As the year draws to a close, it’s natural to reflect on whether we have done the job you hired us to do in 2014.
We know from research that one of the most important roles we serve for readers is as a watchdog over local government and businesses, demanding integrity and effectiveness in those institutions. It’s not a role politicians love us to have, and they often try to convince us no one would even care if we quit looking.
Consider, for example, the case of former DeKalb County Commissioner Elaine Boyer.
AJC investigative reporter Johnny Edwards decided to check on county spending by commissioners and local elected officials. When he got to DeKalb County, he ran into quite a lot of resistance; the records he needed to review couldn’t be pulled easily and would cost hundreds of dollars. But Edwards kept digging, and he reported in March that Boyer had racked up thousands of dollars in personal charges on her county Visa card.
Boyer said she didn’t mean to do anything wrong, and called it sloppy accounting. And she said she was totally honest and transparent in her plan to repay the money.
The AJC heard from other DeKalb officials as well. Did they decry Boyer’s integrity, issue censures, vote to open investigations?
Indeed, no. We were asked if we were going to apply the same level of scrutiny to other counties, suggesting we had unfairly singled out DeKalb. Several officials said it would not be right to strip Boyer of her county credit card.
Of course, one government agency did take serious notice – the FBI. Agents launched an investigation and found Boyer had not only used the credit card to steal money, she had a kickback scheme going with an evangelist posing as a consultant.
In September, Boyer pleaded guilty to bilking taxpayers out of more than $90,000.
And officials in DeKalb still complain about our coverage.
Here are a handful of other stories where we kept the spotlight on integrity and effectiveness in 2014, even when some would have preferred we did not.
Ice jam: Forecasters predicted bad weather for metro Atlanta, but delays in key government decisions triggered a wave of cascading failures, leaving tens of thousands of motorists abandoned and desperate for food, water and shelter. Children were trapped at schools, calls to 911 went unanswered and emergency signs flashed useless information. In the days that followed, we examined what went wrong — and who, exactly, should shoulder the blame.
ER waits, infection rates and doctor discipline: It's hard to imagine any topic more important to our readers than health care. In study after study, readers rate availability, cost and quality of health care as extremely important. All year in print and on our online health page, we reported key statistics that reveal the effectiveness of local hospitals and examined the workings of the Georgia Composite Medical Board, which regulates physicians. Among our findings: Some Georgia hospitals rank among the worst in the nation for rates of life-threatening bloodstream infections or other serious conditions that patients can pick up while hospitalized for something else. And doctors without malpractice insurance or with serious problems in other states can get approval to work in Georgia.
Ethics agency in shambles: Throughout the year, the state's ethics commission has been a source of continuing controversy and drama. Former ethics commission employees filed whistleblower lawsuits against the state, alleging that they were pushed out of the agency for attempting to investigate complaints against Gov. Nathan Deal, and ultimately four former ethics staffers won nearly $3 million in settlements. The executive director (now fired) exchanged text messages with a key governor's aide, and later said she viewed the conversation as pressure to back off. A judge described the executive director as dishonest and non-transparent, and she had to pay a fine. Meanwhile, the ethics commission was completely ineffective. We reported that little work had been done on a backlog of 156 open cases.
Local Veteran's Administration office part of national problems: Amid national reporting on unconscionable delays in treatment for veterans, we revealed the local VA Health Eligibility Center may have improperly purged thousands of applications. We also found senior VA officials pushed untrue and misleading information to veterans, the public and Congress to blunt a potential scandal involving a backlog of hundreds of thousands of applications for access to VA health care.
Pardons secrecy: Many readers were shocked to learn how the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has restored gun rights to violent felons. This was part of a series that focused extensively on secrecy and how victims and prosecutors weren't even alerted when a pardon was considered. The Parole Board has since adopted policy changes. In the future, the board will notify crime victims and prosecutors when a sex offender or other violent felon applies for a pardon. For decades, the agency has kept the existence of such applications confidential, and prosecutors and victims could not learn about pardons until after the fact. From now on, they'll be offered a chance to weigh in before the board acts.
We did plenty of other important investigative work — too much to list here. But you may recall stories on Georgia’s oversight of child deaths; lack of transparency in Cobb County’s embrace of the Braves; an investigation of Atlanta’s pension advisor; an examination of blighted neighborhoods and why they are so hard to fix; squandered job training funds; nepotism in local government; controversial tax breaks; and poor oversight of Georgia’s for-profit colleges.
We expect to keep at it in 2015. You can keep up, too, by following us on Twitter at @ajcinvestigate or following our Watchdog Blog.
Thanks for reading and for honoring us with the privilege of watching out for you.
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