welfare” nonprofit connected to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, and Americans for Tax Reform, led by anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist.

During the 2014 midterms, Americans for Prosperity spent more than $2.35 million advocating against mostly Democratic U.S. Senate and U.S. House candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. During the 2012 election, it spent more than $33.5 million in a bid to deny President Barack Obama re-election.

More than a dozen Michigan-based nonprofits also received modest contributions from Reynolds American, whose operating companies manufacture such cigarette brands as Newport, Pall Mall and Camel, and of late, non-tobacco products including Vuse e-cigarettes.

Reynolds American’s second-largest nonprofit contribution — $240,000 — went to the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, which describes itself as a “regulatory watchdog” that ensures regulators “comply with the ‘good government’ laws which regulate the regulators.”

Most recently, the organization has been supporting a bill, to be sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that calls for a separate budget specifically for federal regulations.

A representative of the group could not be reached for comment.

The Log Cabin Republicans, a nonprofit that represents gay conservatives, received $25,000 from Reynolds American in 2015.

In declining to comment, the group’s president, Gregory T. Angelo, said the “Log Cabin Republicans’ policy is not to discuss finances nor donors.”

Reynolds American spokeswoman Jane Seccombe declined to comment on the company’s 2015 contributions to nonprofits, but previously told the Center for Public Integrity that it began disclosing contributions made to politically active nonprofits at the behest of an unnamed shareholder.

Seccombe this week pointed to a statement asserting the company and its subsidiaries “participate in the political and public policy process in a manner consistent with the law and the interests of their businesses.”

The statement also notes that Reynolds American “may not necessarily agree with all of the positions taken by each candidate or organization to which they contribute.” But before making a contribution, the company determines that a contribution aligns with its published Vision and Beliefs and Transforming Tobacco statements, “or is otherwise in the interests of the company.”

Reynolds American is rare in that most large companies, regardless of their industry, volunteer little information about their political activities beyond what’s required by law.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of which many such companies are members, has for years hectored them to keep their corporate mouths shut, warning that such disclosures give fuel to anti-business activists itching to “silence the business community’s voice.”

Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, which publishes an annual index on corporate political disclosure, hailed political transparency policies.

While not perfect, “Reynolds American is a leader, and the company should be praised,” he said.

Chavis of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which last week conducted three-day gathering  in Washington, D.C., that featured various elected and government officials, said he actively courted Reynolds American’s support given its long-standing advertising relationship with many member newspapers. He said he never considered rejecting Reynolds American’s $250,000 contribution when it arrived.

One major factor, he said: “We saw a lot of diversity among their executives.” Reynolds American, Chavis also noted, has diversified into non-tobacco products, invests in community development and has actively worked to curb smoking among youth.

“The contribution helps us sustain our organization and fulfill our mission, and we’re very grateful for the support,” Chavis said, noting that companies such as General Motors and Ford Motor Co. also make large contributions to his association.

A 2011 study published in the Journal of Health Communications concluded that newspapers with primarily black readerships are more financially dependent on tobacco-related advertisements than newspapers with general readerships. Many black Americans, therefore, are exposed to significant amounts of advertising for products proven to cause cancer and a host of other health problems.

“Given the current advertising environment, public health initiatives are needed to counter ... messages that target vulnerable populations,” the study stated.

"The tobacco industry has a long history of targeting African-American media and audiences," Elisia Cohen, a study co-author and chairwoman of the University of Kentucky's Department of Communications, told the Center for Public Integrity on Wednesday.

Among Reynolds Americans other 2015 disclosures is a $7,750 contribution to Americans for Tax Reform, although that figure appears to only represent a fraction of what the company gave the nonprofit.

That’s because Reynolds American says it only discloses the portion of contributions top nonprofit recipients can’t deduct from their taxes — generally, expenses nonprofits uses for direct political advocacy or government lobbying.

Such is the case for the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, which received $66,395 in “non-deductible” dollars from Reynolds American last year. The group counts 35,000 members among its ranks and considers job creation the “core” of its issue advocacy.

For its part, the Renew North Carolina Foundation, which says its mission is “to educate and advocate about policy issues that are critical to the future of North Carolina and its citizens,” received $25,000 in “non-deductible” Reynolds American cash last year.

The Renew North Carolina Foundation has previously run advertisements promoting the agenda of Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican. Renew North Carolina Foundation reported raising about $313,000 in 2014, according to its most recent tax return filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

For nonprofits that use 75 percent or more of its Reynolds American money for political purposes, Reynolds American simply notes the size of its full contribution.

Among these kinds of contributions in 2015: $10,000 to the Washington Vape Association, which advocated against a bill in the Washington State Legislature aimed at taxing or further regulating e-cigarettes and certain tobacco products. Another is Americans for Prosperity, which received $4,000, according to Reynolds American's disclosure.

