A new super PAC established by a former Federal Election Commission chairman appears poised to enter New Hampshire’s political fray, where three Democratic incumbents in Congress are seeking re-election.

Known as “New Hampshire PAC to Save America,” the super PAC was registered by David Mason, a Republican who served on the FEC from 1998 to 2008 and now works as the senior vice president of compliance services at the Washington, D.C.-based political technology firm Aristotle.

Beyond its intent to “raise funds in unlimited amounts,” the new super PAC’s mission, at the moment, is unclear.

“We’re going to file what we’re required to disclose when we’re required to disclose it,” Mason told the Center for Public Integrity. “No public announcements.”

While Mason, the super PAC's treasurer, is the only person named in New Hampshire PAC to Save America’s registration filing, the group also lists an address in Concord, N.H., that matches that of the law firm Cleveland, Waters and Bass. A message left with the firm was not immediately returned.

Mason himself serves as the treasurer of one other federal super PAC, according to FEC records— a conservative-leaning group known as “Champions for Change.”

In 2012, the Champions for Change super PAC raised $127,500, all of which came from a limited liability company connected to controversial businessman and race car driver Scott Tucker.

This year in New Hampshire, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is fighting for a second term in one of the nation’s more high-profile Senate races.

Republican Scott Brown, who previously served in the U.S. Senate representing Massachusetts, last month launched a Senate campaign in the Granite State. Also seeking the GOP Senate nomination are former state Sen. Jim Rubens, former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith and conservative activist Karen Testerman.

Big-money groups such as the pro-GOP Crossroads GPS and the pro-Democratic Senate Majority PAC have already made expenditures in the Senate contest.

And Americans for Prosperity, the politically active nonprofit supported by the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has also aired ads in the Senate race, as well as the state’s two U.S. House contests.

In those House races, Democratic Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Ann McLane Kuster are running for re-election.

In one GOP House primary campaign, a super PAC called “New Hampshire Priorities” has supported Republican Dan Inniss, dean of the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire, against former Rep. Frank Guinta. The winner of that race will run against Shea-Porter.

Through the end of March, the New Hampshire Priorities super PAC raised $174,000, all of it from businessman Peter T. Paul.

Meanwhile, Republican state Reps. Marilinda Garcia and Gary Lambert are vying for the GOP nomination to run against Kuster.

A secretive nonprofit connected to a pair of conservative Montana state senators, which spent heavily during the state’s contested 2012 Supreme Court race, raised more than $900,000 in 2012, according to a tax filing obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

Five unnamed donors accounted for 70 percent of the Montana Growth Network’s receipts, with the largest contribution ringing in at $200,000.

Complaints filed with Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices argue the Montana Growth Network should have registered as a political committee and disclosed its donors in 2012. But because the group operates as a “social welfare” nonprofit under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code, its donors remain secret.

The group’s leaders include Republican state Sens. Jason Priest and Ed Walker, according to tax records, with Priest listed as the group's executive director, president and treasurer.

In February, Priest was arrested and charged with assaulting his estranged wife, their four-year-old daughter and his wife’s boyfriend. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and a trial has been set for later this summer.

In an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, Priest lambasted the state’s political practices commission as a “kangaroo court” and maintained the Montana Growth Network's messaging was not designed to influence elections.

“There are different vehicles for different things,” Priest said.

“You don’t buy a pick-up truck to commute to work if you live in San Diego,” he continued. “If you do issue advocacy, you set up a 501(c)(4).”

The group aims to “make Montana more business friendly,” according to an archived version of its now-defunct website.

Walker, who, like Priest, declined to identify the nonprofit’s funders, said the Montana Growth Network’s biggest achievement in 2012 was “educating Montanans about the activist nature of the court.”

Ahead of a three-way, nonpartisan primary in 2012, the Montana Growth Network reported spending about $42,000 on mailers that encouraged voters to support Laurie McKinnon, a district judge widely viewed as the most conservative candidate, as the Center for Public Integrity previously reported.

After McKinnon and attorney Ed Sheehy advanced to the November general election, the Montana Growth Network blasted Sheehy as an “activist” in mailings and radio ads. This spending went unreported with state regulators because it did not explicitly urge people to cast their votes against Sheehy.

Sheehy, who dismissed the Montana Growth Network’s allegations as “misrepresenting” what he did as a public defender, ultimately lost to McKinnon by 12 percentage points. Each candidate’s campaign spent about $40,000.

Even with the new tax filing, it’s still not clear how much money the Montana Growth Network spent on its issue ad blitz during the state Supreme Court contest.

The new tax form shows the group spent nearly $690,000 overall on “mailings and advertising” related to “judicial fairness, energy and the environment, taxes and the economy and healthcare.”

The bulk of that money went to three media consulting firms: Virginia-based SRCP Media and Montana-based Persuasion Innovation and 47 North Communications.

Additionally, the 2012 tax filing shows the Montana Growth Network contributed $50,000 to another conservative social welfare nonprofit: American Tradition Partnership.

American Tradition Partnership — previously known as Western Tradition Partnership — describes itself as “dedicated to fighting environmental extremism.” When it applied for tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, it said under the penalty of perjury that it would not directly or indirectly attempt to influence elections, as Frontline and ProPublica first reported.

But documents found in a Colorado meth house that were later turned over to Montana officials show the group appeared to coordinate with the campaigns of several Colorado and Montana candidates, as Frontline and ProPublica previously reported, leading to allegations that it engaged in illegal electioneering activities.

American Tradition Partnership, which has denied any wrongdoing, also gained notoriety after successfully suing Montana to force the state to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which allowed corporations, unions and special interest groups to expressly advocate for the election or defeat of candidates.

Montana had prohibited corporate electioneering since it passed a law in 1912 that sought to reduce the influence of the “copper kings” and other mining magnates.

Social welfare nonprofits such as the Montana Growth Network and American Tradition Partnership aren’t legally required to publicly disclosure their donors. But grants made by nonprofits to other nonprofits must be disclosed in annual tax returns to the IRS.

Walker, the state senator, declined to speculate on the Montana Growth Network’s plans for the 2014 election cycle.

Priest said the organization would continue to engage in issue advocacy “on our own schedule,” not one “driven by the election cycle.”

After writing a couple weeks back that we need to keep an eye on profit-hungry health insurers to make sure they are not refusing to pay for medically necessary care, I got a flood of emails and tweets from people with stories to share.

That column was published just as Arizona media were reporting that the country’s third largest insurer had told a Phoenix man he would have to pay a $165,000 hospital bill himself.  Many wrote to tell me how outraged they were to hear that had it not been for the media attention, Cliff Faraci, called a good Samaritan for trying to save the life of a 19-year-old girl following a fiery crash in Arizona, might be facing bankruptcy.

I, too, was outraged, but, sadly, not at all shocked. It was just the most recent example of how health insurance bureaucrats insert themselves between patients and their doctors, all too often resulting in potentially life-saving treatment not being provided or patients getting stuck with bills far beyond their ability to pay.

The Arizona Republic wrote about Faraci’s nightmare as part of a series of stories about people who find themselves in financial trouble as a result of the country’s “fragmented health-care system.”

Here’s what happened, in reporter Robert Anglen’s words:

The accident happened in an instant. One second, traffic was moving steadily. The next, metal debris was flying past Cliff Faraci’s windshield as cars skidded across Loop 101 near Scottsdale Road.

Faraci jammed on his brakes. In front of him, a battered red car was stopped sideways and steaming. Inside, a teenage girl, covered in blood, slumped in the driver’s seat. Faraci ran to the car and tried to help her out. The driver and passenger doors were jammed. He talked to the girl, told her everything was going to be OK.

“I noticed smoke coming from under the hood,” Faraci said, describing the March 2013 accident as if it were still unfolding in front of him, the way it will play out inside his head for the rest of his life.

“I reached in through the driver’s window to turn off the ignition … but I could not reach it … I reached further into the car with both arms and upper body … I was halfway through the driver’s window.”

The engine ignited. Faraci, standing in a puddle of gasoline, was enveloped by searing heat and yellow flames. He jerked away, trying to stop the burning. The ruptured gas tank exploded and Faraci watched the girl inside the car die.

Faraci was taken to the burn unit at Maricopa County Medical Center where he was treated over the coming week  for first-, second- and third-degree burns.

Two days after he was discharged, he got a letter from Aetna telling him that the company didn’t believe his injuries were “sufficient to warrant” a weeklong stay in the burn unit.

As Anglen wrote,

Almost overnight, the freeway Good Samaritan had become a victim of a health-care nightmare. His case is an example of what can happen when an insurance company decided to question the administration of care provided by doctors and other medical experts directly involved in the patient’s treatment.

Faraci said he was shocked to be denied coverage. He assumed that because he paid the premiums, his insurance company would be there for him if he ever had an emergency.

Faraci filed an appeal, but Aetna executives wouldn’t budge. They said in their denial letter that Faraci’s coverage extended only to services and supplies that Aetna — not his doctors or hospital staff — deems medically necessary.

Faraci decided to become a squeaky wheel. He hired a lawyer and contacted Channel 12 News.

When Faraci’s second appeal was also denied, his lawyer requested an external review of the case. Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers, which deny millions of claims every year, must have an approved external review process in place to resolve disputes. The reviewers chosen by the parties involved in an appeal must be physicians affiliated with an independent review organization and have training in the area of medicine in question.

In Faraci’s case, requesting the external review and asking Channel 12 to intervene paid off. The independent examiner ruled that Aetna should pay half of Faraci’s hospitalization. Soon after that, Aetna told Channel 12 that Maricopa Medical Center would not bill Faraci for the remaining $82,500.

Anglen wrote that an Aetna spokeswoman said the company was “pleased the matter is resolved,” adding that Faraci would be responsible only for his deductible and co-insurance.

As a former insurance company PR guy who used to deal with reporters when something like this happened, I can assure you that becoming a squeaky wheel can make all the difference.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported on April 24 that Aetna’s medical loss ratio — “the amount of premiums used to pay patient medical costs” — fell to 80.4 percent during the first three months of 2014, down 81.9 percent a year earlier. That helped the company make $665.5 million in profits during the first quarter, an increase of 36 percent over the same period a year ago.  The company seems to be muddling through.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Wisconsin struck a blow in one of America’s most contentious legal battles. Finding that Wisconsin’s new law requiring that citizens show government-issued photo IDs in order to vote was discriminatory and violated the Constitution, Judge Lynn Adelman set off a skirmish that is likely to be fought across nine states that have passed stricter voting rules since the beginning of 2013.

Most of these new rules created tougher ID requirements for casting a ballot, a stricter process for voter registration, or restricted the time period for voting and methods of absentee balloting.

“The disproportionate impact of the photo ID requirement [on racial minorities] results from the interaction of the requirement with the effects of past or present discrimination,” Judge Adelman wrote in her decision on Wisconsin.

The controversy over America’s restrictive voting laws — which supporters describe as necessary to prevent fraud and ensure uniformity among different regions — raised a question that is global in scope. We at ICIJ wanted to know: how restrictive are voting requirements in nations around the world? 

Click through to ICIJ.org to continue reading.

When President Obama met top NATO officials in Brussels on March 26, he publicly expressed renewed optimism that America’s estimated $120 billion effort to reconstruct Afghanistan will leave behind “a stable and secure country that serves the prosperity and the security of the Afghan people.”

A month earlier, however, a group of senior U.S. military officers rendered a much harsher judgment in private about the legacy of the 12-year U.S.-led intervention. The officers concluded in a report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Afghanistan’s ability to serve its citizens’ needs remains directly threatened by a deeply entrenched culture of corruption that not only defied the West’s intervention but grew substantially worse because of it.

The report, written by a division of the Joint Staff assigned to draw lessons for the future, was based on dozens of interviews with government officials and experts — including 11 flag or general military officers — and its judgments were approved by top commanders, according to a spokesman.

Among the conclusions:

• in retrospect, U.S. military forces were unprepared to deal with a country where private profit-making dominated public policymaking;

• early U.S. alliances with Afghani warlords helped solidify a corrupt leadership style and a climate of impunity for those involved;

• Washington made the problem worse by inundating Afghanistan with more cash than it could absorb in legitimate channels to undertake needed reforms;

• American military officers and civilian aid workers alike were unprepared to manage Afghan contractors, resulting in what the report said was “the expenditure of millions of dollars with almost no oversight or alignment with other … [U.S. government] efforts.”

Obama heard some of this bad news directly in an exit briefing a year ago from the outgoing head of the multilateral military force in Afghanistan, Marine Corps Gen. John Allen. According to the report, Allen told the president that corruption — not an incompetent military, not an inadequate police force, and not the Taliban’s sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan, all longstanding U.S. concerns — currently remains “the existential, strategic threat to Afghanistan.”

