Few stories excite me more than document-driven stories stemming from public records requests. Combine that with an angle of advocacy journalism favoring transparency in government and it’s even better. One such instance happened in the spring of 2011, when I exposed and successfully saw the change of a policy in the New York State Comptroller’s Office that forced local governments to violate state law. It took almost three months and close to 3,000 words in print, but transparency prevailed.
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Following public outcry into local fire board actions, I made a public records request. I discovered through documents released that elected officials were circumventing the requirements of the state’s open meetings law and that some records were potentially unavailable to the public. That fall, the two fire commissioners who were up for re-election lost at the ballot box by 2-1 margins.
This is a series of stories, each appearing on its own page. Please use the links below to navigate.
Daggett County was an often difficult region for coverage, sitting some 60 miles away from the nearest community with a newspaper or news radio station. So when the county attorney was suddenly fired, I was tasked with finding out what had happened. This yielded two stories about a month apart that tell two views into how the county commissioner and the county attorney saw their roles within county government.
This is a series of stories, each appearing on its own page. Please use the links below to navigate.
Portfolio and resume of a professional journalist