Some fantastic news: For the first time, The American Independent News Network (AINN) registered four “impacts” in a single week. In three states, four separate pieces of legislation were introduced to address important problems first revealed by AINN reporters. In all cases, parties involved cited the work of AINN in their decision-making:

  • State Sen. Tim Keller (D-Albuquerque) introduced a motion to revive a transparency bill that would eliminate much of the secrecy surrounding state agencies, which was first revealed by The New Mexico Independent (NMI) contributor Bryant Furlow. Keller’s recall motion passed unanimously.
  • Rep. Jack Thomas (D-Rio Rancho) filed legislation that would require the state Educational Retirement Board to publicly disclose the pension amounts its members receive, after NMI’s Trip Jennings revealed an obscure law had been passed to keep its members’ benefits secret.
  • Two Iowa state senators introduced a successful amendment last week to address concerns, first raised by The Iowa Independent’s Lynda Waddington, that a key bill would restrict the psychiatric medications made available to people on Medicaid.

As most of you know, one of the ways we measure success at AINN is through the production of “impact stories”. This is a qualitative measure of how our coverage “impacts public debate and advances the common good.” More details can be found below.

Best regards,

David

Politics reporter David Weigel covered the national Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tenn., driving top traffic with his reports on the split that emerged there over the “birther” conspiracy theory. Weigel was quick to cover WorldNetDaily Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah’s Friday night dinner speech, in which Farah spent around 10 of his 40 minutes on questions about President Obama’s citizenship, saying there was more evidence that Jesus Christ was born than that Obama was born in Hawaii. Weigel went on to cover the conflict that ensued after the speech between Farah and conservative publisher Andrew Brietbart. In a bitter open exchange, Brietbart told Farah that the “birther” issue was not “legitimate,” while Farah questioned Brietbart’s journalistic bona fides, saying journalism is “not about proving things. It’s about asking questions and seeking truth.” Weigel’s story was read by more than 24,000 people, with pickups ranging from the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan to political blogs on both the left and the right.

Civil libertarians have been a driving force behind the push to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. But national security reporter Spencer Ackerman picked up on a different—and somewhat ironic—train of thought among civil libertarians these days: many of them are now opposing President Obama’s plan to close Gitmo, if the result would be a similar facility for indefinite detention in Thomson, Ill. “What’s the point of simply moving Guantanamo on shore?” said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Ackerman also got an exclusive advance look at the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s master planning document, which wouldn’t to be unveiled for another three days. He found that despite President Obama’s pledge that the spending freeze would not affect defense spending, the Defense Department is planning cuts to Air Force and Navy programs. It’s also reorienting its approach to defense spending, shifting from hypothetical threats to actual, current ones.

In December, House Republicans proposed a discretionary spending freeze to help rein in the ballooning budget deficit. To their surprise, President Obama co-opted their idea in his State of the Union address, calling for a three-year freeze beginning in 2011. Politics reporter Dave Weigel spoke with a number of leading Republicans and found a diversity of reactions to the president’s proposal, with two common threads: Republicans are taking credit for the spending freeze idea, and they’re not convinced the president is serious about cutting government spending.

IMPACT: Two state representatives introduced a bill last week aimed at expanding maternity coverage in Colorado, and in the process the lawmakers cited reporting by TCI’s Katie Redding inspiring them to act. The bill, co-sponsored by Denver Democrats Reps. Jerry Frangas and Beth McCann, demands that all insurance companies offer at least one plan for individual policyholders that includes maternity care. In her remarks introducing the bill, McCann cited Redding’s reporting on the industry’s frustrating gender inequalities in the state. “There was an article in the Colorado Independent about a reporter who posed as a 34-year-old woman trying to get maternity coverage in the rural areas, and her experience was very frustrating,” she said. “Either the policy was not there at all or it only covered a very small portion for quite a bit of money… so, this is a problem.”

Editor John Tomasic was first to report on the growing momentum behind U.S. Rep. Jared Polis’s bold move to pass health reform legislation that includes a public option. Polis first began circulating among lawmakers, and on the web, a letter that he co-authored with Maine Democrat Chellie Pingree outlining a proposal to add a public option to the current Senate version of the bill and pass the measure through reconciliation. Polis sent the letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week with the signatures of 120 representatives, including six Blue Dog Democrats. Polis’s office was surprised and cheered by the response the letter received from the public and from lawmakers. A representative said, “Progressive groups got a hold of the letter and saw what we were doing and the phones just lit up.”