Politics and particularly money-in-politics is the meat and drink of the Center for Public Integrity. It’s where we do much of our long-term coverage and also where journalists like federal politics lead Dave Levinthal keep the Center in the public and political eye with commentary on television and coverage in the news cycle.

Citizens dis-united

Few stories reverberate though the years in the Center’s online traffic reports than a 2012 piece by John Dunbar on the meaning of the then-fresh Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision which ruled that corporations had the same free speech rights as individuals. John’s piece recurs almost daily in our most-read.

John returns to that subject with an hour-long radio documentary and podcast with RevealNews.org, our podcasting partner run by the Center for Investigative Reporting in California. “Anyone who cares about who represents them at any level of government should tune in,” Dunbar said.  “This decision affects everyone.” The piece is on PRX stations nationwide from tonight and Reveal is available for download from iTunes and Stitcher.

The Center partners with many media organizations but the Reveal partnership is particularly strong and gives our stories national reach through their radio network and high quality podcasting and training for our team. Its part of a strategic dissemination strategy to get our stories into the right places and expose our work.

Political reality

Dave Levinthal and his federal team have also had the difficult task of keeping current with money and politics in a race now dominated by someone who allegedly funds his own campaign. Dave, Michael Beckel and our Soles Fellow Cady Zuvich have done a strong job for months now on tracking campaign spending data and using proprietary Kantar-CMAG political advertising data to find political nuggets. Michael dug into Bernie Sanders’ data to show small-but-intriguing commitments from lobbyists. Cady used the Kantar-CMAG data to put hard data behind the assumption that Republican super-PACs would put their money into anti-Trump advertising.

Politicians love defense spending, voters not so much

Also on the subject of fellows, Lauren Chadwick, a Scoville Foundation fellow, filed a valuable piece this week on the disconnect between politicians — as we know well-fed by defense companies — and voters on the priorities of defense spending. It’s a good start. Lauren joins us from a stint at NBC and is a past intern at CERN and at the Monterey Institute for International Studies.

Patrick Malone showed the reach of Jeff Smith’s national security team at the Center with a strong set of pieces — also published by partners in the Netherlands and Belgium — on the extraordinary tale of poor security at Belgian nuclear installations and attempts by ISIS to kidnap a leading scientist with the objective of creating a dirty bomb.

Recognition matters

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has been shortlisted a couple of weeks ago for the European Press Prize, investigative reporting category for the Swiss Leaks project.

Here, Center journalists were finalists in two categories in the Scripps Howard Awards for 2015. One was the “community journalism” category where the state political team worked with the Post & Courier in Charleston to unlock the secrets of expenses data to produce this story. The second was Dan Wagner, now at BuzzFeed,who exposed the mobile home empire of Warren Buffett and its treatment of poor customers.

Susan Ferriss has worked tirelessly on the subject of kids being treated as criminals in our schools. The Washington Post editorial board highlighted that work this week.

The environment team’s Talia Buford will speak to Wesleyan University faculty and students next month about “Environmental Justice, Denied,” the project she co-reported with Kristen Lombardi that looked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s dismal record of enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. 

What we’re reading and thinking about

Jeff Smith, our national security managing editor, noted two pieces this week:

Foreign Policy has a very interesting and sad article explaining how the refugee crisis is remaking Europe, changing both its politics and some of its ideals. It’s written from Sweden, which until recently had doors open wider than anyone else and the most generous aid programs. Not any more.

The New Yorker and ProPublica had an elegant co-production on philanthropist and private equity baron David Rubenstein.

I welcome feedback on this note.

A series exposing the exorbitant fees and sky-high interest rates of a mobile-home empire has earned the Center a “Best in Business” prize from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW). Three other Center projects were named as finalists in the prestigious competition, which recognizes outstanding business journalism.

The Center was one of just a handful of news outlets to be cited four times in the contest, joined by ProPublica, Quartz, Reuters, TheMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, TheMinneapolis Star Tribune and  International Business Times.

The Mobile-Home Trap project was a partnership between the Center, The Seattle Times and Buzzfeed. The series revealed how Clayton Homes, owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, relies on predatory sales practices, high fees and hefty interest rates to trap many buyers in loans they cannot afford and in homes that are difficult to sell or refinance. A second story in the series examined how Clayton Homes “systematically pursues unwitting minority home buyers and baits them into costly, subprime loans.”

Contest judges said the stories helped “…readers gain an understanding of a private company and its practices, and learn much about a little-known corner of the lending marketplace.”

Reporters and editors on the project included Alison Fitzgerald of the Center for Public Integrity and Daniel Wagner of the Center and BuzzFeed, and also Ken Lambert, Garland Potts and Jim Neff of The Seattle Times.

