Wire · Issue 004
Read the contracts
Three pieces where the finding only exists because somebody read the underlying documents. Contracts in one, property and assessment records in another, and in the third a set of accounts that are not on the record at all.
That last one is included with its shape stated. Anonymous sourcing is not a defect and it is not equivalent to a contract you can pull yourself, and a wire that graded everything the same would be useless.
Why is it so unusually expensive to replace lead pipes in Chicago?
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, Keerti Gopal and Clayton Aldern spent seven months on program documents and contracts, asking why the same work costs what it costs in one city and not another. This is the nearest neighbour on the list to our own water record: a utility, a capital program, and a spending trail that only answers the question if somebody reads the contracts rather than the announcement.
EvidenceProgram documents and procurement contracts, obtained and read across seven months, set against comparable costs elsewhere. The comparison is what turns a large number into a finding.
In a Wisconsin land rush, data centers made them millionaires
Tom Kertscher and Paul Kiefer checked county property sales against assessment records, transaction by transaction, around a 672-acre data center. More than $125 million changed hands across 1,500-plus acres, including a 173-acre parcel that sold for roughly seventeen times its assessed valuation.
EvidencePublic property records checked line by line against the county's own assessments, with named sellers and neighbours interviewed. The same shape as checking a public board's minutes against what it authorized.
Trump Administration Killed Criminal Investigation of GOP Senator's Coal Companies
Molly Redden and Avi Asher-Schapiro on a criminal investigation into a sitting senator's coal companies, closed. Rust-belt accountability and squarely in the public interest.
EvidenceRests in part on sources who are not named. That is a different evidentiary shape from the records-driven work around it in this issue, and worth saying plainly rather than leaving a reader to work it out.