Allen’s assessment was in some ways unsurprising: The Obama administration is considering an accelerated drawdown of forces there — from a peak of 63,500 in 2012 to as few as 5,000 next year — at least partly due to frustration over the country’s kleptocratic political culture.

Independent experts, congressional panels, and John Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, have all voiced similar criticisms that Washington and its allies failed to combat what is now generally recognized as that war-torn nation’s most intractable and consequential problem.

But the Joint Chiefs of Staff report stands out for two reasons: It makes clear that some senior officers recognize that a major military incursion can be disastrously undermined by an overriding, non-military factor, namely an illicit national economy. And it acknowledges that the U.S. military itself bears much blame for Afghanistan’s enduring mess, due to its poor understanding of Afghan traditions, mismanagement of key reform efforts, and weak oversight of its local partners.

The report displays “a critical awareness and candor often missing from official documents,” says Sopko, the special inspector general.

The depth of the problem should have been clearer, the report suggests, from polls showing that many Afghan citizens believed local officials abused their power and that federal decision-making was itself corrupt. Some citizens viewed the Taliban and its shadowy judicial processes as less prone to the bribery, selective prosecution, and extortion that permeated official government actions.

But international and U.S. forces headquarters were mostly clueless about how to respond, the report suggested. It quoted a complaint from the head of the Defense Contract Management Agency’s efforts in the country that none of the military services “man, train, or equip for countering corruption.” A senior military adviser to the Afghan Interior Ministry said this shortcoming played into contractors’ hands and made those deployed seem like “amateurs confronted with professionals.”

Western response was slow and tepid

Poor training and preparation meant that Western advisers and military officers essentially came late to the party. Little attention was devoted to the corruption challenges until 2009, according to the report, when Gen. Stanley McChrystal assumed command and endorsed a counter-insurgency strategy that recognized the threat posed by “unpunished abuse of power by corrupt officials.”

An array of anti-corruption groups were established that year and in 2010, including four run by the military, two by international partners, one by the Treasury Department, and one by the Afghan government. But they rarely worked together, disagreed on the definition of corruption, and were staffed by officers and experts on rotations so short that Gen. Allen said it felt like “12 one-year wars” instead of a sustained campaign.

“The problem was at the highest level. There never was any direction … to unify efforts — actually the opposite,” a deputy to the U.S. ambassador for the rule of law told Joint Staff interviewers. “It was, in a word, a mess,” the head of one of the anti-corruption groups said, with no single Western authority assuming overarching responsibility for the problem.

As Obama administration officials flirted with taking a more aggressive stance, Afghan president Hamid Karzai became less and less “receptive,” the report said. His government undertook “illusory” reform and slow-rolled Western proposals, the report said. Karzai’s attorney general’s office regarded prosecutions as a way to “extort a bribe,” a U.S. Agency for International Development official said.

Senior Afghans not only resisted implementing reforms, they took countermeasures, a top counter-narcotics adviser told the Joint Staff interviewers. By 2011, “what became clear to a lot of the Afghans, especially the bigwigs, was ‘I need to start moving whatever resources I can out of Afghanistan,’” the adviser said.

Cash payments by U.S. intelligence agencies to Karzai’s office, meant to bolster his cooperation with the West and counter influence from Iran, meanwhile “gave substance to charges of American hypocrisy,” the Joint Staff report said. And as security conditions worsened, military contracts with local transport firms began to look increasingly like a U.S.-fueled protection racket.

In the end, Western forces faced with preserving security or tamping corruption repeatedly chose the former, even though many security victories were short-lived. An effort by Central Command to stop relying on Kam Air, a privately-held airline based in Kabul, due to its alleged involvement in opium smuggling was quickly reversed, according to the report. Western forces helped push out a police chief in Helmand province who was linked to narcotics and killings, then welcomed him back when “the security situation deteriorated,” the report said.

Washington repeatedly refused to condition its aid on strict adherence to anti-corruption targets and deadlines, opting instead — according to Sopko — to disburse funds as quickly as it could.

“We never really understood the problem … We were naïve,” Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, the Western forces’ deputy commander and incoming British Army Chief of Staff, told the interviewers. “We had a role in contributing to corruption, and that was because of the way we spent our money, because of the way we contracted, and because of our logistics system.”

The obvious question is whether the U.S. military — as well as the rest of the government — will heed these lessons, and undertake the systemic reforms the report urges. These include passing legislation linking U.S. aid more directly to foreign anti-corruption efforts, improving training for military service and contracting personnel, and embracing a radical concept at the Pentagon of using “money as a weapon system” in forcing better behavior by aid recipients.

But it’s not yet clear if the Joint Staff’s conclusions will impact only the dwindling U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, or have a larger consequence for the way that Washington functions. Asked for comment on the overall recommendations, the Joint Staff initially asked only a CENTCOM spokesman to reply.

“All recommendations for ISAF-related matters … are currently being staffed for integration into current and future plans and operations. In the meantime … it would be premature to comment on any specific recommendation until ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] is further along with their analysis,” said Col. Patrick Ryder at CENTCOM.

Eventually, however, Air Force Col. Edward W. Thomas, Jr., a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded more broadly that “we are … looking at ways to ensure those recommendations are incorporated across the entire joint force development cycle."

“We have done multiple studies of our operations in Afghanistan,” Thomas wrote in an email. “We have an obligation to ensure those lessons, both good and bad, are correctly learned for the future, and we take that charge very seriously.

Usually, it’s the judge who decides how to handle a kid in court who’s accused of an offense. 

But in eastern Tennessee, a lawsuit filed on April 24 alleges that it was a court bailiff — a sheriff’s deputy — who meted out an instant physical penalty last year in the middle of a juvenile court proceeding. The alleged incident took place in Cocke County, a region near Knoxville that has struggled in recent years with FBI investigations and multiple allegations of law enforcement corruption  and abuse and judicial impropriety. 

Bailiff Jim Huskey is accused in the federal lawsuit of walking across a Cocke County courtroom in April 2013 and allegedly striking a 14-year-old boy in the face after the teen uttered comments the boy’s mother agreed were disrespectful to the presiding judge. The boy, identified as D.W., was in court on a minor misdemeanor charge related to underage alcohol consumption, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Greenville, Tenn.

After the boy entered a plea in court that day, the suit claims, Cocke County Judge John A. Bell “repeatedly badgered” and “threatened D.W. with contempt” if he did not reveal who provided him with alcohol. When the boy refused to disclose information and uttered the disrespectful comments, according to the suit, Huskey crossed the room and hit the boy. The judge ordered D.W. removed, the suit claims, and four deputies allegedly wrestled the boy to the ground and took him out of court.

“The blow to the face was loud enough to be heard throughout the courtroom and left a red mark on D.W.’s face,” according to the complaint. “At no time before bailiff Huskey struck D.W. was D.W. violent or did he pose a threat to anyone.”

The civil-rights complaint is filed against Huskey and the Cocke County Sheriff’s Department. It alleges that the bailiff committed battery and violated D.W.’s constitutional rights by using excessive, unnecessary force. The suit is also claims that the relatively small — and historically troubled — Cocke County Sheriff’s Department has “maintained a policy or practice of encouraging the use of needless force to intimidate citizens.” 

The boy’s mother, Christi Williford, believes a security camera was rolling the day her son was in court and captured the incident. But when Williford spoke in person the next day with a sheriff’s department detective, he refused to give her a copy of the security video, according to the suit. The detective allegedly told Williford that he had heard about the incident, viewed the tape and decided no further action was warranted.  

Williford then asked the Cocke County District Attorney’s office to take action, which it did not, the lawsuit alleges. But because she pursued action against the deputy, Williford claims in the suit, the department retaliated against her son — by accusing the boy of assault.

“The day after Christi Williford filed a criminal complaint against bailiff Huskey for striking her son, she learned that D.W. was charged with assaulting the sheriff’s deputies who removed him from the courtroom,” according to the lawsuit.

A deputy at the Cocke County Sheriff’s Department said the department had no comment on the suit. The deputy, who would not give his name, said that Huskey has found another job and no longer works at the department. Cocke County Attorney Carter Moore did not respond to calls for comment either, but a local radio station reported that Moore said the case has been sent to the county’s “liability carrier.”

 An assistant to Judge Bell — who presides over general sessions and juvenile court — also said that Bell declined to comment on the allegations.

Cocke County Assistant Public Defender Keith Haas told the Center for Public Integrity that another public defender, Brad Davidson, was in court that day defending D.W. “He was a witness to the slap,” Haas said. “He was sitting right there.”

Haas said that Davidson told other public defenders that same day that he saw the bailiff strike the boy, and that a “commotion” broke out, Haas said, and deputies dragged the boy from court. Haas said Davidson also told colleagues he heard a group of deputies at the courthouse subsequently “chuckling and laughing at sticking it on this poor kid.”  

The incident, Haas said, was one reason Davidson decided to run against Bell in the Republican primary vote for judge Tuesday. Since no Democrat is running, the winner will take the bench.

Williford’s suit was not filed against Bell. But it does accuse Bell of doing “nothing to reprimand bailiff Huskey for striking a child in his courtroom without need or provocation.”

Assistant D.A. Brownlow Marsh told the Center that the D.A.’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation. However, he said, it wouldn’t help Williford to complain directly to the D.A. because that office doesn’t pursue prosecution unless a law enforcement agency formally asks the D.A. for action.

Rebecca Ketchie and Robert Arrington, the Kingsport, Tenn. lawyers representing Williford and her son, said that Williford has decided not to comment publicly on the suit. It seeks $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and other relief the court finds appropriate.

In 2011, the Tennessee State Supreme Court upheld a disciplinary 90-day misconduct suspension of Bell that a judicial panel imposed for his handling of a lawsuit and recruiting a friend who was a lawyer to try to persuade the plaintiff in that case to drop his complaint against Bell.  

In 2008, the disciplinary council for the Tennessee Court of the Judiciary accused Bell of misconduct for contracting his brother-in-law’s private probation service business to supervise adults and juveniles convicted in Bell’s court. The company provided services, supervision and mandatory drug testing, for which the convicted were required to pay fees that generated income for Bell’s family members.

The judicial complaint also accused Bell of making improper threats to hold a person in contempt of court in connection with critical remarks that the person allegedly made about the probation arrangement. As a trial began over the allegations surrounding the probation service, the judge reportedly reached an agreement to stop using his brother-in-law’s company. That ended the disciplinary proceeding.  

In 2013, after a string of other scandals, a Cocke County sheriff’s deputy resigned and then pleaded guilty to charges of drug dealing following an FBI investigation. In 2006, a chief deputy pleaded guilty in connection with charges of dealing in stolen goods.

Follow the money: that’s what Center for Public Integrity journalists do every day. So when it comes to our own organization’s funding, we want to be as transparent and ethical as possible. But what does that mean, exactly, as it relates to support for the Center?

We seek to answer this question by broadly sharing a new, board-adopted gift acceptance policy. It outlines how we work with funders, the sources of our contributions and the efficient management of those important funds. It is a guide to how we hope to conduct our business, and it is a tool to evaluate how we’re doing.  

Why should this matter to you?

Investigative journalism, so crucial to a functioning democracy, is priceless — but it isn’t free. Newsrooms are struggling to survive, new streams of funding are critically important, and the public demand for unbiased, yet credible news is at an all-time high. Understanding how your news is produced and funded makes a lot of sense. And if you’re not only a reader but a donor (“thank you!”), you surely care about the way we accept and manage tax deductible gifts.

The fact is, the Center for Public Integrity is funded almost solely by philanthropy. Contributions from our readers and from foundations are the lifeblood of the Center for Public Integrity, and have been for the last 25 years.

In some ways, we are just like other 501(c)(3)s based in the U.S., such as disaster relief organizations, colleges, or food banks. But in other ways, we differ completely. Our purpose is to produce investigative journalism, which means asking hard questions and holding the powerful accountable — so we are obligated to make sure we have our own house in order. To that end, we began a process a year ago of asking ourselves hard questions about accepting and managing contributions. The result: a more comprehensive, formalized gift acceptance policy.

Why now?

No particular issue, no one gift prompted us to create this policy. We have a talented team of development professionals who adhere to the Association for Fundraising Professionals Code of Ethics, and are skilled in the systems and structures most nonprofit organizations use to manage gifts. The Center meets BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s 20 Standards for Charity Accountability, is a Silver-level Guide Star Exchange participant, and has held a Four-Star rating from Charity Navigator for three consecutive years — a distinction received by fewer than 11 percent of rated U.S. charities.

In addition, we wanted to have our own policy that aligned tightly with our mission and made plain our intentions. We also wanted a policy that would withstand the test of time, staff transitions and the evolving sectors of journalism and philanthropyIn a process led by the Center’s Development Department, we spoke with our editorial staff, digital team, senior leadership, Board of Directors and even a funder or two. We talked with other similar organizations. We sought advice from nonprofit and journalism sector leaders and the Center’s counsel.

