Money talk in Politics

Money, Money, Money! Who can reject them in those tough times? Not only today or tomorrow politicians will go away from some extra campaign cash. This is why there are so many political reporters who work full time just studying campaign financing and lobbying records. One of those experienced political reporters is William March- Windy.

Mr. March was kind enough to share one of his successful stories, which he published on March, 16 1997 at the Tampa Tribune. He was kind enough to walk us through the steps he took in order to cover the story.

Back in 1997 Windy spend a good amount of time to complete his story, while today he said this type of political reporting can be done by “three clicks with the mouse.” I was not really surprised by this fact because today many public records are available on the web. What actually surprise me were the accurint reports on people that are available for political journalists. I’ve never seen a report that contains all of the important public records for a certain an individual. It was interesting to hear where political reporters start their research and how they reach the end of their stories.

Violation of campaign finance law seems to be the biggest trap for politicians. Money laundering can be done on the state or federal level. What this says is that the illegal political money is looking clean. They are two types, hard or soft money. Hard money is used for individual’s political campaigns, and on the other hand, soft money is used in political party’s campaigns. To make the system work corporations are asking their employees to contribute to a certain politician so they can benefit after that person steps into office. The example that Windy gave us was a report about the largest amount of soft money contributed in 1996 by a Future Tech Corporation from Miami, FL. Wendy’s editor saw the story at New York Times and hand it to him to go on his journey.

According to Wendy, a good political reporter has to know how to use the web correctly when searching for campaign suspicious financing either on state or federal level. There are many ways an individual contribution can be tracked. It is a common sense that if a person contribute to a party the top amount of money and did not even voted for them, there is something wrong. Also some of those contributors did not even have a voter registration from the past. Seems a funny fact, but this is the reality in Windy’s story.

Overall I learned that campaign financing is a complicated subject, but if I want to become part of the media watchdogs, I better know how political reporting works. As future journalists I was blessed to be provided with some of the most useful web sites that can help me when I track political campaigns financing.

http://www.safereview.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/ – for tracking various industries that contributed and to whom
http://www.fec.gov/ - search the disclosures
http://www.moneyline.cq.com/ – individual search

Public Information vs. Government Fraud

Preston Trigg, a director of administration and special projects for Hillsborough County Tax Collector, and his speech made me realize how much I have to know in order to become a great journalist. Since Mr. Trigg is a former journalist, he was able to explain in orderly fashion how public records at his current work place will make my journalistic career easier and productive in the future.

According to Mr. Trigg journalist must be very strong adequate for the First Amendment, The Law of Transparency, and openness from the government. He emphasize that information needs to be out there and to back his words he quoted the founding father, Thomas Jefferson, “Biggest tread to people is government secrecy.”
Hillsborough County Tax Collector gives us access to one of the most important public records available to a journalist, which is property tax information. At this constitutional office we can also find business tax database and motor vehicle records. All of this information can be researched by name, address, and section of town at http://www.hillstax.org.

Preston Trigg put a great emphasis on how important is for a journalists to know what is known as public record according to the Florida Statute Sec 119.001 (11). He also explained who can get those records and what the rules are. As an experience media person Mr. Trigg shared some trick of trades for public records like putting in writing request of the public records, citing exemptions and nature of records the agency isn’t giving us, asking for the cost up front, inspecting records rather than spending money for copies, recording crimes of not releasing a record, giving reasonable timeframe, and always to be aware of the competition. For journalists is especially important to know that a written request of a record is a public record.

What every reporter should do? According to Mr. Trigg we should always look for the money, especially when government is involved. Second, always check for the truth. Third, don’t let them fool you around.

To conclude his presentation Mr. Trigg presented the most important records a reporter should ask for when he or she goes to the constitutional agency. I was surprised how far a journalist must go in order to reach the truth in a given story. The list includes budget, organizational chart, financial disclosure, five years of any gift disclosures made, one year of pay roll records for ten-highest paid officials in that agency, one year of bills for all credit cards held by reporting individual. To continue we have to include the top ten highest paid travel records, educational, and automobile expenses. Finally here it comes again the list of all written 119 requests made in the past year by the reporting individual.

In conclusion I would say that Mr. Trigg gave us the most thorough
information about public information within his agency compare to the once we’ve be visiting so far. He made it clear that the only way we can watch our government is by looking as far as we can in order to reach the truth.

Helpful web site for the public can be: http://www.zillow.com
OVER ALL- Follow the money!

Think twice before you cross the line!

Wooden doors and direct supervision is how the Orient Road Jail works in Hillsborough County today. This might not sound too bad comparing to what we are use to see on the movie screen, but once you enter those doors you records are in the system.

Unfortunately, I missed the trip to the Orient Road Jail and I watched the video from the tour that was recorded last semester. The tour was given by Lt. Scott Smith who is a shift commander at the jail. According to him the jail system have done beyond from what it used to be 20 years ago. Wooden doors replaced the old linear system and direct supervision became the way inmates are controlled.


An interesting fact for Orient Road jail is that they are the only booking facility for 27 arresting agencies in Hillsborough County. There the inmates stay for four to six hours before they are moved to intake housing. If they get booked before midnight, they will see the judge at first appeal court in the morning. If the inmates are booked after midnight, they have to wait for 24 hours before they appear in front the judge. Inmates can leave the court if they pay their bonds, but if the bond is for a large amount of money the people who pay the bond need to prove the legal ownership that money. This is a precaution taken from the judge.