The Center’s was also cited as a finalist for these projects:

Unequal Risk, a series by Jim Morris, managing editor/environment, about risks workers face from toxic chemicals and substances in the workplace, including asbestos.  “What this series did exceptionally well,” judges said, “was to expose the shortfall in worker protections, a story told in recounting human consequences.” 

Evicted and Abandoned: The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor,  by the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,  along with the Huffington Post and other media partners. The cross-border, global investigation revealed that the World Bank failed to live up to its own policies for protecting people harmed by projects it finances, physically or economically displacing an estimated 3.4 million people.

Hedge Funds Get Cheap Homes, Homeowners Get the Boot by Jared Bennett, with news applications by Yue Qiu and Chris Zubak-Skees. This story found that a Department of Housing and Urban Development  program originally meant to help distressed homeowners had instead largely become a lucrative investment tool for hedge funds and others. Judges said the project “broke new ground and helped spur a call for HUD to address weaknesses in its program.”

Congratulations to all of the winners. 

This is the story of a phantom who sponsored a political attack ad in the heat of Florida’s critical presidential primary and sidestepped federal transparency laws.

It begins with a single TV spot— one that aired last week on an independent, Spanish-language station in South Miami.

The ad first chided Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for supporting normalized relations with Cuba.

It then cut to Sen. Marco Rubio decrying how the United States is lifting its trade and travel ban on Cuba.

And like all political ads, the spot ended by disclosing its sponsor: “Inspire America.” Federal law requires such disclaimers for the sake of political transparency and informing voters.

But exactly what — or who — is Inspire America?

An easy answer refused to reveal itself.

So the Center for Public Integrity sought answers from the Federal Communications Commission.

Thanks to the Communications Act of 1934, broadcast TV stations must make public certain details of TV ads containing political candidates and issue advocacy. This includes the cost and run times of an ad buy, as well as basic information about the sponsor’s officers.

Inspire America, however, was nowhere to be found in FCC records.

Next, the Center for Public Integrity scoured Federal Election Commission databases for any mention of or reference to a political group named Inspire America.

Nothing.

Web searches? Equally unfruitful.

The Center for Public Integrity then contacted the station where the ad aired. An employee referred questions to Marcell Felipe, general counsel for WFUN and WJAN, co-owned Spanish-language stations that had aired Inspire America’s ad.

Felipe said the ad — which aired 14 times on WFUN just before the March 15 primary — was not political, but instead a “public service announcement” to encourage voter turnout.

Therefore, he argued, his station wasn’t required to provide federal regulators with information about the ad or its sponsor, Inspire America.

But how could this be?

The ad, after all, featured two “legally qualified candidates” and addresses an “issue of national importance” — factors the FCC say triggers automatic disclosure.

The Center for Public Integrity pressed Felipe on this point. It was not until several correspondences later that Felipe revealed what he had withheld to that point: he was the true sponsor of the ad.

It was Felipe, too, who founded Inspire America — what he says is a new 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit. The group has yet to appear in Internal Revenue Service records, and such nonprofits are not supposed to make politics their primary purpose.

Felipe appeared nonplussed when informed about disclosure requirements.

“If we are told that we have to disclose it, we’ll disclose it,” said Felipe, who deemed the ad a “get out the vote” ad. He said he would consult with an FCC lawyer about disclosing this particular ad.

And as general counsel of the very station that ran the ads, Felipe said he convinced WFUN to run the ad at no charge, given the ad’s supposed “public service announcement” status.

Having acknowledged being behind the ad, Felipe explained why he produced it.

"I believe that immigrants who come to the United States in search of democracy provide valuable contributions to our civic engagement and should be heard, particularly on how to promote democracy throughout the world,” Felipe said.

“Communities like ours that have come to the U.S. looking for democracy need a platform for dialogue on how to shape American policies and American values,” Felipe added.

WFUN and WJAN, to be sure, played a small, but nevertheless important role ahead of the Florida primary. It broadcasts "América TeVe," which targets Cuban-Americans in South Miami. It also reaches homes in as far as Key Largo, Florida, about 70 miles south of central Miami.

Rubio, himself a Cuban-American from Miami, had much to gain from a high Cuban-American turnout.

But while Rubio won 62 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Tuesday’s Florida primary, he ultimately lost the Florida contest and dropped out of the presidential race after a crushing second place finish behind Trump.

Felipe is both a supporter of Rubio and the Republican Party: Federal records show he donated $2,700 to Rubio’s presidential campaign and has previously contributed to U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, a lobbying organization that itself has donated more than $250,000 to Republican lawmakers and $51,000 to Democratic lawmakers during the 2016 election cycle.