When in doubt, we went back to the impulse that started the Center for Public Integrity — when Chuck Lewis, a television producer at 60 Minutes, decided to start an investigative news organization that would operate without outside corporate or government influence. Thus, the Center for Public Integrity was born. What are the implications, 25 years later, when more and more people give through donor-advised funds or online crowd-funding? What about the trend of individuals giving anonymously, to avoid unwanted solicitations by mail or phone? How do we reference donations when donors ask that their names not be shared? What are the implications when more of our funds come from international sources? How do we handle gifts that come through non-standard sources, such as through financial advisers?

Ethical issues are characterized by two or more competing perspectives, both of which have merit. We want to produce fact-based, trustworthy and accountable journalism. We want to be transparent about our fundraising. And, in keeping with excellence in fundraising practice, we want to honor the wishes of donors. We’ve tried to strike that balance with this new gift acceptance policy.

There will be moments when we have a gift that challenges us in its terms or its source. When that happens, the Executive Committee of our Board of Directors will help us to determine how best to proceed.

This policy is a living document. As such, it will live on our website. It’s also a dynamic document. We’ll see how it serves you the reader, our donors and our organization as a whole, and we’ll undoubtedly adapt it along the way. Above all, please be aware that we aim to conduct our business and fundraising with as much integrity and transparency as our journalism and nothing less. I welcome your perspective. You can reach me at rheller@publicintegrity.org. 

The ads accuse Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, a candidate for state attorney general, of living a lavish lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense.

Shots of Miller with Mike Tyson and Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend flash across the screen as the narrator highlights more than $60,000 in gifts Miller has accepted from “special interests” since taking office in 2006.

“He lives the life,” the narrator says. “You pay the tab.”

The $500,000 ad campaign is being paid for by a nonprofit from Virginia called the State Government Leadership Foundation. It’s an impressive sum, especially considering the ads ran three months before a primary in which Miller is running unopposed, and for an office that doesn’t normally get so much attention.

Miller’s campaign called on TV stations to pull the ads, challenging them as misleading.

So why is so much money being poured into the race and who is behind it? The biggest underwriter of the group behind the ad is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the affiliated Institute for Legal Reform, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation.

The Chamber isn’t talking, but it’s not hard to figure out why state attorney general races are getting so much of its attention, not just in Nevada, but across the country.

First, the joke is that “AG” stands for “almost governor” in the 43 states where they are elected, as many go on to higher elected office. Spending on these races is an investment in the future. Eight current governors and eight current U.S. senators were previously state attorneys general.

“You want to stop people from getting going,” said James Tierney, director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School and the former attorney general of Maine.

Second, attorneys general are charged with bringing consumer protection lawsuits on behalf of their states that that can mean multibillion-dollar judgments against business interests represented by the Chamber.

And perhaps just as importantly, it’s easier than ever for outside groups to operate thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which knocked aside bans that had existed in 24 states on political spending by corporations and labor unions.

AG races on the radar screen

A national organization called the Republican State Leadership Committee shares the same leadership as the Virginia group that paid for the anti-Miller ads in Nevada and the group counts the Chamber as its biggest supporter.

In 2012, with only 10 seats up for grabs, outside spending groups spent at least $8 million to influence state attorney general races and the top spender was the RSLC, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, state campaign finance filings and Federal Communications Commission records. With 31 states electing an attorney general this year — and nine of those seats open races, with no incumbent — there should be significantly more outside spending.

The RSLC has poured more than $16.6 million in direct contributions and independent expenditures into state attorney general races during the past decade, more than any other group.

And no backer has been more generous than the Chamber. Between 2003 and 2013, the Chamber and its Institute for Legal Reform have donated $15.5 million to the RSLC, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service, three times more than the next largest single donor, the American Justice Partnership.

While the RSLC has also focused on state legislative and other down-ballot races, it’s spent more on attorney general races than any other type of election. That may be due to the fact that the Republican Attorneys General Association was part of the RSLC until they split this year.

With the shift, the RSLC announced it is now planning on increasing its spending in judicial elections. The RSLC declined to discuss with the Center whether it will continue to spend in state attorney general races through its affiliated nonprofit.

Tobacco settlement gets attention

The roots of the Chamber’s interest in attorney general elections can be traced to the massive tobacco settlement of the late 1990s.

“The AGs got the attention of corporate America in a big way,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a member of the executive committee for the RAGA. “It was a wakeup call. These guys can do more damage to you overnight than a legislature can.”

The Chamber made state attorney general elections a major election priority as part of its broader “tort reform” efforts to limit the size of legal settlements.

A particular concern for the Chamber, and the wide assortment of businesses it represents, has been the arrangement used during the tobacco cases and elsewhere by which trial lawyers offer free legal services up front, with the promise of a cut of potential damages down the road.

Such an arrangement netted trial lawyers in the tobacco case more than $13 billion overall.

“Plaintiffs’ lawyers have made a concerted effort to ally themselves with state attorneys general … to continue to pursue speculative but lucrative litigation against a wide range of industries,” reads a section from a 2013 report by the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform on “The Growing State Attorneys General Alliance With Plaintiffs’ Lawyers.”

“Private lawyers have enticed states to bring novel or speculative lawsuits that seek to expand liability rather than enforce existing law,” the report says.

Curtailing such lawsuits was a major impetus for the initial creation of the RAGA in 1999, months after the tobacco settlement was finalized.

When the organization was created, elected Democratic state attorneys general outnumbered their counterparts almost three to one. Currently Democrats hold only a one-seat advantage.

The Democratic Attorneys General Association came into existence three years after the formation of RAGA — the same year RAGA was folded into the RSLC — and while the organizations share many of the same top donors, there are some stark differences in the levels of giving and their overall spending.

The Chamber’s giving to the RSLC, for example, has been more than 100 times greater than its giving to the DAGA from 2003 through 2013.

Tobacco companies, most notably Reynolds American and Altria, have given more than $7.5 million to the RSLC compared to just over $500,000 to the DAGA.

At the same time, trial lawyers have given the DAGA more than $4.5 million in that same time period. That’s $3 million more than they’ve given to the RSLC.

Stealth ads sink candidate

Miller in Nevada isn’t the first candidate to get slammed by a front group backed by the chamber.

Deborah Senn can still remember the morning she first saw an ad sponsored by a group called the Voters Education Committee.

“Who is Deborah Senn looking out for?” a narrator asked, before detailing what the group claimed was a questionable deal Senn made with an insurance company in her former role as the Washington state insurance commissioner.

“I turned on the TV and saw those ads on every single channel,” she said. The committee’s name didn’t ring a bell, and she had no idea who was behind it — the committee hadn’t disclosed its donors to the state.

Senn was running for state attorney general in 2004, and the ad ran less than two weeks before her September primary. The implication that she had a cozy relationship with the insurance industry was ridiculous, she said. Ralph Nader had once praised her as the best insurance commissioner in America, but her lead in the Democratic primary shrank.

The ad had caught her campaign completely by surprise. The Voter Education Committee was compelled by the state to reveal that it had been backed by the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform. She blames the ads, and similar ones that aired later, as a decisive factor in her election night loss to Republican Rob McKenna.

“I had a great career in politics, and I got sidelined,” she said.

She was so troubled by the race, and the growing role of money in politics, that she wrote and performed a one-woman play about her experience four years after the race.

Someone who saw the show asked why she hadn’t put up ads in response to the Chamber’s attack, she recalled.

“Well, I didn’t have a million dollars,” she said. “People don’t understand the magnitude of the money. That is the only reason I’m not in office today, it’s just about money.”

Another Chamber front group?

Finding out who is behind negative ad campaigns can be a laborious process.

In Texas’ 2002 state attorney general race, a group called the “Law Enforcement Alliance of America” helped torpedo Democrat Kirk Watson’s chances. Watson filed suit to force the group to reveal its funders.

Watson, now a state senator, still doesn’t have an answer.

But notes from a 2001 LEAA meeting obtained by the Center show that the Chamber provided support for LEAA ads in the 2001 Virginia attorney general race attacking Democrat A. Donald McEachin, who ultimately lost to Republican Jerry Kilgore.

The LEAA, which has also been backed by the National Rifle Association, was also active in 2002 state attorneys general races in Illinois and Kansas. It’s unknown whether the Chamber supported the LEAA’s spending in those races. Both the Chamber and the LEAA declined to respond to numerous phone calls and emails from the Center.

In Texas, Watson’s lawyers are hopeful they’ll have an answer soon to who was behind the 2002 ads. Meanwhile, his opponent in that race, Greg Abbott, is the current Republican nominee for governor.

Rising star

For Miller, the candidate from Nevada, his inclusion last year on a “top 10” list of rising political stars by The Washington Post’s“The Fix” blog, might explain the early interest in his race. Also on the list: four state attorneys general.

Miller’s campaign has called on TV stations to pull the early attack ad, saying that its claims about Miller’s lavish lifestyle are misleading. The information about Miller’s brushes with celebrities are drawn from his personal financial disclosures, but none of the events cited were paid for with public funds.

At the same time, the lawyer for a pro-Democratic PAC in the state has filed a complaint calling on the RSLC-affiliated nonprofit to disclose its donors.

Miller has brought similar complaints against several political nonprofits, including Americans for Prosperity, affiliated with the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, so he’s not surprised that he has himself become the target of spending by a dark money group.

But while he has no idea who’s behind the ad, he’s unequivocal in his assessment of what they’re trying to accomplish.

“This is a case where an out-of-state group is trying to buy the Nevada attorney general race,” he said.

Alan Suderman contributed to the reporting for this story.

Hard-line conservatives have become Democrats’ unwitting allies in the battle to control Congress.

Conservative groups have together spent nearly $3 attacking Republican candidates for every $1 spent slamming Democrats, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal independent expenditure disclosures.

In all, from Jan. 1 through Tuesday, identifiably conservative political action committees, super PACs and nonprofit groups have spent about $10 million advocating for the defeat of Republican congressional candidates in advertisements and other communications.

Identifiably liberal groups, meanwhile, have spent next to nothing attacking their own, instead spending millions of dollars either bashing Republican hopefuls or gushing about fellow Democrats through television, radio and Internet ads.

Such a dichotomy illustrates the persistent family feud between mainstream Republicans and their tea party-affiliated cousins, many of whom have forced GOP incumbents into bitter — and expensive — primary fights because they believe they’re not conservative enough.

It also provides a curious twist to the initially Republican-benefiting Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, which led to the creation of super PACs and freed politically active nonprofit groups and union organizations to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to spend supporting or opposing political candidates.

During the 2010 midterm elections, conservative organizations hardly spent any money opposing Republican candidates, federal records from the first four months of that year indicate.

Tea party groups of today are unapologetic about their attacks on numerous Republican torchbearers. They say the candidates they support are bona fide conservatives better positioned to defeat Democrats in November’s general election.

Club for Growth Action, the super PAC arm of the Club for Growth, has so far invested $2 million into attacks on several incumbent Republicans, including Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.; Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho; and Shane Osborn, a former Nebraska state treasurer who’s running for U.S. Senate.

Club for Growth Action seeks to involve itself in contests “we feel that our resources can make an impact on the outcome of the race,” spokesman Barney Keller said.

So far, tea party groups are off to a lousy start. Tea party-backed candidates failed Tuesday in a long-shot primary bid to unseat House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and win North Carolina’s U.S. Senate primary. But they still sought to find a silver lining.

“Whether we win or lose, the other side has had to campaign on our issues during these primaries,” said Russ Walker, national political director for FreedomWorks for America, which has this year spent more than $118,000 on advertisements and related expenditures primarily attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Cochran.  “Our ultimate goal is to pass policy that’s lowering taxes and making government smaller.”

Officially, Republican Party officials are floating above the fray, and per usual, not endorsing candidates in primaries.

“Voters in each congressional district know best as to who will make the best general election candidate,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said.

GOP brass are, however, hardly thrilled with their midterm election lot, regardless of their early success repelling tea party challenges.

Three national-level party officials not authorized to speak on behalf of the party said they’re particularly concerned that protracted primary fights — a la Mitt Romney in 2012 — will hurt the party’s ultimate midterm congressional nominees by bleeding them of time and resources that could be better spent skewering Democrats.

One cited Cochran’s June 3 primary fight with state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who’s enjoyed heavy support from groups such as FreedomWorks for America and the Senate Conservatives Fund, as particularly troubling.

Democrats, for their part, are content to let conservatives continue to supply ammunition to its circular firing squad.

“Anytime you have people spending large amounts of money to attack their own, you have a smile on your face,” said Peter Fenn, president of Fenn Communications Group, whose many Democrat-supporting roles include working as a surrogate spokesman for the presidential campaigns of Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama. “You have what I like to call the cuckoo caucus going against hardened conservatives. It shows how extreme the Republican Party has become, and that helps Democrats.”

