DROPPING THE VEIL

You don’t need a license to practice journalism. You don’t need to be employed by a media company to consider yourself a journalist. But if it’s easy to be a reporter, it’s especially easy to be a bad one. All you’ve got to do is write down what people say and never give any of it any thought.

What’s hard is to get at the truth, to get attention, to make anyone care, to surprise them, to convince others that what you’re saying is in fact true.

I can’t tell you how to do all of that. But I can tell you that to write stories that force change, you need to do all of the above. Most of all, you need to dig. Stories of waste and fraud don’t just drop in your lap. But if you dig up these stories, you get to tell people what they mean. You have their attention in a way that no commentator will. Use it to tell a factual story.

It’s fine to have a philosophy about how government works or doesn’t work, but use it to inform your reporting, not as the story itself. If what you believe is true, then the facts are out there, and they are your story.We’re going to go over some of the ways to find those facts.

This tipsheet is a modified version of one created by Teri Sforza, the Watchdog blogger for the Orange County Register. She is a one-woman dynamo. If you want to see what one motivated reporter can do, check out her blog. Copy her. She is a fount of good ideas about how to hold your local government accountable.

You might notice some differences in terminology owing to differences between government structures in Texas and California. I left the original language as it was.

If you regularly ask your city councils/school boards/special districts/local nonprofits for these records, you’ll find that you have more meaty stories than you know what to do with. Plus, they’ll be the kind of stories that make readers sit up straighter and yell, “Hey, Martha! Did you hear this one?” You can provide detailed, important, local news like this in a way that your local paper never did and never will.

Pulling back the veil on the mysterious machinations of local government is great fun. The City Clerk has many of the records listed below, and can tell you where to find the rest. (Many of these documents are held by Special Districts as well – the Fair, library districts, water and sewer districts – there are at least one or two in every city, and they’re a fabulous source of material. Don’t neglect them!)

You need not ask for all of these documents on the schedule suggested. When you get the records, don’t feel bad if they seem impenetrable at first. They just take a little while to decipher.