Why should knowing an ad’s sponsor matter to voters?

“Knowing the messenger of an ad is important in evaluating the ad’s message,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign reform group. “If ads are running and the station isn’t disclosing, it creates a problem.”

After the Center for Public Integrity’s inquiry, Felipe and WFUN did eventually file details of the ad buy with federal regulators.

But the filing came one day after Floridians cast their votes, and by then, presidential candidates had packed their bags, leaving Florida to campaign in other states.

Presidential candidates and their supportive super PACs generally entered March one of two ways: flush with energy and cash or destined for Election 2016 footnote status.

A new round of federal campaign finance disclosures due Sunday night detailed presidential hopefuls' boom-or-bust February — sometimes in all-too-ugly detail for the several candidates who ended their campaigns last month.

Here’s a rundown of the more telling — and curious — statistics to emerge:

$25 million: What a gaggle of billionaires, corporations and other wealthy types invested in Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio's presidential bid just as it was poised to fall apart. Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC supporting Rubio, had its best fundraising month in February, raised the gaudy sum in February alone. The bulk of the money — $22 million — came in just 11 seven-figure contributions from big names in GOP donor circles, including billionaire investors Paul Singer and Ken Griffin (each $2.5 million) and Oracle Corporation's Larry Ellison ($2 million). Most likely to feel like a turkey? Arkansas poultry magnate Ronald Cameron, who contributed $5 million to the ill-fated effort. Conservative Solutions PAC also reported $2.5 million contributions each from two companies associated with Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg — Starr International USA and C.V. Starr & Company Inc. Greenberg is on quite a losing streak, having previously contributed $10 million to Right to Rise USA, the super PAC backing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's failed presidential campaign. Rubio withdrew from the presidential race in mid-March after he lost his home state primary in Florida.

$13,623,451: Difference entering March between the Hillary Clinton campaign’s cash on hand (more than $30.83 million) and that of the Bernie Sanders campaign (about $17.21 million). The gap comes after a February in which Sanders outraised Clinton by more than $14 million in the Democratic presidential primary. But Sanders in February also burned through about $9.4 million more than Clinton after his campaign already started the month with less cash in reserve.  Another problem for Sanders who trails Clinton in delegates as they fight to secure the Democratic nomination? Pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action, which like all super PACs may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against candidates, boasted nearly $44.5 million cash on hand heading into March.

$12,056,903: What Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s long-shot presidential campaign has raised through February — for the entire presidential election. That’s about one-twelfth the amount Sanders’ campaign has raised during the same period. Kasich, who’s only Republican primary victory came last week in his home state of Ohio, can take some heart in that New Day for America, a super PAC supporting him, reported more than $2.5 million in its coffers heading into March.

$6.85 million: Value of the loan — unlikely to be recouped— that billionaire businessman Donald Trump personally made in February to his presidential campaign. It’s part of about $24.4 million that Trump has loaned his campaign. But lo: Despite Trump’s frequent assertion that he’s self-funding his Republican presidential bid, supporters also collectively contributed $2.03 million to The Donald in February alone. That's in addition to the roughly $7.5 million individual contributors have already sent Trump's way.

$4,510,722: The remaining cash, after subtracting debt, that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s campaign enjoyed on Feb. 29 — four days before Carson quit the race. In addition to this surplus, Carson’s campaign committee is sitting on a veritable gold mine: the lucrative personal information of millions of donors and supporters, many of whom have never before engaged in presidential politics.

$4 million: Amount billionaire climate change activist Tom Steyer gave his Democrat-backing super PAC in February.

$1,093,568: What the presidential campaign of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who dropped his bid six months ago, still collectively owes more than 40 creditors for services ranging from legal fees to photography. Walker’s campaign did manage to pay off almost $120,000 worth of debts in February thanks in part to money raised from renting the personal information of its donors to a data brokerage firm. It also scored a $5,000 contribution from the political action committee of tobacco company Reynolds American.

$700,000: How much Arizona Diamondbacks owner Earl “Ken” Kendrick Jr. contributed in February to Conservative Solutions PAC, the pro-Rubio super PAC. That’s more than 16 Diamondbacks players reportedly earn in annual salary. (The baseball club finished 13 games out of first place in the National League West last year.) Now that Rubio struck out, Kendrick is backing U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the Republican presidential primary — and is willing to lose fans over his desire to keep Trump out of the White House.

$530,018: What corporations, limited liability companies and other such organizations contributed in February to Stand For Truth Inc., one of several super PACs supporting Cruz. The super PAC received more than half that amount from Missouri-based Herzog Railroad Services Inc.

$250,000: Value of a personal loan Bush made to his own campaign on Feb. 2 in a desperate effort to keep his ultimately doomed campaign alive.