Said Matt Thornton, spokesman for Democrat-backing super PAC House Majority PAC: “Pass the popcorn. It’s indicative that the Republican Party is at war with itself… the longer they’re spending money against each other, the less time they’re spending against us.”

Mainstream conservative organizations are responding with big money of their own to parry tea party-affiliated groups’ offensives on established Republicans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, has so far spent $1 million on attack ads targeting tea party challengers. This includes $500,000 against Cochran primary challenger McDaniel in Mississippi and $200,000 against attorney Bryan Smith, who’s battling incumbent Rep. Mike Simpson in Idaho.

The U.S. Chamber spent another $300,000 against attorney Woody White, who lost Tuesday to former state Sen. David Rouzer in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District GOP primary.

It’s also spend another $3.6 million through early May on positive ads boosting the images of several GOP candidates, including those such as McConnell, Simpson and U.S. Sen. candidate Thom Tillis in North Carolina who faced, or are facing, competitive primaries.

Chamber officials didn’t respond to inquiries Wednesday. But spokeswoman Blair Latoff Holmes told the Center for Public Integrity recently that the U.S. Chamber would “support free enterprise candidates aggressively and early” and that such support “is predicated on where the candidates stand on a broad range of issues that are important to the business community.”

In the Cochran vs. McDaniel primary, a super PAC formed by Cochran supporters and calling itself Mississippi Conservatives has spent $600,000 on ads pummeling McDaniel.

The YG Network, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit led by a former deputy chief of staff to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., spent $50,000 on phone calls and mailers opposing White in the North Carolina.

Super PAC American Crossroads, founded in part by GOP strategist Karl Rove, has yet to launch negative attacks against Republicans. But it has involved itself in Republican intramurals spending more than $1.8 million on positive ads that mostly urged North Carolina Republicans to vote Tuesday for Tillis over his tea party rivals.

Tillis won handily, and now faces Sen. Kay Hagan, the Democratic incumbent who’s already enjoying significant air cover from the likes of liberal super PAC Senate Majority PAC, which didn’t wait for Tillis to win his primary and has already lit him up with more than $2.4 million in negative ads.

“We saw the need to boost the name ID of the candidates we support while also holding the Democrats accountable for their records,” American Crossroads spokesman Paul Lindsay said of his super PAC’s strategy.

In addition to these "independent expenditures" — messages that overtly promote or oppose federal political candidate — groups such as Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity have sponsored a slew of so-called “issue ads” that mention federal-level politicians but don’t advocate for or against their election or defeat.

Groups sponsoring broadcasted issue ads aren’t required to disclose how much they cost or where they’re appearing, unless they’re run 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election.

While both liberal and conservative groups will eventually fight each other full time, expect the right to remain at odds with itself for some time yet.

Republicans’ contested U.S. Senate primary in Nebraska isn’t until May 13, and the Kentucky primary, featuring McConnell and opponent Matt Bevin, is May 20. The winner will face well-funded Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

And it won’t be until Sept. 9 until the final GOP congressional primaries are conducted.

One, in New Hampshire, features former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. Brown is in no way a tea party favorite. He faces accusations of carpetbagging and must fend off primary challenges from former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., former state Sen. Jim Rubens and conservative activist Karen Testerman. The state of 1.3 million residents is already drawing super PAC interest.

After months of fits and starts, the Federal Election Commission today unanimously ruled that federal political committees may accept a limited amount of Bitcoin to fuel their election efforts.

But the decision left open as many questions as it answered about the digital currency, which in political circles has been particularly popular among candidates and committees with libertarian streaks.

That's because the commission, in voting 6-0, ruled in a relatively narrow fashion on an request from a single political action committee known as Make Your Laws PAC.

So what does the ruling mean both for this one PAC — and all others? A primer:

• The FEC decided that federal political committees may accept $100 worth of Bitcoin per election, per contributor. Committees "should value that contribution based on the market value of bitcoins at the time the contribution is received," the ruling states.
   
• What if Bitcoin skyrockets in value after a political committee accepts its $100 worth? Bully for the committee. Say $100 worth of Bitcoin today steadily appreciated to a point where it was worth $10,000 at the year's end. A political committee would then find itself with — and could use — that $10,000 worth of Bitcoin. The FEC notes that "earnings (or losses) realized upon the sale of any bitcoins ... must be reported like other investment earnings or losses."
   
• There's a catch: While committees may accept Bitcoin in its native form, the Make Your Laws PAC proposed that it could "either sell its bitcoins or disburse bitcoins to purchase goods and services." The FEC agreed that the sale of Bitcoin, and its conversion into dollars before being used, is legal. Liquidated Bitcoin must be deposited, in dollar form, into its campaign account within 10 days. But the FEC could not reach an agreement on whether political committees may directly "purchase goods and services with bitcoins it has received as contributions." In other words, the FEC isn't allowing committees to make purchases with actual Bitcoin. But it isn't prohibiting them from doing so, either.
   
• In a related matter, the FEC ruled that "purchasing goods or services with bitcoins" that a political committee has purchased with campaign cash is "not permissible under Commission regulations."
   
• Federal law states candidate committees may this cycle accept $2,600 per election from individuals. But the FEC's Bitcoin ruling only OKs acceptance of $100 worth of Bitcoin. That's largely because the Make Your Laws PAC only asked to accept $100 per election per person. The FEC's decision is neutral on whether committees may accept up to $2,600 worth of Bitcoin per election per person. In other words: Accept more than $100 per election at your own risk.
   
• How about super PACs, which may raise unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against politicians? Could they accept unlimited amounts of Bitcoin? Again, the FEC's decision did not speak to this issue. It remains an open question.
   
• Must Bitcoin contributions be disclosed publicly? Yes, the FEC ruled, regardless of whether Bitcoin users want to remain anonymous. The Make Your Laws PAC told the FEC that it will "provide a unique linked address by which an individual may make a bitcoin contribution only after that contributor provides his or her name, physical address, and employer, and affirms that the contributed bitcoins are owned by him or her and that the contributor is not a foreign national." The commission said this level of disclosure "adequately addresses" the committee's "obligations to determine the eligibility of its contributors as required" by federal election laws and rules.
   
• One important caveat, however: Since the FEC didn't rule on whether committees are allowed to directly spend Bitcoin on goods and services, it states in its ruling that "the Commission is not addressing how such purchases might be reported." 
   
• Will the FEC consider Bitcoin contributions to be currency? Cash? And in-kind political contribution? That's not crystal clear. Its ruling states that Bitcoin fit into its "anything of value" definition, which includes in-kind contributions. Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub notes the ruling "doesn't take a position on whether they are more like cash or in-kind." But in an interview, Republican Chairman Lee Goodman said, "we're telling the regulated community that we're treating bitcoins like in-kind contributions."
   
• Could the FEC further regulate Bitcoin? Most certainly, although there's no immediate indication that it will. As the commission notes in its ruling, "the analysis or conclusions in this advisory opinion may be affected by subsequent developments in the law, including, but not limited to, statues, regulations, advisory opinions and case law."

Read the FEC's full opinion here.

In the final stretch of the seven-way GOP primary in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, a super PAC called the “Freedom Frontier Action Network” has spent more than $80,000 on mailings touting Republican Alex Mooney.

And new campaign finance reports reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity show that three limited liability companies account for nearlyall of the money the pro-Mooney group raised through late April.

Since super PACs sprang to life following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, corporate super PAC contributions have been relatively rare, with most large donations coming instead from wealthyindividuals, who must disclose their contributions.

But federal law allows companies — including certain nonprofits and LLCs — to donate to super PACs, though they need not identify their officers by name.

Two direct mail fundraising firms that typically work with Republicans account for the bulk of the Freedom Frontier Action Network’s receipts.

Georgia-based Capitol Hill Lists LLC contributed $50,000 to the Freedom Frontier Action Network in April, while Virginia-based HSP Direct LLC gave $25,000, records show.

Meanwhile, a third limited liability company — called Boston Holding Co. LLC — contributed $15,000.

Who’s behind Boston Holding Co. LLC?

It’s not immediately clear from Freedom Frontier’s filing with the Federal Election Commission.

The super PAC lists Boston Holding Co. LLC at a Boston address, but there is no company registered in Massachusetts with that name, according to state business records. Furthermore, an employee at the management office of the building listed on the FEC filing told the Center for Public Integrity that there was no such tenant at that address.

There is, however, a Florida-based limited liability company with the same name — and corporate documents list Leo Govoni, a financial services industry veteran, as its managing member.

In February, the Florida-based Boston Holding Co. LLC contributed $100,000 to American Crossroads, the pro-GOP super PAC co-founded by strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.

Govoni himself donated the legal maximum of $2,600 to Mooney last year, FEC records show.

The Freedom Frontier Action Network was created in 2011, although it was essentially dormant during the 2012 election cycle. It lists its treasurer as J. Scott Bensing, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee who once served as chief of staff to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

Neither Bensign nor Govoni responded to requests for comment, nor did officials at Capitol Hill Lists LLC or HSP Direct LLC.

Mooney, the former chairman of the Maryland GOP, has raised more money than any other candidate — more than $590,000— in his bid to become the GOP nominee in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. There,several Republicans are vying to replace Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who is now running for U.S. Senate.

Also in the mix are pharmacist Ken Reed, who has raised more than $560,000, and former U.S. Trade Rep. Charlotte Lane, who has raised about $350,000. Both Reed and Lane have made six-figure loans to their own campaigns, with Reed self-funding to the tune of $525,000 and Lane loaning her campaign $150,000.

The presumptive Democratic nominee in the race is former state party chairman Nick Casey, who has raised more than $890,000, including $200,000 in personal loans to the campaign and another $100,000 out of his own pocket.

The primary is Tuesday.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — She was barely 15 and scared at the prospect of being in court. She agreed to plead guilty to truancy. But when Judge Tim Irwin announced what he planned to do with her, the girl known as A.G. screamed in disbelief.

Guards forced the sobbing teen out of the Knox County Juvenile Court and clapped shackles on her legs. She had been struggling with crippling anxiety and what she said was relentless bullying at school. Now she was being led through a county juvenile detention center to a cell with a sliver of a window and a concrete slab with a mattress. For truancy.

“I cried all night long,” A.G. said. “It seemed like everyone was against us in court.”

Like tens of thousands of kids every year, A.G. was in court to answer for a non-criminal infraction that only a minor can commit. These infractions are called “status offenses,” and they can include skipping school, running away, underage drinking or smoking or violating curfews. But since status offenses aren’t technically crimes, indigent minors don’t benefit from the constitutional right to the appointment of defense counsel before they plead guilty.

That meant A.G, whose family couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer, was left with no trained defense counsel to argue that there might be justifiable reasons why she was having so much trouble going to school.

It also meant the girl had no counsel to object to her abrupt jailing in April 2008— a jailing that lawyers who reviewed A.G.’s file argue exceeded the court’s statutory power during the teen’s first appearance in court. 

“A.G.’s incarceration immediately following her guilty plea for truancy, a status offense, was illegal under state and federal law,” asserted Dean Rivkin, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who later represented A.G. and oversees the Knoxville campus’ Education Law Practicum. 

Due to litigation that’s pending, Irwin declined repeated request to comment on A.G.’s case or those of other prosecuted truants, some of whom were also jailed.

A.G.’s lockup has never been investigated or reviewed on appeal. But it’s the type of allegation that’s put Tennessee at the center of a national debate over whether status offenders should be guaranteed immediate legal counsel once in court — to ensure minors’ basic rights are respected —and under what conditions they can be incarcerated.

In late February, the nation’s top juvenile justice official quietly asked the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate whether Tennessee status offenders were wrongly deprived of legal counsel.

A.G., who was already in counseling, was so shattered by her shackling and detention that when she was released at 7 a.m. the next day her parents took her to a doctor rather than straight to school, as they said they were ordered to do. Their daughter had become suicidal, and she spent the next week in a psychiatric hospital.

Unraveling the rules

Forty years ago, a federal law — the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act—actually barred states that receive federal juvenile-justice funds from sending status offenders into detention, reflecting the widespread belief that incarcerating these minors exposes them to danger and bad influences. In 1980, though, Congress amended the 1974 federal Act to allow judges a significant federal exception to the lockup ban. It’s called the “valid court order” exception.

The exception permits jailing as a last resort to try to control status offenders once they’ve pleaded guilty and gone on to violate instructions from the court: the valid court order. But if states want federal funds, lockup as a punitive response is only supposed to occur after courts hold multiple formal proceedings, give children time to comply with instructions, consider alternatives to jail — and take great care to ensure kids benefit from full due process rights, including right to appointment of defense counsel for indigent children.

This chance to obtain defense counsel must be afforded before status offenders face formal accusations that they’ve disobeyed valid court orders and could potentially face jailing or removal from parents’ custody.