In a series of charged emails to the Colorado Independent prompted by a report on the existence of unlisted immigrant-detention “subfield offices” in the state, Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, wrote to clarify that the offices were used only for processing suspects. He said immigrants suspected of violations were held at the agency’s subfield offices for up to approximately two hours before being transferred to long-term holding facilities. He conceded that contact information for the facilities was unavailable and that detainees being processed at the offices were not allowed to contact relatives or attorneys before being transferred to the larger facilities. However, the nature of the processing done in the offices was merely transitional, he wrote, and the offices were not “secret.”

John Tomasic was quick to fact-check claims made by U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton on a Colorado Springs radio talk show that she has never worked as a lobbyist. But as the Colorado Independent reported in September, from 1994 to 1999, Norton headed the lobbying department of Englewood-based Medical Group Management Association, “the principal voice for the medical practice association.”

Todd Heywood drew top traffic with his coverage of the protests outside Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s final State of the State address, where Tea Party protesters squared off against students and foreclosure-moratorium activists. It didn’t take long for tensions to mount between the two groups, fueled by the expression of extremist views on both sides, and the Michigan State Police was called in to separate the two groups. None of the state lawmakers who said they would attend were anywhere to be found.

Eartha Melzer reported that an environmental advocacy organization that owns stock in utility Consumers Energy is asking the company to explain how it is protecting the public from risks posed by the 700,000 tons of coal ash it produces each year. Such shareholder resolutions have been successful at getting energy producers in other states to reform their processes, Melzer reported, and Consumers Energy may be a prime candidate for such action. The EPA has already identified one of its unlined dumps as being among those with no system to monitor whether toxins are moving into the groundwater. In the case of another dump, Consumers was not able to confirm for federal regulators that the facility was even designed by professional engineers.

David Alire Garcia looked at the slate of prominent anti-choice Democrats in the governor’s race and determined that traditional Democratic constituencies may face a difficult choice in the primaries. With candidates like Andy Dillon and Bart Stupak in the running, one pollster said, “It creates an opening for a pro-choice candidate to get instant traction,” he said. “In this case, it might suddenly make [Lansing Mayor] Virg [Bernero] much more credible.”

Todd Heywood reported that, as Messenger has continued to investigate bio-terrorism charges against an HIV-positive man for biting someone during a fight, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office appears to be violating the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. By withholding some documents—like communications within the office regarding the case—and denying the existence of court transcripts that are known to exist, officials “[e]ither… are concealing something or they don’t keep good records in this case,” said Chetly Zarko, who runs the newly formed Michigan Transparency Project. “It reflects poorly on the public body.”

Andy Birkey brought in the most weekly page views since August, 2009, when he found a fundraising pitch in which Rep. Michele Bachmann claims Barack Obama wants to “KILL conservatism.” The letter sent on behalf of the American Conservative Union Strikeforce states that Obama “isn’t interested merely in defeating conservatives… HE WANTS TO ANNIHILATE US!” – adding, “that’s the purpose behind ObamaCare, too.” Thanks to pickups by Huffington Post, Raw Story, ThinkProgress and others, MnIndy saw more than 52,000 page views.

Other important parts of Birkey’s recent work include two other blog posts about Bachmann: one in which the 6th District Republican claimed that government critics would be put on a list and denied health care under new reform measures, a claim not supported by fact. In another post he noted that Bachmann, along with Gov. Tim Pawlenty, will be appealing to conservative voters at the CPAC convention. Both Bachmann and Pawlenty have been criticized for their high volume of out-of-state travel in recent months.

In the state’s reddest district, the one represented by conservative lightning-rod Rep. Michele Bachmann, Dr. Maureen Reed is running for Congress as an Independence Party candidate—but so far she’s refused to discuss her stance on reproductive rights. This week, reporter Andy Birkey succeeded where others have failed, getting Reed on record as a supporter of Roe v. Wade as “the law of the land.” This puts her between staunchly pro-life Bachmann and EMILY’s List–endorsed Democrat Tarryl Clark.

In a series of blog posts, reporter Chris Steller and editor Paul Schmelzer researched the Minnesota connection to the arrest of conservative activists who deceived staffers at Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in an attempt to tamper with phone lines. Rep. Michele Bachmann once praised one of those arrested, James O’Keefe, as “brilliant,” and one of his collaborators, Joseph Basel, was confirmed as a Minnesota native and a student at the University of Minnesota – Morris. The Minnesota Independent was the first state news outlet to report Basel’s local ties.