$73,828: What Trump’s campaign paid law firm Jones Day in February. Why that’s notable: Trump’s general counsel is Don McGahn, a Jones Day lawyer who served as a Federal Election Commission commissioner from 2008 to 2013, including as its chairman and vice chairman. McGahn also previously served as general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee. And like Trump, McGahn tends to march to his own tune — especially if it’s Guns ‘n’ Roses. After Trump won the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 9, McGahn stood at Trump's side has he delivered his victory speech.

$25,252: Amount of money New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign committee owed in payroll taxes by the end of February. It’s part of $485,000 in campaign debt Christie’s now-defunct campaign owed.

$6,000: The amount Christie's campaign committee received in late February from Republican rival Rubio. Rubio gave Christie the money to access his campaign donor information — and the exchange came four days before Christie endorsed Trump, Rubio's rival for the Republican presidential nomination. (Ouch.) But Christie's endorsement may have been worth marginally more than his donor list: Trump crushed Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, in Rubio's home state on March 15, prompting Rubio to suspend his presidential campaign.

$523.75: What the campaign committee for Bush, who helped raise tens of millions of dollars over the years for his nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education, still owedSouhegan High School in Amherst, New Hampshire, as of Feb. 29. The debt is related to a “facility rental” — likely, a campaign event he conducted at the school on Jan. 16.

$200: The amount of money former presidential candidate and ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s Democracy for America committee recently paid for “office supplies” — at Toys R Us.

67: Roughly, the percentage of money Sanders had raised this election cycle from people giving $200 or less to this campaign.

$10: What U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s defunct presidential campaign says it raised on Feb. 6 from a newspaper reporter in Indiana.

Michael Beckel and Chris Zubak-Skees contributed to this report

Donald Trump-fueled tumult in the Republican presidential race is prompting some major donors to abandon the field for now and instead funnel resources into downballot races.

Some key political groups dedicated to promoting Republican congressional candidates say they’re seeing interest from donors who would otherwise be focused on the presidential race.

Ian Prior, a spokesman for the conservative Senate Leadership Fund super PAC and One Nation, a nonprofit group that also focuses on the Senate, told the Center for Public Integrity in an email that “there have certainly been consistent concerns with the tenor and tone of the Republican nominating process."

Consequently, Prior continued, “the fight to keep the Senate has become one where there has been increased interest, focus, and attention from the donor community.”

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC that may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, has so far reported raising about $13.8 million during the 2015-2016 election cycle. One Nation does not disclose its donors.

Scott Reed, a senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which doesn’t intervene in presidential elections but spent tens of millions of dollars to influence the 2014 midterm congressional elections, said: “While $200 million has been spent supporting GOP Presidential candidates that did not make it to the final three, many big donors are recognizing the importance of keeping the Senate pro-growth — and serving as the final backstop to confirm or reject federal regulators and judges.”

The $200 million refers to contributions given directly to the candidates’ campaigns, leaving out hundreds of millions of dollars given to outside groups supporting those candidates.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t reveal its donors.

So far, donors have funneled more than $520 million collectively into campaigns and outside groups supporting Republican presidential candidates who have now dropped out — and the primaries are far from over.

Only U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Trump remain in the Republican presidential primary, and they’re aggressively courting those who once wrote checks to their opponents. But some GOP megadonors with millions of dollars to spend haven’t selected a new date to the presidential dance. Others are on the arms of their second and third choices.

For instance, members of the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, contributed $5 million to a super PAC supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential bid.

Since Walker withdrew in September, the Ricketts have not thrown substantial support behind another presidential candidate. But since January, members of the Ricketts family have contributed $5 million to an anti-Trump effort, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

In addition, the Ending Spending Action Fund, founded by Joe Ricketts, has continued to spend money on the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire.

Brian Baker, the president of Ending Spending Action Fund, said that “everyone is all over the map,” when it comes to deciding whether to continue contributing to presidential candidates versus down-ballot races.

Another Republican megadonor, billionaire investor Paul Singer, supported U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio until he suspended his campaign earlier this month. Singer is also reportedly boosting anti-Trump efforts; one Rubio fundraiser who attended a meeting of supporters shortly before the Florida primary this month said Singer was outspoken on the subject of Trump, referring to him as a “plague.”

Singer did not respond to questions submitted through his lawyer about his political spending plans and his comments about Trump.

New campaign finance reports filed Sunday show Singer gave $1 million to the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC.

Mica Mosbacher, a fundraiser for Cruz, said his finance operation has long been attempting to woo Republican donors who initially backed other GOP presidential hopefuls.

“We asked folks in, say, the Bush or Rubio camp to consider Cruz as a second, third, fourth choice,” she said in an email. “Money is not drying up for Cruz. His path is still possible.”