Usually 200 inmates are booked every day at Hillsborough County Jail. Finger prints, incident reports, medical exams, mug shots, video footage, and phone calls are all public records. Some of those records can be web accessed at: http://www.hcso.tampa.fl.us/PublicInquiry/ArrestInquiry.

According to Lt. Smith the jail’s capacity is 1700 inmates, but at that time they had only 999 inmates in their seven housing units. The average jail time for most of them is 19 days, but it can go to a year or even more. Some inmates go and comeback and their records still remain in the jail’s record system. Usually one deputy is assigned to 72 inmates in a pod, but in confine cells there are 3 deputies in a pod of 64 inmates.

Last but not least, the visitations to the inmates are now done through video recording, which are also public records along with the monitoring calls that each inmate makes.

Criminal records are something that can hunt you down all the way through life, so think twise before you cross the door of Hillsborough County Jail’s doors.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office – one big family of professionals

Something different, something new, something that I would never imagine seeing before in my everyday life, these are the 911 Emergency Center and the Public Information Office at Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

A memorable moment of my visit to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office was time spend with Brad Herron, Communication Center 911 commander, and his team of professionals. “One big family” of 155 employees which annually collect 1.5 million calls from the public in the law enforcement outlet of Hillsborough County. Those well trained professionals control where, when, and how the police exercises their law enforcement power.

According to public records all call recorded at the 911 Emergency Center are public record with the exception of phone numbers and addresses who are edited for safety reasons.

Across the street from the Communication Center, Deputy Larry McKinnon, Public Information Office, and Cristal Bermudez, Media Relations, work together to create a better communication between the media and the police. An interesting fact that stood out in the presentation was the police department’s effort to become a news outlet. When and how is this happening? I can’t really answer this question, but Mr. McKinnon was very positive and motivated when he explained how the police feed the media through media alerts with the latest information. He made a major point that they are trying to have a smooth relationship with the media because those two power houses need to serve the people the best possible way. On one side the police wants factual information presented to the public, and on the other side, the media wants cooperation when they are trying to collect the news.

Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has made a tremendous improvement in obtaining their public records. Now all reports are filed electronically and they are maintained on hard drives. The police is now part of the “Go Green” campaign and they’ve saved $40 000 of paper cost.

During the lecture Mr. McKinnon and Mrs. Bermudez emphasized the importance of Statue 119, which represents the standard operating procedure for news releases and media cooperation from the Sheriff’s Office. This stature represents how public records are accessed. One of the important facts for SRA’s criminal reports is that it can’t be filed and accessed before the investigation is complete. Those reports are first available at the jail records and later in the clerk’s office. According to the 119 statue, DUI reports are available in the Sheriff’s Office records. Florida traffic crash reports are also available there after 60 day of the accident. Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office web site is another public record outlet which gives access to press releases as well as individual’s charge reports.

Overall, I was really impressed how Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office communicates with the media. I also admire those special people who put a tremendous effort to work on one of those hot chairs at 911 Emergency Center.

Chris Davis- Investigative reporting

Chris Davis is a data based specialist at the Sarasota Herald- Tribune. His great team of investigative reporters has made the paper one the best medium size papers in Florida. The main key for their success is their extensive use of public records.

To emphasize the value of public record and their attribution to investigative reporting, Chris Davis introduced the flipping fraud case done by the Herald- Tribune. According to him this case was a lost battle if the journalist’s didn’t know how to take advantage of the Sunshine laws.

The flipping fraud case turned out to be a state wide problem. Speculators were driving the home market by buying a property and then have it unlawfully appraised in a higher price. In a period of 90 days the price of the property increased with 30% and more. The deals were done by people who knew each other. Their main goal was to trick the banks by asking them for loans to cover the expenses for the illegally appraised property. This circle of people was basically stilling the bank’s money.
To indentify the people who did the fraud, the Herald- Tribune’s investigative team asked each individual county in the state to provide them data base of 18 million sales from property appraisers. Public records helped to tie the chain between those people and 55 thousand suspicious flips were discovered. The reporters made a deep and explicit investigation in order to get the job done. They organized the data and present their results to the public by using program language, helpful graphs, and maps.

In his lecture, Chris Davis was kind enough to share how an investigative reporter went after a murder case from the 60’s. The only way he was able to track the data were the public records at the sheriff’s office. The more impressive part of this murder case was the illustrations of the data and the graphic designs on the web. Those tools dramatically enhance the story telling.
Another memorable part of the lecture by Mr. Davis was the investigation done on abusive teachers. The public has the right to know who is teaching their kids. Unfortunately according to Davis and his investigative team a lot of those teachers still have their teaching licenses even though their cross the line between them and their students. The Herald- Tribune made an online database where parents can search their child’s school for insulting teachers. In order to build the online database the paper created text documents by scanning all public records on those teacher. To merge all sources together the reporters need it SSC records of the teachers. Those SSC were the bridge for the news organization to finish their investigative reporting. The First Amendment Organization came into play to protect the media of accessing the SSC records.

Overall I realized that the web and the new technology enhances the storytelling and gives the public in depth information. I was surprised how many obstacles investigative reporters have to go through in order to provide the public with the information they deserve.