IMPACT: State Sen. Tim Keller (D-Albuquerque) introduced a motion to revive a transparency bill that would eliminate much of the secrecy surrounding state agencies, which was first revealed by NMI contributor Bryant Furlow. Furlow reported that state investigators had filed a report to federal authorities charging that New Mexico health officials were stonewalling investigations into Medicare fraud and elder abuse. The revived bill, pocket-vetoed by Gov. Richardson last year, would force agencies to share Medicaid spending and other financial data with the Legislative Finance Committee, making such secrecy impossible. In introducing his motion to rekindle the measure, Keller referred to the allegations reported exclusively by NMI. “We definitely have an issue with investigating Medicaid fraud,” Keller said. “This is not glamorous stuff, but it’s very important.” Keller’s recall motion passed unanimously.

IMPACT: Rep. Jack Thomas (D-Rio Rancho) filed legislation that would require the state Educational Retirement Board to publicly disclose the pension amounts its members receive, after NMI’s Trip Jennings revealed an obscure law had been passed to keep its members’ benefits secret. Jennings uncovered the law while investigating the practice of “double dipping,” by which public-sector retirees return to work for the state, collecting both a salary and a pension. “It’s a pretty simple bill,” Thomas said. “It’s about open government.” He added to Jennings, “You caused us to do this.”

Contributor Bryant Furlow broke big news with his exclusive revealing that Medicaid investigators have filed a federal complaint charging New Mexico state health officials with stonewalling efforts to investigate Medicaid fraud. Investigators with the Attorney General’s Fraud Division told federal authorities that bureaucrats were “sterilizing” information about fraud and elder care abuse. The AG added in a follow up that the state’s obstructionist moves constitute violations of federal rules and demanded “direct access to Medicaid data” to do its job.

The NMI team joined forces with the Sunlight Foundation this week to co-host a liveblog and webcast of key hearings on transparency issues in the Roundhouse. As it turned out, The House voted unanimously to expand webcasting debates and votes on the House floor as soon as this week, as Trip Jennings later reported that day.

IMPACT: Two Iowa state senators introduced a successful amendment last week to address concerns, first raised by the Iowa Independent’s Lynda Waddington, that a key bill would restrict the psychiatric medications made available to people on Medicaid. As Waddington had first reported, a patch of overlooked language in the state reorganization bill would remove protections for psychiatric medications purchased through Medicaid. Instead, medications not approved by the state would only be paid for if a physician requested and received a waiver on behalf of the patient—a process that most physicians who are already underpaid by Medicaid would not undertake, advocates pointed out. Waddington went on to discover that the language first emerged in a consultant’s report to the governor as a quick cost-savings measure. The new amendment, co-sponsored by Sens. Jack Hatch (D-Des Moines) and David Hartsuch (R-Bettendorf), grandfathers in current patients receiving state assistance and adds a buffer period in which patients can get medications while waiting for a state waiver. Margaret Stout, executive director of the Iowa chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness, said Waddington’s reporting was instrumental in raising awareness of the problem, adding that she personally passed the story along to key decision-makers to ensure they understood the issue.

Editor Jason Hancock conducted an exclusive interview with conservative GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats, who did little to assuage the fears of moderate Iowa Republicans that he might run as an independent if he loses in this June’s primary. He stood by his vow not to sign a “loyalty oath” to support the eventual nominee, noting that said the primary will decide whether Republicans truly believe in conservative principles or not. Among his priorities, he said, would be to stop the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage with an executive order, pointing to language in the state’s constitution that calls the governor “chief magistrate of the state.”

Lynda Waddington revealed that the conservative Iowa Family Policy Center has begun conducting weekly religious training sessions inside the Capitol during the legislative session. Republican State Sen. Nancy Boettger reserved space in the Capitol for the Center to screen “The Truth Project,” a 12-part educational series sponsored by Focus on the Family that aims to train Christians to develop a Biblical worldview and inject that belief into the public sphere. Secularists decried the events as a violation of the First Amendment, and even the director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, which aims to promote the role of religion in public life, voiced reservations. “To utilize a public building — especially in the middle of the legislative session when there are so many other important issues going on — it seems to me that this is a misuse of public property to promote one particular viewpoint and one particular group’s agenda,” the director said.

Contributor Michael Swanger took top traffic with his coverage of Citizens for Community Improvement’s (CCI) protests at two downtown Des Moines banks, where progressive activists temporarily halted business activities to demand the banks give up employee bonuses to help pare down Iowa’s projected $1 billion budget shortfall. The bank protests were the culmination of CCI’s “Showdown at the Statehouse,” a day-long event in which CCI members called upon elected officials to rein in corporate power and support campaign finance reform.

GOOD NEWS
State follows trend to virtual government

When Van Buren Township announced a new service to send interested residents “public safety threats and community events via web, e-mail, and cell phone,” the small metro Detroit government was embarking on a new approach to providing basic government services.