This same federal law does allow status offenders to be held in detention before trial for less than 24 hours or over a weekend, but only under limited circumstances — such as credible concern that minors might not appear at a scheduled hearing or because police have found kids wandering on streets and no non-jail shelter space is available, or because parents are not immediately available to pick them up.

If states don’t ensure courts follow these requirements to provide legal counsel and limits on detention, they can get their federal delinquency-prevention grants pulled.

In A.G.’s case, “nobody said anything about an attorney,” said A.G.’s mother, who had no idea what her daughter’s rights were before A.G. pleaded guilty and was taken away and put into detention.

The Knox County District Attorney’s office, which prosecutes truants, said children’s privacy rights prohibit staff from commenting on specific cases like A.G.’s.

A continuing controversy in Knox County  

Since late last year, the Center for Public Integrity has been reviewing previously sealed documents that suggest a vigorous pattern of locking up status offenders in Knox County. Families and attorneys here have also alleged that accused truants with diagnosed mental-health and other difficulties were shackled and jailed straight from court.

Children whose only infraction was struggling with a loathing for school were pulled into the criminal-justice system, branded with permanent delinquency records and jailed with kids who had actually committed crimes, parents complained. All this happened without their kids having lawyers, some parents said, and some children dropped out rather than getting back to an education.

Patricia Puritz, executive director of the nonprofit National Juvenile Defender Center in Washington, D.C., said that across the country there is a disturbing shortage of timely legal representation to ensure kids’ rights are respected when they’re pulled into courts for crimes and for status offenses.

“Little people, little justice,” Puritz said.

In Knox County, a behind-the-scenes disagreement over providing access to counsel continues.

Judge Irwin, the county’s elected and sole juvenile court judge, has refused to allow volunteer lawyers to set up a project at the courthouse to offer free counsel to accused truants as they arrive with their parents for hearings, according to Harry Ogden, a Knoxville business attorney who wants to participate in such pro bono representation. 

“This project can be a ‘win-win’ for the court, the school system, the D.A.’s office … and — most of all — at-risk children and youth,” wrote Rivkin, the University of Tennessee law professor, in a December 2012 letter to Judge Irwin.

Irwin did not respond to Rivkin’s plea, and has also declined to speak to the Center about his decision not to endorse the pro bono idea, which remains in limbo.

On the court’s behalf, Knox County Law Director Richard Armstrong sent a letter to the Center for Public Integrity that said: “Children and their families are welcomed and encouraged to retain counsel in all matters brought before the juvenile courts of this state.”

But in March of last year, “know your rights” brochures that the volunteer lawyers had left in the court lobby for families of accused truants were removed, according to an email that Rivkin wrote to Irwin and sent to him via the judge’s administrative assistant.

“Needless to say,” Rivkin wrote, “we were surprised to learn that the brochures had been removed from the rack shortly after they were placed there.” Irwin did not respond to Rivkin’s email and an offer to meet to talk about the brochures.

In February, Rivkin also requested that the Tennessee Supreme Court review an appeal of one truant’s conviction; for the last two years, as part of a series of appeals, Rivkin has also been trying, so far in vain, to convince a state court to issue an opinion that would guarantee faster appointment of defense for accused truants.

Heavy penalties, confusing courts

Whether all kids in courts, including status offenders, should automatically benefit from defense counsel is part of a broader national debate over just what legal rights children have, and whether the country’s confusing patchwork of state and local regulations is enough to ensure children are treated fairly.

The National Juvenile Defender Center is leading an ongoing project that dispatches observers to juvenile courts, so they can recommend, state by state, measures to improve proceedings that are supposed to be primarily rehabilitative.

Puritz said observers have witnessed kids facing serious repercussions with no lawyers to advise them, either because they were not afforded counsel, or because they waived rights with a casual shrug that belied their confusion over what was at stake. In 2006, observers reported that half the kids they saw in Indiana courts waived counsel even though the minors were accused of misdemeanors or felonies.

Agitated parents, Puritz added, sometimes hope a rough court experience will scare a kid straight. But parents often fail to grasp, Puritz said, how pleading guilty even to a status offense can lead to penalties that could bedevil minors for years.

In Texas, teen Elizabeth Diaz spent 18 days in an adult county jail when a judge in Hidalgo County began a campaign in 2009 to collect old truancy fines. The judge issued warrants to arrest minors once they turned 17 and force them to pay — or get thrown in jail.

Elizabeth’s $1,600 in fines had been imposed in a court where she had no counsel. She missed her high school exit exam while jailed, the American Civil Liberties Union said, and was traumatized by harassment in jail. A federal court in 2012 ruled that her detention for failing to pay fines she couldn’t afford was an unconstitutional violation of due process.

In Knox County, A.G. was required to return to court a month after being jailed and hospitalized, but she was still not afforded an attorney. Another five months went by before, on her third court appearance, as was then the practice, A.G. was appointed a public defender, for a fee of $100. After several more months, with A.G. continuing to miss school and warned she’d be jailed again, the family was referred to Rivkin at the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville.

Rivkin was able to put a hold on the teen’s ongoing prosecution and began representing her in negotiations with her school.

A.G.’s case, her lawyers said, illustrates why they believe timely, trained counsel is in the child’s best interest: In spite of increasing difficulties at school, A.G. was not tested for special needs or offered an alternative education plan before her name was turned over for truancy prosecution. Instead, A.G.’s parents said, school staff advised them to ask police to force A.G. out of the house and into the school building. Reluctantly, they followed that advice, but it only deepened the family’s crisis.

School district staff said privacy rules prohibit them from discussing students’ histories. But Melissa Massie, executive director of student support services for the Knox County School District, said that she had not heard of staff advising parents to call police. She did say, though, that she was critical of some past anti-truancy efforts.

In 2010, approximately 137,000 status offenders like A.G. were “petitioned,” or sent into courts nationwide, more than a third for truancy, according to statistics cited by the Vera Institute of Justice. In Tennessee alone in 2012, more than 9,600 minors were taken to court for truancy.

The Education Law Practicum Rivkin supervises offers pro bono help to Knoxville area families seeking special-education services. Like the Vera Institute, Rivkin favors a “counter-narrative” on truancy: When counselors take the time, they find that most chronic truants are struggling with learning disabilities, emotional distress or mental-health illness, bullying, violence or financial or other crises.

Few of these kids or their parents, Rivkin said, can be expected to understand that kids have more options than just pleading guilty in court.

In Tennessee, as in many states, statutes theoretically limit juvenile courts to initially responding to truants who plead guilty by issuing them monetary fines, ordering them to perform community service and putting them on probation, with instructions to follow, and initiating the valid court order process.

States are also expected to conduct audits to monitor how well courts are complying with the limits on putting status offenders in detention. Periodically, federal justice authorities review these state audits to look for patterns of violations. 

Last November, Rivkin wrote to Robert Listenbee, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, suggesting a hard look at the lockups of status offenders in Knox County and the rest of Tennessee. He suspected federal officials — while signing off on grants to the state — were not getting the full story.

In a reply to Rivkin dated Feb. 28 of this year, Listenbee explained that he had asked the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for an “investigation.” 

Failure to provide counsel to kids potentially facing incarceration, Listenbee wrote to Rivkin, if true, “would be of great concern to all of us here … and is not in keeping with the best practices outlined by this office.”

Appealing to higher courts

In 2011, Rivkin began a prolonged and complex attempt to overturn convictions of four students’ truancy convictions, in an attempt to clarify some of these issues.

He first lost before Irwin, then before the state’s Fourth Circuit and then before a state Court of Appeals panel. He submitted a final appeal this year to the Tennessee Supreme Court on behalf of only one plaintiff. As of May, his review request was still pending.

Along the way, the battle has revealed that judges, lawyers and other officers of juvenile courts can have strikingly different interpretations of laws that can end up critical to a child’s life: Do indigent status offenders have a right to appointed counsel before valid court orders are issued to them, or only after they are accused of violating orders and are thus vulnerable to judges legally jailing them or removing them from their parents’ custody? 

In essence, Rivkin has argued that accused truants have the constitutional right of appointment of counsel if not before pleading guilty, then before judges begin imposing court orders that could pave the way to incarceration.

“There may be compelling reasons why the [valid court order] is not warranted due to the juvenile’s mental health condition, due to educational disabilities, due to family circumstances such as lack of transportation, etc.,” Rivkin wrote in his appeal to the Fourth Circuit.

“Without an attorney it is unrealistic to expect a juvenile to make these arguments,” he wrote. Waiting to afford children attorneys until they face imminent potential jailing, Rivkin wrote, is “too little, too late.”

The four original plaintiffs were Knox County students who, like A.G., suffered from significant mental-health stress and had no legal counsel at their side when they pleaded guilty. None could afford to hire attorneys, and some parents said they didn’t dream they would need legal counsel. 

None were jailed the same day they pleaded guilty, but they were threatened with jailing, Rivkin’s appeal alleged, if they violated any of a litany of instructions given to them under the label of probation or, in some cases, valid court orders.

The plaintiffs were admonished not to miss another day of school, unexcused, or face jail. They were also told not to get into any trouble at school, and to pay for and attend court-selected counseling programs. They were also ordered to submit to and pay for random, mandatory drug testing, although none faced drug charges.

One plaintiff, a 13-year-old middle school student identified as T.W., was jailed twice, without the benefit of legal counsel first appointed to represent him, according to the appeal.

On a February 2009 mandatory return to court after pleading guilty, T.W. was jailed overnight directly from court because his school reported he had accumulated more unexcused absences after pleading guilty. During another return to court in January 2010, T.W. was given a drug screen that registered positive for marijuana and he was immediately taken into juvenile detention again for several days.

Some kids Rivkin eventually represented at the Practicum were appointed public defenders during their third visit to court.

But Rivkin argued that there was nothing in T.W. or the other plaintiffs’ files proving in writing, as required by state regulation, that they’d agreed to waive the right to defense. Like other parents, T.W.’s mother, Debbie Jones, submitted an affidavit declaring that her son was not informed of his full rights to counsel. 

As his appeal moved through courts, Rivkin submitted an affidavit signed by Knox County Public Defender Mark Stephens in 2012 noting that the public defender’s office had no record of a single request from the court between 2010 and fall of 2012 to represent a truant before valid court orders were imposed.

In some cases, including T.W.’s, the court assigned truants lawyers known as guardians ad litem, who advise judges on what they believe is best for children, including removal from the home. But these lawyers are distinct from defense counsel. Minors interviewed by the Center said that their guardians ad litem didn’t object to them being jailed or drug tested, and didn’t raise questions about their schools’ responsibility to evaluate them for special needs — issues Rivkin later raised for truants after he began representing them.

Setbacks

In 2011, in his rejection of Rivkin’s appeal, Judge Irwin upheld his own convictions. In a written order, he said that the four truants entered court and after being advised of “the right to remain silent, the right to confront witnesses against them, and the right to an attorney, chose to enter a plea immediately, without the advice of counsel and offered no justification for … excessive absences.”

But, again, while truants in Tennessee must be informed of the rights that Irwin recited, indigent status offenders don’t have the right to the appointment of a defense attorney if they decide not to plead guilty and want a trial. 

After Irwin’s initial ruling, the state of Tennessee and the Knox County D.A.’s office took on the defense of the juvenile court’s practices.

As part of that defense, the state argued that the juvenile court had adhered to proper procedure, including by jailing T.W., and that T.W. had missed a 10-day deadline for appealing his 2009 detention order. The state’s lawyers submitted forms identified as court notes with identical language on them declaring that T.W., during each of his court appearances, was “advised of rights.”

But as Rivkin noted in a filing, the state didn’t challenge the argument that there were no signed waivers in the files of his plaintiffs. 

In 2012, in a second rejection for Rivkin, Judge Bill Swann of the Fourth Circuit found that the juvenile court’s actions were generally proper. He didn’t opine on whether he thought T.W. had been appropriately afforded an opportunity for appointed counsel before he was jailed. But Swann did reject Rivkin’s interpretation of federal law, arguing that existing law requires appointment of counsel only after indigent truants have already violated valid court orders and face possible incarceration.

“The constitutional right to counsel only attaches at that point, and not before,” Swann wrote. But he added that the plaintiffs “laudably urge the advancement of a social policy” that only the state’s legislators could change. 

Last December, when a Court of Appeals panel also rejected Rivkin’s arguments, the judges found that the plaintiffs didn’t meet the burden of new evidence to justify a review of their convictions. 

Knox County District Attorney Special Counsel John Gill told the Center for Public Integrity that the D.A.’s office acknowledges that state and federal law do not permit jailing truants except when valid court orders are issued and kids are informed that they have a right to the appointment of an attorney.

Asked about general allegations that kids were put into detention frequently in recent past years perhaps without understanding their rights, Gill did say: “There were some practices that hadn’t been scrutinized.”

“I’m not saying it hasn’t happened,” Gill said, referring to truants being jailed.