  • CLAIMS. When someone has a beef with the city, they must file a claim with the city before they can file a lawsuit. Ask for these every few weeks or so, and you’ll get a wealth of info.
  • SETTLEMENTS. The city will, sometimes, pay out on those claims. Find out what they’re dishing monthly.
  • LAWSUITS. Keep an eye on this at the Hamilton County Court web site, Do periodic searches of your town, police departments, and other local agencies.
  • EXPENSES. Every month or so, the council/board of directors, city managers, department heads et al submit their expenses so they’ll be reimbursed. Hotel bills, airfare, monthly high-speed internet access at their homes (charged to the public). Be sure to ask to see the receipts as well as the report. Always great fun.
  • CREDIT CARD STATEMENTS & CELL PHONE BILLS. This stuff may or may not be on the monthly expense sheets. If the city/district issues bigwigs credit cards and pays the cell phone bills directly, these things will NOT show up on the expense statements. Good to check monthly. Great fun here too!
  • CITY COUNCIL/BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING PAY LOGS. Every council member and board member gets paid for each meeting he/she attends. This can range from $100 to around $200 per meeting, and can really add up. They submit monthly “logs” of what meetings they’ve attended, and how much they expect to be paid. You’ll see some members charging meeting pay for talking on the phone with the city manager; you’ll see some who hardly charge for anything. Check monthly. Always a hoot to ask folks why.
  • MONTHLY CHECK REGISTER. A delightful inventory of all checks written by the city. Who’s getting paid what, and for what?
  • REQUESTS FOR PROPOSALS. What sorts of major things is your city buying that it can’t provide itself? Someone to manage its computer systems? To clean its sewers? Ask monthly to see all RFPs issued. Companies will respond with bids, and generally, the lowest bid gets the contract. Ask to see those bids as well.
  • CONTRACTS LET BY THE CITY.You may find that the lowest bidder is *not* the one who gets the contract, and it’s always good to ask why. Ask the city monthlyfor copies of contracts it has entered into with vendors for $75,000 or more, or some other figure to your liking. Fun then to see if any of those vendors are also campaign contributors. Also, ask what the city’s biggest contracts already in effect are, and get copies of those – the city manager’s, the chief engineer’s, the database operator, etc.
  • HEALTH INSPECTION REPORTS. Restaurants closed down by health inspectors can be found at McDonald’s has a sewage backup every month! That Millie’s has been closed for rodent infestations 20 times! Check landmarks, stadiums, famous restaurants.
  • RECORDS REQUESTS. Yes, you’re asking for records – and so is the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the guy pissed off about how often the sewer is backing up into his bathroom. Get the city clerk’s log of who is asking for what, and you may find some other very good stories. Monthly.
  • SALARIES. This is a fun thing to do every six months or year or so. Get a list of all the jobs in the city and what they are currently being paid. Try to go beyond wages to get the value of all compensation, including pension contributions.
  • RETURNED SEARCH WARRANTS. This is my favorite public record. Police have to establish probable cause to get a search warrant in an affidavit to a judge. This document gives you an inside look at the case the police have, from witness statements to circumstantial evidence to suspects. They often leave out contrary evidence, so be careful about casting aspersions on anyone who hasn’t been arrested. Within 10 days of serving the warrant, the detective has to return the search warrant and an inventory of items seized to the court, where it becomes a public record. These are usually filed by address, not by name, so figure out locations of interest in your case before going down to the court. If you’re smooth enough, you can get some clerks to bring you stacks of recent warrants for you to browse. Try it at a branch court in the early afternoon.
  • DOMESTIC COURT RECORDS. You’ll be stunned at what’s available in divorce case files. When a man shoots a woman or vice versa, check Domestic Court records. Most of the time, the story’s there waiting. Too often, some insane custody decision is behind the rage.
  • CRIMINAL COURT RECORDS. Check back every now and then on cases of interest for new filings. Hard-to-get police reports, for example, sometimes get filed a month or two after charges are first brought.
  • PACER. If your police department gets sued, chances are it’s for civil rights, which ends up in federal court. This massive database also has nationwide bankruptcy, appellate, & Supreme Court rulings.
  • BUILDING RECORDS. Check into the building permits issued by your city every month or so. Ask for figures from the years prior, so you can get a sense of how your city is developing. It may be boom, it may be bust. You can also tell how much buildings cost from these records. Environmental Impact Reports are also here, and have a wealth of info.
  • CORRESPONDENCE. Letters and emails between public employees, and sent to public employees, are public record. You may want to ask for copies of correspondence between the City Manager and Council (and target projects in the news lately, be it the maintenance director, the head of the building department, etc.). I’d do the city mgr/council request every couple of months or so, and others as needed.
  • CAMPAIGN FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES. Filed during election season. See who’s pouring money into the races – the trash company? The unions? Check the names of donors against those holding big city contracts.
  • FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS. Filed annuallyby council and board members, police chiefs, top officials, even some committee members with the Ohio Ethics Commission. They should also be available from the City Clerk.
  • AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.. This gives you a much better picture of your city’s overall financial health than what you’ll find in operating budgets. The whole report is known as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, or CAFR, and is the one document about your city that you need to understand. You’ll see how much is held in reserve as a cushion for hard times, you’ll see how much infrastructure is worth (buildings, pipes, etc), and lots of other fun stuff.Annually.
  • ANNUAL BUDGET. These are policy statements – just with numbers instead of words! Don’t settle for the summary. Get the line-item budgets for each department. Annually.
  • PAC DONATIONS. Chances are, there are political action committees affiliated with politicians and unions in your city. Check out who is giving and getting what at the Secretary of State’s campaign finance web site,
  • NONPROFIT REPORTS. You can find most of the big charities in your community by going to , clicking on “advanced search” and then putting in the name of the city (and state) you’re interested in. I tried San Clemente just for fun, and got 292 organizations. Many have their tax returns (990s) on the site, so you can really do some reporting. Check the finances of the local museums, hospitals, Boys and Girls Clubs, Little Leagues, Boy Scouts, etc. – folks who often wind up in feature stories, but whose money management skills we rarely look at. How much is the head of the Boys & Girls Club being paid? Are they losing money on fundraisers? Are they spending more than they take in? Is membership down? You can also find some very weird non-profits in here that can be fun features – with the added bonus of having actual financial information about the organization. We should ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS ask to see Form 990 (the IRS tax return for non-profits) EVERY TIME we write about charities. If they’re too small to file 990s – which means, they take in less than $25,000 a year – ask them to provide PROOF of their nonprofit status in the form of a letter from the IRS, *and* the California Attorney General, *and* to provide an accounting of their finances for publication. We should never, ever write about a supposed charity unless we know it’s a charity, and we know that they manage their money sufficiently. Writing about a charity in the newspaper lends it great credibility, and we’ve gotten burned in the past after finding out that the charity we profiled, er, doesn’t exist. Oops.
  • COMMITTEE AGENDAS & REPORTS. Easy to overlook these things, but you can often find great stuff there before it rises to council level for action. Monitor regularly.