“I never support more than one candidate at a time, but I need to be realistic,” said Houston real estate developer Welcome Wilson Sr., who supported former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s bid and now helps to raise money for Cruz.

His son, Welcome Wilson Jr., also started out supporting Perry. Then he backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush— a high school classmate, according to his father. He is now supporting Cruz, as well.

Wilson said his politically inclined associates are still willing to attend presidential fundraisers he’s hosting. Wilson cites what he described as a well-attended fundraising breakfast he recently conducted for Cruz, which featured the senator’s wife, Heidi Cruz.

In contrast, two “bundlers” who raised money for Bush’s campaign and subsequently for Rubio’s effort said some donors in their networks are reluctant to support yet another presidential candidate. This is forcing the bundlers to be judicious as they consider their next move.

Both men asked not to be named, saying they didn’t want Trump, Cruz or Kasich — or other down-ballot candidates, for that matter — nagging them for money.

One campaign bundler said he will likely support Cruz. Another said that for now, he’s taking a break from presidential fundraising — and may look at supporting Senate candidates, instead.

This story was co-published with TIME.

People who fell ill after working in the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex continued to struggle with a federal compensation program beset by confusing rules and incomplete records, according to the latest official assessment of the program.

Congress created the program after it became clear that the country’s nuclear-weapons effort routinely endangered workers’ health in the name of national security. In the nearly 16 years since the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act passed, the program has been the frequent target of criticism — from former workers, survivors, advocates and elected officials who have tried to help people navigate the system.

A new report, released Friday, focuses on 2014 and comes from an ombudsman’s office created by Congress in 2004 to aid the program’s claimants. Every year the office’s staffers summarize the problems brought to their doorstep, and every year those problems are numerous.

“We receive complaints and grievances addressing practically every aspect of the ... claims process,” the report says.

The program has helped tens of thousands of sick workers or their survivors, paying out more than $12 billion in compensation and health care since 2000 for illnesses ranging from cancer to debilitating lung diseases. But advocates who help claimants say it’s often a struggle to get approved, and many never manage it. Problems can also continue afterward, as people seek the medical care they’ve been promised.

A Center for Public Integrity investigation in December detailed some of the key difficulties for ex-workers trying to get accepted into the program, including disputes over the level of their toxic exposures at top-secret facilities where records of those exposures — if they existed at all — were sometimes lost, destroyed or falsified. That issue was covered in the ombudsman’s report.

“Since Congress recognized that there were unmonitored exposures and other continuing problems, claimants question the deference that ought to be accorded to the records maintained by these facilities,” the report says.

The program is run by the U.S. Department of Labor, which declined to comment on the report because it is preparing a formal response, due to Congress July 6. But earlier, the agency’s Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation said it follows the rules and noted that the program was never intended to compensate all the ex-workers who fell ill. Approvals are higher than what was initially expected, the division says.

“We have to evaluate the likelihood that this cancer is due to work or not due to work, and … there [are] always going to be people that are going to get an answer that they don’t want to hear,” John Vance, the program’s policy chief, said last year. “It’s the perfect intersection of politics, science, human emotion and all of that. It’s a difficult, difficult situation.”

Among the other issues the report highlighted:

• Hard-to-find information. The Labor Department issues bulletins, circulars and other documents that explain aspects of the program and dictate policy. The ombudsman’s office heard from people who relied on the information in one document, “only to later discover that their claim is impacted by a relevant discussion of the same issue found in another document.” They found it “particularly frustrating” that the document they relied on made no mention of the other one.
• Inconsistencies. The program says in writing that scientific studies about the effects of a substance on animals can be helpful in some cases, given that certain “chemicals used in the production of nuclear weapons are so unique and exotic that no broad-based studies of their health effects exist.” But a man who submitted animal-exposure evidence told the ombudsman’s office that program officers denied his claim, eventually explaining that “we generally do not recognize data obtained from animal studies.”
• Lack of assistance. Claimants told the office that no one at the agency explained to them that, for instance, they can look at an online database of exposure information by facility and job to help them pull together the evidence they need. Claimants also said program information “is sometimes worded using legal, scientific, and/or medical terminology that is difficult to understand.”
• Post-approval problems. The ombudsman received calls from people with approved claims who ran into issues with their medical care. For instance, “we were made aware of instances where oxygen providers terminated service to claimants” because of Labor Department billing issues. Some doctors also refused to continue providing services “because they felt that this program required too much paperwork.”

Terrie Barrie, a founding member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, whose husband worked at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado, called the report “an honest and accurate account of the problems the claimants encounter with the program.” She was particularly glad to see it note that the law requires the Labor Department to help people with their claims.