He said that he doesn’t believe that valid court orders are currently being issued in the court to handle truants or that they are being jailed. The D.A.’s interest, he said, is “getting kids back to school, not convictions and not in locking them up.”

How many were shackled, handcuffed and jailed?

In his appeal filings, Rivkin noted that by Knox County’s own count, more than 600 accused truants were called to the juvenile court between 2008 and 2012. But it’s hard to determine who among them was locked up because the court refuses to release detailed detention data that could include reasons for jailing, and whether detention was pre-trial or post-trial and if the kids had counsel.

Without transparent data, Rivkin said, “there is no way of knowing how many children and youth have suffered the consequences our clients did before we began representing them.”

In 2011, Rivkin filed public record act requests asking for lockup information, with juveniles’ names redacted. Irwin declined the request. The judge retained a lawyer for himself, Robert Watson of Knoxville, who has since died. Watson argued in a letter that the records were “confidential and inspection is allowed only if the judge so chooses.”

A Center associate in Tennessee filed a request for redacted juvenile detention records and was told in January that she would have to provide $17,500 in processing costs to Knox County first.

In the meantime, Rivkin was able to obtain, though an unofficial channel, an internal Knox court compilation tracing status offender histories over several years; the document contains no information about whether lawyers were appointed. But it is illuminating nonetheless.

The Center reviewed the compilation, which was submitted to the Fourth Circuit Court. The review found that in 2009 alone more than 50 status offenders identified only by “client” numbers were put into detention. The only charge listed in connection with some lockups was truancy. Most followed a succession of prior appearances and prior detentions for a mix of infractions no greater than truancy, running away, cigarette possession, curfew violation and probation revocation or valid court order violations.

One minor, the records show, appeared in court twice for truancy in 2006 and 2007, and then had probation revoked in 2008 and was put into detention that same year. The same minor was back in court again for tobacco possession in 2008, followed by revocation of probation again and detention again. In 2009, the minor was in court again for revocation of probation and again put into detention.

A young woman who asked to be identified as K.P. also has a history of cycling through court in Knox County during this time frame.

In February 2008, when she was 15, she pleaded guilty to truancy, without the benefit of an attorney. She was arrested twice later that year and put into detention both times. She was accused of disobeying truancy probation, but she had no valid court order in her file, lawyers at the Practicum who later represented her said.

In September 2008, K.P. was held for several days in detention. There was nothing in her file to indicate that she was being held to ensure she would appear for a court hearing that had been scheduled. In December 2008, K.P. was arrested by police again, this time in front of classmates, while she was attending classes at the same school she was accused of failing to attend.

“Defendant was picked up at [redacted] High School on an outstanding petition for revocation of probation. She was transported to Knox County Juvenile Center,” an arrest report says.

In an interview, K.P. said that being put into handcuffs, shackles and prison garb “only made me want to rebel more.”

She said she originally began refusing to go to classes because of sexual harassment — she was attacked on the school bus she rode daily — and because she had developed anxiety and bladder problems at school. She said her complaints were not addressed at school, and she was not offered an alternative learning option.

“These are not all kids with chains hanging off their belts, in gangs,” said attorney Brenda McGee, who is Rivkin’s wife and collaborates with the Education Practicum, and much later represented K.P.

State proposal to ensure truants get counsel fails

In 2012, a fledgling attempt to pass state legislation establishing an immediate right to appointment of counsel for truants quickly died.

The measure failed to get out of a subcommittee after it was estimated the state indigent defense fund would require an additional half a million dollars a year; that sounds modest, said its sponsor, former Sen. Andy Berke, now mayor of Chattanooga. But the increase was too much for some legislators, Berke said, given that less than $2 million out $37 million spent from the fund in 2010 went to juvenile defense.

Because of this failure, Rivkin believes it’s more important than ever to provide pro bono counsel to accused truants.

States’ rules and statutes all vary, and there’s virtually no formal data on the issue, but Rivkin estimates based on his own research that 33 states now ensure a relatively early right to counsel for truants during court proceedings.

In some states, such as Pennsylvania, counsel is automatic and can only be waived after multiple steps to ensure children grasp what they are doing. Pennsylvania was rocked by a scandal a couple of years ago when two juvenile court judges in Wilkes-Barre were found guilty of taking bribes for sending kids who had waived counsel to do time at private detention camps.

Puritz of the National Juvenile Defender Center remains concerned that minors, who are being processed through crowded courts, too frequently waive rights even in states with expansive rights to counsel on paper.

The idea to offer pro bono counsel to accused truants in Knox County is modeled after a similar project in Atlanta. Judge Irwin privately confided to lawyers that he didn’t think accused truants had extensive unmet legal needs, according to Harry Ogden of Knoxville’s prominent Baker Donelson firm, one of those attorneys who tried to personally persuade the judge to support the project.

“He’s a great guy,” Ogden said of the judge, “but when you’re 14 years old, and standing in front of the juvenile judge, then you are probably about as tongue-tied as I was as a third-year law student in front of a judge.”

Unnecessary drug rehab, diagnoses ignored

Irwin, 55, is a 6-foot-7 former University of Tennessee football hero who went on to a more than 14-year-pro-football career, 13 of those years as a tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. He has plenty of fans in Knoxville who admire his strong support for the local Boys and Girls Club, and gestures like passing out stuffed animals to small kids in court who could be taken from parents due to neglect.

But A.G. and other truants said that the judge, who’s been on the bench since 2005, was intimidating. A.G. said that when she returned to court after her stay in a psychiatric hospital, she tried to tell him about a diagnosis she was given of “school phobia” and bipolar disorder.

“He said, ‘I have a phobia, too. It’s a phobia of kids not going to school,’ ” according to A.G.

K.P. and her mother today believe that a hostile court environment forced the family into a decision they regret and believe could have been avoided if they’d had legal counsel.

When K.P. tested positive for marijuana while on truancy probation, her mother feared the court would take her child into state custody and foster care. The mother panicked, and scrambled to find space in a secure drug and behavior rehab facility — for nine months — even though she didn’t believe K.P. required such treatment. The move satisfied the court, K.P.’s mother said, but “nearly tore us apart.”

“They walked all over us because we didn’t have a representative,” said K.P.’s mom.

K.P. said, “I lost a year of my life. Being at that rehab center didn’t help at all. It was awful. I felt like I didn’t belong there.”

Debbie Jones, T.W.’s mom and a daycare worker, has stuck with Rivkin’s appeal because she feels the court’s treatment of her son made his problems worse.

Jones told the Center that T.W. loved school as a young boy. “I couldn’t pay him to stay home when he was sick,” she said. But at 13, he became reclusive, and struggled with classroom learning. He pretended to board his school bus and hid out instead of going to classes.

“He said he felt smothered at school,” Jones said.

For all the punitive treatment he received, T.W. never graduated and now he’s too old to be prosecuted. Rivkin is looking for a suitable adult school for T.W., whose phobias make it difficult for him to sit among large groups.

John Gill, the D.A.’s special counsel, said that office has been working more diligently with educators and social workers to address roots of truancy and avoid putting kids into court.

About 80 percent of initial truancy complaints the D.A. gets are resolved now, he said, after families attend the mass meetings warning them to straighten out problems. New petitions — not including ongoing petitions — to prosecute these kids declined to 65 in 2012 compared to 76 in 2011.

Knox County Assistant Public Defender Christina Kleiser said the court’s reaction to truancy seems to have softened. But not long ago, when police were referring to truancy as a “gateway crime,” Kleiser said many truants were getting locked up over weekends to show toughness.

Massie, who leads the school district’s student support services, admits to inconsistent intervention in the past to help struggling students who were frequently absent. Educators, she said, are now required to follow an intervention checklist and convene meetings more promptly with parents so specialists can evaluate students and plan targeted support.

“I think the truancy program is much better than it was before,” she said.

But she said that by statute, the district is still required to provide the D.A.’s office with names of students when they reach more than 10 unexcused absences.

Although his pro bono services remain little known, Rivkin said, two parents did contact him this year complaining that children with emotional problems were threatened at school with jailing if they missed more school. Last fall, Rivkin also met, by chance, Carla Staley, a mom who received a warning letter from the D.A. accusing her son Lowell, 13, who has cerebral palsy, with excessive absences that could land them in court.   

National trends, federal teeth

Knox County isn’t the only region where truancy has galvanized community crackdowns.

Communities want to increase graduation rates, boost collection of attendance-based funding schools lose when kids are absent, and keep kids off the streets. But aggressive campaigns involving prosecution are attracting scrutiny, especially when minors are not afforded counsel.

In Washington state, another lawsuit over truants’ right to counsel led — briefly — to expansion of that right. In the state’s Bellevue School District, a 13-year-old girl, a Bosnian refugee, appeared at an initial truancy hearing in 2006 with no counsel and signed a promise to attend school or face penalties ranging from community service to “house arrest, work crew and possibly detention,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The girl was appointed an attorney only when found in contempt because her absences continued and she then faced imminent punishment.

Asked to weigh in, that state’s Courts of Appeals found that all accused truants had a constitutional right to counsel from the onset of hearings that could lead to penalties. The Washington State Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2011, favoring the state’s argument that truancy statutes protect a child’s right to education, so no counsel is initially required.

Last December, the board of trustees of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges took another approach by urging Congress to eliminate the valid court order exception as part of a long-overdue reauthorization of the 1974 federal juvenile justice act. Back in 1980, it was this same judges’ group that urged Congress to include the valid court order exception.

In 2009, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., proposed eliminating this exception in the reauthorization of the act — which Congress has still failed to do. And in March of this year, Rep. Tony Cardenas, Democrat from California’s San Fernando Valley, also introduced legislation to get rid of the valid court order.

Federal official Listenbee, a former defense attorney, is also starting to speak out more in his new role as the nation’s top juvenile-justice official.

In a speech he gave last August, he warned that detention should not be taken lightly. “Research has … shown,” Listenbee said, “that the minute a youth sets foot in detention or lock-up, he or she has a 50 percent chance of entering the criminal justice system as an adult.”

In March, Listenbee responded to Center for Public Integrity’s inquiries about when his office believes status offenders’ right to appointment of counsel begins.

Language in the federal regulations does not specifically address whether judges must afford appointment of counsel to kids before they are issued valid court orders, Listenbee acknowledged. But he believes that this is the intent. He also said he doesn’t believe states can claim they’re following the rules unless they ensure that courts provide counsel before valid court orders are meted out.

“Attorneys should be appointed in advance so they can have an opportunity to meet with their clients and properly prepare for the hearings,” Listenbee said. “We make this clear in our training [for state officials] and do our best to emphasize this expectation in communicating with states around compliance matters.”

In January, auditors on a visit from Listenbee’s office found that Tennessee must “prioritize training and technical assistance” to ensure respect for due process and the valid court order process. But auditors only examined 2012 data.

As for A.G. and K.P., they’re both 20 now. It was only last summer, after both young women turned 19, that Rivkin and McGee were legally able to request that Irwin expunge delinquency records the young women said they didn’t even know the judge had given them back when they were teens. The judge granted the requests to expunge the records.

Delinquency records equate status offenders with kids who’ve committed crimes. And they remain on file, if they aren’t expunged. A delinquency record can follow a youth, surfacing to jeopardize job, college and other applications, lawyers warn.

After the Practicum began to represent A.G., more than a year after she was jailed, A.G.’s school finally designed a learning plan that shielded her from crowds of students and bullying and enabled her to graduate in 2011.

Looking back, K.P. said the adults who ultimately helped her finish high school in 2011 were the lawyers at the Practicum, who pushed for the school district to evaluate her for special needs and provide her a special-education plan — after she was twice jailed and put into unnecessary rehab for nine months.

With lawyers’ help, she said, “I actually graduated a year early. So much for being the bad kid.”

The flagship nonprofit of Charles and David Koch’s political network.

A group that’s been called “a secretly funded arm” of New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez’s re-election campaign.

The nation’s largest GOP organization devoted to gays and lesbians.

What do they have in common?

All received financial support from tobacco giant Reynolds American Inc. in 2013, according to a document released by the company and reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.

The North Carolina-based company donated $4,000 to the Koch-supported Americans for Prosperity last year, the document indicates, while it gave $11,000 to the pro-gay Log Cabin Republicans and $10,000 to New Mexico Competes, a conservative advocacy group whose first executive director was a former deputy cabinet secretary in the Martinez administration.

Reynolds American ranks among a growing number of companies that voluntarily disclose information about their contributions to politically active nonprofits, including “social welfare” organizations registered under Sec. 501(c)(4) of the tax code and trade associations created under Sec. 501(c)(6).

In all, the company contributed at least $550,000 last year to trade associations, such as the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Tobacco Outlets and the Bodega Association of the United States.

Of that sum, about $200,000 was used by the trade groups on lobbying activities or other political expenses that the company cannot deduct on its taxes.

