Clik here to view.
Disease victims often shut out of workers' comp system
LANCASTER, Pennsylvania — Finding the first bit of evidence that Gene Cooper’s job damaged his brain and destroyed his health was the easy part. That only took his wife four years, eight doctors and at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Federal law lets political action committees wait weeks, even months, to reveal which candidates benefit from their cash.But Twitter's nascent PAC, which is poised to make its first-ever federal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In security breach, Russian programmers wrote code for U.S. military...
The Pentagon was tipped off in 2011 by a longtime Army contractor that Russian computer programmers were helping to write computer software for sensitive U.S. military communications systems, setting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Abuses of state government persist. We're telling you why
In New York, former State Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver is on trial this week after being charged in January with accepting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks.His lawyer Steven Molo said in his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Capitol Gains: Vague terms cloak S.C. lawmakers' expenses
South Carolina ethics laws require candidates to describe how they spent their campaign money. Here are some examples:In July 2012, Sen. Kent Williams, D-Marion, spent about $800 at Best Buy, pegging...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oregon gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
November 10, 2015: This story has been corrected.One day before Oregon’s usual Valentine’s Day statehood celebration this year, the Capitol was awash with reporters chasing a rare story on the abuse of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pennsylvania gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
New bronze plaques adorn four of the portraits in the halls of the state Capitol in Harrisburg, in a collection that honors Pennsylvania's legislative leaders from Benjamin Franklin's time to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rhode Island gets D+ grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Rhode Island has suffered from an inferiority complex dating back to colonial times, when Massachusetts minister Cotton Mather called it the “sewer of New England” and Connecticut tried to absorb the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
South Carolina gets D- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
South Carolina is the kind of place where change only comes after a massive shock to the system. The state where the Civil War began takes threats to tradition seriously. During the early 19th Century,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
South Dakota gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Every year, 105 lawmakers and hundreds of lobbyists make the trek to South Dakota’s lonely capital city of 14,000 residents. Situated 34 miles from the nearest interstate highway, Pierre feels tiny and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tennessee gets D grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Tennessee adopted what were thought to be sweeping ethics reforms after four sitting state lawmakers were arrested on bribery charges. Ten years after the scandal rocked the legislature, however, there...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Texas gets D- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
In his first State of the State address to the Texas Legislature in early 2015, newly elected Gov. Greg Abbott challenged lawmakers to dedicate their unfolding 140-day session to ethics reform,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Utah gets D- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Utah is a study in contradictions. Against the backdrop of breathtaking vistas from the northern Wasatch Range to the red rock arches and mesas in southern national parks, Utah projects Hollywood...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vermont gets D- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Maybe, just maybe, Vermont is on the verge of being dragged into the modern world of government transparency and oversight.Not because the Green Mountain State is corrupt. By almost all accounts, it is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Virginia gets D grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Virginia long claimed it had an ethical political culture based on a tradition of civic service, genial debate, and gentlemanly behavior – until events proved otherwise in 2014. That’s when the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Washington gets D+ grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Immediately after a federal grand jury indicted Washington State Auditor Troy Kelley in April 2015 for tax evasion, perjury and other charges largely stemming from a business he ran before being...
View ArticleClik here to view.
West Virginia gets D grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
All last fall, televised political attack ads reverberated among the hills and hollers of West Virginia. It was part of a bitter fight between the two parties, and Republicans managed to ride to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wisconsin gets D grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
While Wisconsin voters tracked the doomed presidential ambitions of Republican Gov. Scott Walker this summer, legislators in Madison brawled over changes that Walker and his allies had proposed to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wyoming gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
Nothing encapsulates Wyoming more than its logo of a bucking horse and rider, which adorns everything from license plates to the insignia of the state’s only four-year university.It’s easy to imagine a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
States flunk at integrity
In 2013, the director of the Idaho Racing Commission told state lawmakers that controversial “instant racing” machines could help save the state’s dying betting industry. He did not tell them he was...
View Article