“It is incongruent for [the department]  to require the claimants to provide evidence for each and every step of the claims process and not provide that evidence they have in their possession to the claimants,” Barrie wrote in an email. “This program ... is supposed to be claimant-friendly and non-adversarial.”

This story was reported by Sarah Barr for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

JONESBORO, Georgia — Leandra Phommavongsay began his speech to the dozen or so teenagers gathered in the back of a Clayton County courtroom by recounting his recent travels.

He had been to California, and before that to Florida and to Texas, all places he hadn’t ever expected to go when he was growing up in small-town Georgia, south of Atlanta.

“I just came from San Francisco. I’m not sure you’ve ever seen San Francisco. But San Francisco is beautiful,” he said.

He had once been like them, Phommavongsay told the teens sitting in two rows, a few parents scattered among them. He hung out with the wrong crowd, and got into trouble with the cops for petty, and sometimes not so petty, offenses.

They could go to San Francisco, too, the way he had for a job detailing cars. But only if they made the right choices during their time in the Second Chance Court program, a community-based diversion program that seeks to keep teenagers out of long-term lockup.

“Grow, man. Think, man. Forget the weed. Forget those bums on the block,” he said. He’s now 21.

He grinned at them. “Go to Miami and get crazy on the beach.”

Phommavongsay landed in Second Chance five years ago after charges that included robbery and aggravated assault. The program has a long list of requirements, including strict GPS monitoring, regular school attendance, participation in programs such as drug treatment or family therapy and meetings with court officials.

He completed the Second Chance program, went to cosmetology school and works in a print shop. He thinks he would like to open his own business someday.

Without the program, he says his life would look much different: “I’d be dead or in prison.”

Second Chance Court is the kind of program counties across Georgia have deployed as part of an ongoing juvenile justice reform effort than began in 2013. Like states across the country, Georgia wants to keep teens out of prison and in their communities, with better outcomes for families, public safety and the state’s bottom line.

The Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature passed the reforms unanimously in 2013, shortly after making major changes to the criminal justice system. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, a former juvenile court judge, has championed the changes.

The Georgia reforms, rooted in an overhaul of the juvenile justice code, included a move away from locking up status offenders and the creation of a statewide database of juvenile justice referrals and results. The state also launched the Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program to fund evidence-based programs in the counties that take their cues from programs like Second Chance Court.

Since 2013, the number of youth in secure confinement has dropped by 17 percent and youth awaiting placement has decreased by 51 percent.

Georgia’s reforms hit many of the marks for reforms rooted in evidence about what works, said Mark Lipsey, director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. Lipsey has helped the state, and many others, evaluate how well programs are working.

Lipsey pointed to the state’s decision to make the reforms in the statute, emphasize evidence-based practices and assemble strong leadership teams as signs of a very strong effort.

“I think what’s going on there is very much state of the art and quite remarkable,” he said.

Budget proposal

When lawmakers were considering the reforms three years ago, researchers at the Pew Charitable Trust said the state could save $85 million during the next five years, largely from avoiding the costs of building two new secure facilities.

Now, as the number of youth in detention facilities come down, the state has the potential to take money they would have spent on running the facilities and put the funding into additional community programming, said Joe Vignati, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice.

The latest budget proposal from Gov. Deal calls for closing one long-term youth detention facility and moving more than $5 million into community-based alternatives. For example, the budget proposal includes $2.7 million for 40 “step-down” slots that help move kids from secure detention to residential facilities.

The code overhaul is what allowed for the slots, but the money wasn’t there in the first few years for the department to make use of them. Now they can as the savings from reform become tangible.

“We’re basically taking all those funds and moving them from secure facilities into the communities. That’s a big shift,” Vignati said.

The costs of long-term and short-term lock-up still make up more than 60 percent of the state Department of Juvenile Justice’s budget, but the costs are growing more slowly than community services in the governor’s most recent proposal.

From fiscal year 2014 to the fiscal year 2017 proposal, funding for community services grew 17 percent, from $82 million to $95 million in a budget of $334 million. Meanwhile, funding for secure commitment grew 11 percent, from $85 million to $95 million and secure detention grew 12 percent from $107 million to $120 million.

Vignati said the costs of long-term and short-term confinement should continue to come down — and the savings redirected to community programs — as the state gets a handle on just how low the number of juvenile offenders they house can go.

But even as fewer beds are used, the costs of running the existing facilities won’t go away. They require staffing, heating and maintenance. Additional costs also could come from the need to update facilities built decades ago and to ensure they’re equipped to handle the highest-risk teenagers, who aren’t placed in community services, said Vignati.

“We’re going to get tougher kids, they’re going to be more resistant to treatment so it requires more intensive services,” he said.