The document also indicates that Reynolds American gave more than $400,000 to other politically active nonprofits last year. The largest was a payment of about $213,000 to a nonprofit called Save Our Stores, a coalition that lobbied against tobacco regulations proposed in 2013 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City.

Other notable Reynolds American payments included $60,000 to a Wisconsin-based nonprofit called the Jobs First Coalition, which has backed Republicans in state-level elections; $50,000 to the Renew North Carolina Foundation, an organization formed by allies of the state’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory; and $50,000 to Keep Texas Working, a pro-business group headed by lobbyist Luke Bellsnyder.

"Contributions are made in line with our business interests," said Reynolds American spokeswoman Jane Seccombe.

On its website, Reynolds American states that it contributes to politically active nonprofits because its products are “sold, taxed and regulated in all 50 U.S. states” and its activities can be affected by “laws and regulations that impact the business climate generally, as well as those that specifically govern the manufacture and sale of tobacco products.”

While most of the social welfare nonprofits listed as beneficiaries of Reynolds American’s financial largesse in 2013 leaned conservative, one group is run by Democrats: the Michigan Quality of Life Fund.

Democratic state Rep. Brandon Dillon serves as the nonprofit’s president, while state Rep. Sam Singh serves as its vice president. The group helps Democrats by hosting trainings, “community forums” and “leadership retreats” for “community leaders, activists and students,” according to federal tax filings.

The Michigan Quality of Life Fund has also received financial support from companies such as Aetna and CVS Caremark, as the Center for Public Integrity has previously reported.

During 2012, Reynolds American donated $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity, which spent heavily against Democrats that year.

This election cycle, the conservative group has continued to assail vulnerable Democrats, including North Carolina’s incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan, who is seeking re-election to a second term this November.

LOS ANGELES — As I wrote in my book, Deadly Spin, the health insurance industry and other special interest groups use a tried-and-true set of tactics to push back against threats to their profitability. I referred to those tactics collectively as “The Playbook on How to Influence Lawmakers and Regulators Through the Manipulation of Public Opinion.”

Seeing what is playing out in California this year, I should have included voters, along with lawmakers and regulators, as among those subject to influence.

Health care reform advocates in California, led by Consumer Watchdog, are supporting a November ballot initiative to give the state insurance department authority to reject proposed rate increases that are deemed to be excessive.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 35 states have given their insurance departments the legal power of prior approval — or disapproval — of proposed health insurance rate changes.

California is not among them, and advocates believe the state’s residents are paying more for their health insurance coverage than necessary. While the Golden State did establish a rate review process in 2011 requiring public disclosure of proposed rate hikes — which the California Public Interest Research Group says has saved residents almost $350 million — lawmakers would not go further and grant the insurance commissioner authority to say “no” to rate hikes. As a result, says CalPIRG, about a million Californians paid higher premiums due to rate hikes state state officials deemed “unreasonable” but couldn’t do anything about.

So you can be certain that California residents are making significant contributions to the big national health insurers’ profitability. And the insurers are spending millions of dollars — and making good use of the The Playbook — to persuade voters that allowing the insurance commissioner to reject unreasonable rate increases would not be in their best interests.

The Los Angeles Timesreported last week that health insurers — led by WellPoint, which owns and operates the state’s eight-million member Anthem Blue Cross company — have so far contributed $25.4 million to an industry campaign aimed at defeating the rate regulation initiative. WellPoint contributed $12.8 million itself, and has been joined by other insurers, including UnitedHealthcare, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield and Health Net.

Published reports show that they have been spending that money almost exactly as prescribed by The Playbook. Here are the highlights:

• “Hire a big and well-connected PR firm … ”

The health insurers have hired at least two firms to craft and disseminate their messaging. Reporters have noted in stories that when they’ve called the health insurers to ask about their campaign, they’ve been referred to Robin Swanson, who served as communications director for California State Assembly Speaker John Perez before hanging out her Swanson Communications shingle.

They also apparently have retained Sacramento-based Redwood Pacific Public Affairs, whose clients include WellPoint. The firm is headed by Rick Claussen, who is also a partner in the Washington-based firm of Goddard Claussen Public Affairs. I know their work from my early years in the insurance industry. It was Goddard Claussen that developed the “Harry and Louise” commercials for health insurers, which are largely credited with turning public opinion against the Clinton health care reform proposal in 1994.

• “Set up and operate a coalition or front group…You can launder your money through your PR firm so that no one has to know you have any association with the front group.”

Health insurers named their front group to fight the ballot initiative “Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs.” And sure enough, it’s operated out of the office of one of its PR firms. On its website, Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs provides its address at 1215 K Street, Suite 2260, in Sacramento, which just happens to be Redwood Pacific’s address.

• “Recruit third parties to list as members of your front group.”

Californians Against Higher Health Costs, despite being funded largely by insurers, claims to be “a coalition of doctors, hospitals, health insurers, and California employers.”

• “Conduct a bogus survey or slice or dice data with the intent of misleading…”

Last week Californians Against Higher Health Care Costs released a study it paid $50,000 to produce that contends the proposed ballot initiative “would disrupt the most comprehensive health reform undertaken since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, almost a half-century ago.” In other words, it might “undercut” Obamacare.

In response, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones told the Los Angeles Times that the report, written by a former insurance company executive who later served as the director of the Massachusetts health insurance exchange during the Romney administration, was flawed and intentionally misleading.

"This consultant's report has been bought by health insurers who are dead set against any public scrutiny that could rein in excessive rate increases," he said.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the campaign for and against giving Jones more authority in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned.

A federal court has scrapped a 2010 decision in an employment discrimination appeal and plans to reopen the case after The Center for Public Integrity uncovered a conflict of interest by one of its judges.

Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Susan Black vacated the original opinion in the case involving Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. last week and ordered it be reconsidered by a new panel of judges.

Black tossed the decision because 11th Circuit Judge Frank Hull bought up to $15,000 worth of stock in Jacobs several months before ruling in favor of the international construction giant, violating court rules.

The rehearing came as a surprise to Lee Winston, who represented Shirley Brown of Huntsville, Ala., more than three years ago in the complaint against the engineering firm. Brown, who is African-American, sued the firm alleging racial and sexual discrimination.

“I’m glad it’s getting a fresh look,” said Winston, who is based in Birmingham, Ala. “Obviously the judge shouldn’t have heard the case.”

The 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The appellate courts are second only to the U.S. Supreme Court in terms of seniority.

Marion F. Walker, the attorney representing Jacobs Engineering, said she has never had a decision vacated for a conflict in her 36 years as a lawyer in the circuit. But she told the Center that she doubts the opinion in this case will change much.

“We felt the record is pretty clear,” she said. “It’s regrettable because it puts other judges to work on something that three judges have already spent a great deal of time on.”

The case is one of 26 cited by the Center in its months-long Juris Imprudence investigation, in which judges had financial interests in a party with a case they heard. Judges cannot own even a single share of stock in companies that come before them.

The Center examined the three most recent years of financial disclosure reports filed by 255 of the 258 judges who sit on the nation’s 13 appellate circuits to determine if judges’ financial ties overlapped with their work on the courts.

The April 28 story showed a lack of accountability in the federal court system. Judges face no formal punishment for breaking theserules.

In response to the Center’s findings, Hull and 15 other judges acknowledged that they should not have sat on the cases. Hull told the Center that her stock ownership slipped through a multi-step screening process meant to prevent conflicts.

The courts formally notified litigants such as Brown about the judges’ conflict of interest, giving them a chance to ask for the cases to be reheard with new judges.

One other case was reopened as a result of the Center’s investigation. Fourth Circuit Judge Allyson Duncan owned General Electric Co. stock yet ruled on a 2010 case involving the company. A new panel of judges, without Duncan, reached the same conclusion as the original panel last month.

In a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, the parties opted not to pursue a rehearing despite a conflict.

But many of the other cases remain in limbo.

Reity O'Brien and Chris Young contributed to this report.

For journalists and researchers pursuing cross-border and global investigations, access to information on companies is a basic need, but one that is not always easy to fulfill.

Unsurprisingly, different jurisdictions have substantially different rules, methods, and levels of public availability of corporate data.

But what may be surprising is that countries like China and Russia provide better access to corporate information than the United States and Canada, according to a new report.

The Open Data Compass report (and website) was released earlier this month by the UK-based Arachnys Information Services. The report analyzed and ranked 215 countries and territories for availability of corporate registrations and ownership, accessibility of litigation information and size of the news media industry. The three metrics derived from the Arachnys methodology are combined for an overall score.

Open and closed books

At #215, the Arachnys Open Data Compass reveals that Turks and Caicos“live up to their reputation as an opaque and high-profile tax haven, with a total lack of corporate and litigation information.”

And who is #1? New Zealand. “Full court records are available for almost every court and detailed corporate records are searchable and thorough,” the Arachnys Open Data Compass states. Rounding out the top 10 are the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Croatia, Netherlands, Finland, Estonia and Hong Kong.

The United States comes in at number 26 on the list, while Canada is 70th, a long way behind Albania (ranked 11), China (20), Venezuela (21), and Russia (23).

Read more on the report on icij.org.

The campaign coffer of Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., is steadily filling with invisible money.

As of Monday night, Polis had received $1,500 in Bitcoin that 39 donors together contributed to his campaign since the Federal Election Commission on Thursday allowed political candidates to accept them in limited amounts, campaign manager Lisa Kaufmann confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity.

His website homepage now shouts in bold red letters: "Now Accepting Bitcoins!"

Polis became the first federal official to accept Bitcoin after the FEC's less-than-crystal-clear decision, which, in part, permits candidates and political committees to accept up to $100 in Bitcoin from an individual per election. It did not rule one way or another on whether candidates and committees may accept the Bitcoin equivalent of the $2,600-per-election federal donation limit for individuals.

Polis' Bitcoin contributions could be a boon or bust for him. That's because the Bitcoin market is notoriously volatile.

Consider that in late 2011, a single bitcoin traded for about $2. By late 2013, its value exceeded $1,100. Today, a bitcoin goes for about $435.

Say, a month or year from now, the Bitcoin market crashes.

The value of Polis' Bitcoin contributions would plummet accordingly, leaving him with less spending power than if his Bitcoin contributions had been made in cash.

But if the Bitcoin market skyrockets, Polis' campaign stands to reap significant riches.

While the FEC may only have blessed Bitcoin contributions of up to $100 per person, candidates such as Polis are allowed to let their accumulated Bitcoin appreciate in value. An initial $100 Bitcoin donation could suddenly be worth $1,000, or $10,000, within a matter of days or weeks.

As of March 31, Polis reported about $300,000 cash on hand as he seeks a fourth term in office in a Democratic-leaning district that includes Boulder and Ft. Collins. During the first three months of the year, he raised about $159,000.

Polis' bullish attitude toward Bitcoin is hardly surprising, given his success creating and selling Internet-based businesses during the 1990s and 2000s. He ranks among Congress' richest members, with the Center for Responsive Politics estimating that his wealth in 2012 potentially reached $330 million.

And in April, Polis became the first known member of Congress to purchase Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is hardly the only digital currency in circulation. Other, even more exotic formats have also popped into existence during the past several years.

But Polis has "no immediate plans to take other forms of digital currency being that Bitcoin is the only one the FEC has issued guidelines on," said Kaufmann, his campaign manager.

He will also adhere to the FEC-prescribed $100-per-contribution limit, she said.

Several other political candidates, including Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, declared prior to the FEC's guidance that they would accept political contributions in the form of Bitcoin.

Seeking to close what a lawyer called “serious gaps” in regulation, 64 environmental and community groups on Tuesday petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to clamp down on toxic air emissions from oil and gas operations.

The 112-page petition, filed by the public-interest law firm Earthjustice, asks the EPA to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to develop “robust emission standards” limiting the amounts of benzene, formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals that can be released by wells and associated equipment.

“Some of the documented health effects of the many types of [hazardous air pollutants] emitted during oil and gas production include increased risks of cancer, respiratory diseases, and birth defects, among others,” the petition says.

Emma Cheuse, an Earthjustice lawyer, said in a telephone interview that “people across the United States need leadership at the national level, need the EPA to act.” Most states experiencing heavy drilling have done a poor job of enforcing the federal clean-air law, Cheuse said; the EPA needs to step in “so people won’t have to wait years and years for protection.”

The petition addresses an issue highlighted in “Big Oil, Bad Air,” a project unveiled by the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel in February. The series examined the air pollution impacts of the Eagle Ford Shale boom in South Texas, where nearly 9,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the past five years through the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Some residents of the region have reported breathing difficulties, nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and other conditions they blame on emissions from wells, storage tanks, gas processing plants and other facilities.

States like Texas regulate air pollution from oil and gas production activities using a patchwork of laws and rules, which, critics say, are often loosely enforced.

As of 2011, there were more than 1 million wells in the United States, “and as many as 45,000 new wells are expected to be drilled each year through 2035,” the Earthjustice petition says.