The state also has steadily increased the amount of funding dedicated to Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program, from $6 million in the fiscal year 2014 budget to $8.8 million in fiscal year 2016. In the participating counties, 1,666 youth had access to evidence-based programming in the second year of the program, up from 1,122 in the first. The programs all are ranked “effective” or “promising” on a federal registry  to reduce criminogenic behaviors in juveniles and the counties have chosen programs rooted in individual, family or group therapy.

Overall, the counties saw out-of-home placements drop 54 percent in fiscal year 2015, compared with a 2012 baseline.

Steve Teske, the Clayton County juvenile judge who started Second Chance Court and has helped lead the charge for reform statewide, said the grants have been instrumental in his county.

The Second Chance program already was underway and showing significant decreases in secure commitment when the incentive program began.

However, the grant allowed the county to target the needs of youth who still were being committed, often for family dysfunction, Teske said. During fiscal year 2015, out-of-home placements dropped 63 percent in the county.

Mark Ferrante, a senior policy analyst at the Council on State Government’s Justice Center, said Georgia also has been aggressive about pursuing federal funding to support its work.

“They’re very thoughtful and proactive about applying for grants,” he said.

Next wave of reforms

As Georgia enters its third year of reforms, Vignati said the state has shown how to be smarter and more creative about juvenile justice. The key now is to build on the state’s progress.

“We have to keep our eye on what we set out to do and measure the changes and adjust the course as needed,” he said.

The Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform, which is charged with making recommendations  to improve both the criminal and juvenile justice systems, called for the next wave of juvenile reforms to focus on schools in its latest annual report.

Schools are one of the largest sources of referrals for the juvenile justice system. The proposed reforms aim to clarify the roles of schools and law enforcement on campuses.

A student who shouts a swear word should be disciplined at school, not accused of disorderly conduct and sent to the juvenile justice system, said Teske, who is a member of the council. Similarly, a schoolyard fight shouldn’t automatically bring assault charges.

“The overall objective is to stop criminalizing kids for what is typical adolescent behavior,” he said.

The report recommended that schools be required to develop and use a system of progressive discipline before a juvenile complaint is filed and that school systems enter into model agreements with law enforcement that clearly delineate how student behaviors will be addressed. The council also recommended measures to improve the procedural fairness of school disciplinary proceedings.

The report also calls for the state to restrict secure detention for anyone age 13 or younger, unless they are charged with a serious crime such as murder. Since the reform, the state has seen a spike in the number of younger children held in secure detention.

“By expanding the detention of younger children and exposing such youth to the trauma correlated with detention, Georgia, is, in effect, voiding the beneficial effects of juvenile reform for this most vulnerable population,” the council said.

The new policies that direct juveniles into community-based programs largely have affected teenagers ages 15 and older because they’re more likely to commit serious crimes than younger children. That has created a vacuum that has unintentionally sucked younger children into the system, said Melissa Carter, executive director of the Barton Child Law & Policy Center at the Emory University School of Law.

Carter said the state’s commitment to reform means that each round of policy recommendations can jump-start valuable conversations about what should happen next.

For example, a discussion of how the youngest adolescents in Georgia should be treated in the justice system could re-energize a debate about whether to raise the age for when teenagers are automatically treated as adults. Georgia is one of only a few states that treats teenagers as adults beginning at age 17, rather than 18.

Or, when policymakers consider the importance of restoring youth to their communities, it can prompt ideas about how to reintegrate youth who are serving long sentences, Carter said.

“I feel like we’re on solid footing. With every step forward, we start thinking about the next step,” she said.

Phommavongsay said he’s confident he can move forward as well.

He still makes mistakes, the kinds of regular growing-up moments he says feel like bumping his head, but he’s stayed out of trouble — a fact he credits in large part to Second Chance. He intends to keep it that way.

“I’ve come too far. I’ve learned too much,” he said.

A joint investigation of lawmakers’ finances by the Center for Public Integrity and The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C. has won the South Carolina Press Association prize for investigative reporting.

The award recognizes The Capitol Gains project, which detailed how state elected officials and candidates have been able to profit from public office and use nearly $100 million since 2009 in campaign cash, gifts and government reimbursements to hire their own companies, buy club memberships and even purchase a used BMW.

The Center for Public Integrity and The Post and Courier analyzed more than 100,000 expenses, gifts, travel items and reimbursements, creating a searchable database of more than 700 candidates for state office to show how they spent the money.

Other stories in the series showed that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley received more than $300,000 worth of free football tickets during her first four years as governor and revealed how part-time state lawmakers receive far more than in compensation than their $10,400 in base pay.  

The project was additionally named as a finalist for the association’s Judson Chapman Award, which honors work that addresses community concerns. The Capitol Gains series was also a finalist for the Scripps Howard Award for Community Journalism.

Congratulations to all of the winners.