“The oil and gas expansion has brought drilling activities closer to heavily populated areas, including the Dallas/Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Los Angeles metropolitan regions, placing drilling rigs near homes, schools and workplaces and posing an ever increasing threat to public health. If this development continues as predicted, more communities will face greater toxic air emissions and associated harm … ”

In an email Tuesday, an EPA spokeswoman wrote, "We will review the petition."

A foreign oil company convicted of polluting a Texas community's air with dangerous chemicals has gotten off easy in a criminal case that could undercut the prosecution of environmental crimes in the United States. The case revolves around Venezuelan-owned Citgo Petroleum’s decade-long violation of the federal Clean Air Act at its refinery in Corpus Christi.

In 2007, the Citgo refinery became the first to be criminally convicted of violating the Clean Air Act by a U.S. jury. The refinery had spent a decade illegally operating two giant oil-water separator tanks without any emission controls. Every day for 10 years, nearby residents breathed noxious fumes emitted from the roofless tanks, including the carcinogen benzene.

It took another seven years, until February, before the judge in the case finally sentenced the company. U.S. District Judge John D. Rainey fined Citgo a little more than $2 million — a penalty prosecutors said would not deter Citgo from committing future crimes since, they argued, the company made $1 billion in profit as a result of its illegal operation. Corpus Christi residents were disappointed with the fine, but disappointment quickly turned into fear and confusion when the judge refused to announce in court that day his ruling on how much restitution must be paid to the refinery’s neighbors.

On April 30, people who had been awaiting a decision for years finally found out what they would receive from Citgo: absolutely nothing.

“When I walked out of [the courtroom] I knew what it was gonna be: he was going in Citgo’s favor,” says Thelma Morgan, who lived two blocks away from Citgo for more than 35 years and whose husband and son were also exposed to toxic chemicals. “When he said ‘I’ll notify you all by letter’ I said then, ‘You’re against us, so we can forget it.’”

Morgan, 79, says she was regularly sick during the time she lived near Citgo, but her husband got the worst of it. A host of health problems forced him into early retirement, so he was home more than she was. One day he was gardening when he suddenly broke out in blisters. Doctors asked if he’d been exposed to any chemicals. He later developed colon cancer and died in 2003, just two years after the family moved out of the Hillcrest neighborhood bordering the refinery.

On one occasion, Morgan says, Citgo paid her after she was exposed to a chemical that came from the refinery. She says she couldn’t stop vomiting and thought she had the flu until she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She doesn’t remember the amount Citgo offered her but thinks it was about $450.

People who live in the Hillcrest and Oak Park neighborhoods nearest the refinery have been hit hardest. Many have stories about exposures that led to respiratory problems, burning eyes and noses, scratchy throats, nausea, and sometimes vomiting and severe headaches. Foul odors penetrate their homes and can linger for days. Residents say the worst episodes happen at night: that’s when the strongest odors come, sometimes following explosions or flares. A 2009 blast nearly sent a cloud of hydrogen fluoride, a deadly gas, into the neighborhoods.

Residents’ complaints to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — more than 200 of them during the 10-year period — led the agency to inspect Citgo repeatedly, but the company covered its tracks. During the conviction phase of the federal trial, the Justice Department showed that Citgo employees removed the oil from the uncovered tanks each time the refinery was due for an inspection, so that by the time an investigator arrived, the company was operating legally. It wasn’t until a TCEQ investigator arrived unannounced that the agency realized Citgo was operating the tanks illegally.

The Justice Department proved that Corpus Christi residents’ ailments occurred as a result of Citgo’s actions. It was the first time sufferers of effects from air pollution had ever been recognized as crime victims in the United States.

Bill Miller, a former Environmental Protection Agency lawyer who worked with the Justice Department on the Citgo prosecution and has since retired, says air pollution cases are much harder to prove than water contamination cases. It’s difficult to establish that a company’s emissions caused specific people’s health problems and deaths, he says, even if courts broadly acknowledge that exposure to toxic chemicals is harmful to human health.

Following that line of thought, Judge Rainey initially denied 20 victims’ request to be granted restitution under the Crime Victims' Rights Act, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him to reconsider. Eventually, Rainey granted crime victim status to more than 800 residents, which allowed them to give oral testimony in court at the beginning of the sentencing hearing last fall. Morgan was one of about 160 people who shared their stories.

Experts say the judge’s refusal to grant the victims restitution last month sets a dangerous precedent for similar cases, particularly if the government doesn’t appeal the ruling.

“I think it’s clear that the judge never wanted to consider them victims in the first place,” says Melissa Jarrell, a criminal justice professor at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi who studies environmental crime. “Why that’s concerning to me is that ultimately the judge was the victims’ safety net — he was the one that could really help them and he didn’t.”

Too big to punish

Rainey, a former director of the Angleton, Texas, Chamber of Commerce, was appointed to federal judgeship by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. He was recommended for the position by Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator who was instrumental in engineering the “Enron loophole” that deregulated electronic energy trading, and whose wife served on the board of Houston-based Enron, an energy-trading company that collapsed in the wake of an accounting scandal in 2001.

Rainey rejected the residents’ and the government’s requests for restitution, which would have included funding for annual cancer screenings and other diseases linked to chemical exposure. The Justice Department also had asked that Citgo set up one trust fund to cover property buyouts and relocation costs and another for victims’ future medical expenses, attorney’s fees and other administrative costs, at a total cost of $55 million.

In an April 30 statement that baffled many, Rainey wrote that victims would be better off receiving nothing from Citgo than waiting for the court to determine what they are owed. That echoed his earlier decision to fine Citgo only $2 million for four violations of the Clean Air Act, a fraction of the potential penalty.

The Justice Department had argued that the Corpus Christi refinery made $1 billion as a direct result of illegally operating the tanks. It wanted to fine the company using a provision that allows punishment of twice the “gross, pecuniary gain” realized by violating the law, which would have allowed for a fine of up to $2 billion. But Rainey — after nearly seven years of delays in sentencing — ruled that empaneling a jury to determine Citgo’s exact profits would “unduly prolong” the sentencing process.

The Crime Victims' Rights Act allows the residents to appeal the judge’s ruling on restitution, but only 20 have legal representation. Their lawyers say they plan to file their appeal this week. It’s up to the government to appeal the sentence on behalf of the more than 800 other victims. The Justice Department declined to comment on the matter.

“It doesn’t look like the Department of Justice has any intention of appealing the sentencing of Citgo, which is a crime in itself in my opinion,” Miller says. “It basically emasculates environmental crime prosecution in the United States completely.”

If the Justice Department doesn’t appeal Citgo’s sentence by the end of the month, Miller says, it will send the message that some corporations are too big to punish. Environmental crime cases rarely go to trial because most corporations settle out of court. When the government succeeds in prosecuting them — and, even more seldom, secures a conviction — it should take that opportunity to show that it will aggressively punish environmental violators, Miller says.

“If you’re not going to do anything about it then it behooves every large corporation who gets caught violating a complex statute like Clean Air Act to go to trial and hide behind complexity of it,” he says. “If I was a company like Citgo and I got caught doing something like this again, I’d litigate it.”

Continued violations

The Justice Department offered evidence during the sentencing hearing that Citgo made $150 billion in profits during the 10 years its Corpus Christi refinery was violating the law. The 165,000-barrel-per-day refinery stands in stark contrast to the low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods in its shadow. People simply can’t afford to move out — most of the homes there are appraised at $30,000 to $40,000 and residents say to move even a few miles away from the refinery would cost them upwards of $100,000.

Citgo didn’t respond to requests for comment, but has previously said that it is proud of its environmental record and its role in the Corpus Christi community.

Residents say they don’t feel safe around a company that continues to expose them to harmful chemicals. Citgo may have covered the oil-water separator tanks years ago, but the company has had a less-than-stellar track record since.

In July 2009, an explosion at the refinery alerted residents that something was terribly wrong. An equipment failure in the alkylation unit had caused a release of hydrogen fluoride — a highly corrosive and potentially deadly chemical that about 50 U.S. refineries still use, despite safer alternatives. The release triggered a fire that burned for more than two days and severely burned a worker, who lost an arm in the explosion.

Citgo and local authorities alerted only about 15 to 20 households of the release, even though a 1986 industry-funded test found that hydrogen fluoride — also known as hydrofluoric acid, or HF — can travel up to five miles in lethal concentrations. The company claimed in the local newspaper that the release had never posed any harm to the community and insisted the chemical didn’t cross the plant’s fence line.

“They have this make-believe fence that [they say] nothing goes over, under or through,” says Connie Gonzalez, who lives about three miles from the refinery. “When they have a release you can smell it and you can see it sometimes and then they put out in the news, ‘The neighborhood was never in harm’s way.’”

Gonzalez’s husband worked at Citgo for 20 years; for a time she took him lunch every day and sometimes dropped him off or picked him up from work. Gonzalez developed breast cancer — she’s now in remission — and has nerve damage in her feet that makes her feel as though she’s constantly walking on rocks. Her husband has prostate cancer and heart problems; the couple traces their conditions to the refinery’s emissions. Before Gonzalez found out she had breast cancer, she says, a blood test revealed she had benzene in her blood.

At the time of the HF release, Citgo claimed only 30 pounds of the chemical had escaped the refinery. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigated the accident, later estimated that about 4,000 of the 46,091 pounds released inside the facility had gone off site. The TCEQ imposed a fine of $303,294. The federal government never prosecuted Citgo for the incident.

The HF release isn’t the only problem Citgo has had in Corpus Christi. Since the company’s federal conviction, the TCEQ has fined it seven times, sometimes for multiple violations, for a total of $87,201. Those violations included “emissions events” that released thousands of pounds of volatile organic compounds, particulate matter and other pollutants. It’s unclear how much of this pollution stayed inside the plant, but in at least a few cases the TCEQ made it clear that some of the emissions drifted into nearby neighborhoods.

“Never does anything escape from the plant,” Gonzalez says. “And yet everybody has allergies and people are dying of cancer.”

Priscila Mosqueda is a contributing writer for the Texas Observer, which has been covering the Citgo refinery in Corpus Christi for at least a decade.

A for-profit university bankrolled by prominent tech firms and co-founded by futuristRay Kurzweil is behind four separate super PACs formed this week, according to interviews and documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Randi Willis, an official at Singularity University, confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity that leaders at her institution will later this year begin determining how to best use these new political committees, which could tap into the wealth of tech industry titans.

"Instead of waiting for people in office to come to us, the idea is, 'Let's put people in office,'" said Willis, the executive programs director for the university who also serves as the super PACs' treasurer. "We have a number of millionaires and billionaires who come through here and who we believe would consider contributing."

Willis added that it's "a little bit too preliminary" to say what candidates the super PACs might support or who'd fund the super PACs, which may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for and against political candidates.

"For now, I'm holding the names — sort of squatting on them, for lack of a better term," Willis continued, noting that could take months to determine the super PACs' strategies. The groups are not likely to participate in the 2014 midterm elections.

While hardly a household name, Singularity University is supported by a slew of corporations that are.

Its listed "corporate founders" include Google, Cisco, Genentech, Nokia and Autodesk. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have personally associated themselves with Singularity University.

"Corporate partners" include General Electric, the Credit Union Roundtable and pharmaceutical company Celgene.

Kurzweil, the Singularity University co-founder, today works as Google's engineering director. He's an outspoken believer that technology and humanity will increasingly combine. And he's long been bent on outwitting death itself.

Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive of the X PRIZE Foundation, is Singularity University's other co-founder.

PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who last election cycle contributed $2.6 million to the conservative Club for Growth Action super PAC and another $2 million to a pro-Ron Paul super PAC, also has ties to Singularity University. Thiel is a co-founder of the Singularity Summit, an annual conference on artificial intelligence that Singularity University acquired in 2012, and he has contributed to the university through his private foundation.

Its faculty, meanwhile, includes people who have worked in high-profile jobs at Microsoft, Yahoo! and consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

The company's four new super PACs are named "Singularity PAC," "Impact," "Global Grand Challenges" and "10^9+" — the latter a reference to Singularity University's stated goal of helping its graduate program students develop "the tools, knowledge, skills and mindset for delivering real humanitarian impact to 1 billion people."

The university, which recently transitioned from a nonprofit corporation to a for-profit corporation, conducts a variety of educational programs primarily targeted at tech-savvy graduate students and industry executives.

Its headquarters are located at a NASA research facility and students might pay five-figure sums for a few days or weeks of instruction.

Singularity University is not the first for-profit education company to wade into the world of super PACs.

The Apollo Group — the parent company of the University of Phoenix — has itself financially boosted super PACs affiliated with GOP politicians such as 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

The Arizona-based company has donated about $140,000 to these three super PACs combined since early 2012, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of federal campaign finance records.

Michael Beckel contributed to this report.