I-Team: Watching Your Tax Dollars
Auditor helping 1,400 small governments save money
Small government bodies such as libraries, planning commissions and tiny villages will save some of their public dollars under a new program that drastically cuts the costs of state-mandated audits.Since the program was launched in December, 11 governments in this region have cut the cost of their audits by an ...
Millions meant for veterans pocketed by suspect ‘charities’
Millions of dollars meant for veterans has been stolen by con men or misspent by charities in recent years, according to Ohio officials who tell the Dayton Daily News they are stepping up enforcement. Recently a sweeping investigation by the Ohio Attorney General of AMVETS found 59 locations around the ...
Counties can’t keep up with deteriorating bridges
Ohio Department of Transportation records indicate that 2,230 bridges statewide are rated as structurally deficient, but government agencies say they lack the funds to keep up on repairs. “There’s not enough money to stay ahead of it,” Montgomery County Engineer Paul Gruner said. “The more we let them go, the ...
Lawmaker may have broken ethics law
Springfield Republican Sen. Chris Widener may have violated Ohio ethics law when he personally appeared before a state board to appeal a building code ruling on a fire hall he designed as part of his private business, a Dayton Daily News investigation found. Widener was in the Ohio Senate when ...
Judge’s vacation time: 14 weeks
Montgomery County Domestic Relations Judge Denise Cross scheduled 14 weeks of vacation last year, more than twice the amount taken by fellow Domestic Relations Judge Timothy Wood, a Dayton Daily News investigation found. Cross also took 14 weeks in 2011. How that compares to other judges is unclear because there ...
JobsOhio staff given hefty raises
In August 2010, then-candidate John Kasich announced his plan to privatize the Ohio Department of Development, calling the government agency a “black hole” that failed to even return phone calls.“The days of trying to connect with business leaders through bureaucrats are over,” Kasich said during a campaign appearance at a ...
Man hired after allegedly misspending public funds
A Centerville man who resigned from Clinton County Children Services after paying back $713 for trips he was reimbursed for but never took is now working next door in Highland County. This is another example uncovered by the Dayton Daily News of public employees being permitted to pay back misspent ...
Group wants to expand Earned Income Tax Credit in Ohio
Some in Ohio are working to get the Earned Income Tax Credit to more people as a means to both fight poverty and boost the economy. Policy Matters Ohio, a left-leaning think tank, presented a proposal to the Ohio House Finance and Appropriations Committee last week to create a state-level ...
Tax payout for low-income workers doubled in Ohio
The nation’s largest cash-assistance program for the working poor has doubled in size since the 1990s and is plagued with an overpayment rate of up to 25 percent, one of the largest error rates of all federal programs, a Dayton Daily News analysis has found. This tax season, the Earned ...
l’Auberge owner blames default on competition, recession
For Josef Reif, the failure of his celebrated l’Auberge restaurant last year after more than three decades in business in Kettering is about more than red ink and personal bankruptcy. “It’s ripping your heart out, ripping your soul out. You don’t know where to turn and you are in an ...
Taxpayers paid $1.3B to cover bad business loans
Lax federal oversight dating back years allowed lenders to repeatedly make bad loans to small businesses under a government program that has cost taxpayers $1.3 billion since 2000 on defaulted loans, a Dayton Daily News investigation found. Some borrowers in the Small Business Administration’s largest federally guaranteed loan program defaulted ...
Government waste findings of $67B fall on deaf ears
Federal agencies bracing for sequestration have for years ignored or failed to implement thousands of suggestions from their own internal auditors on ways to cut waste, fraud or abuse, the Dayton Daily News has found. The number of unimplemented recommendations from federal inspectors general has reached an all-time high, totaling ...
Parting bonuses ‘taxpayer-funded wet kiss goodbye’
Area lawmakers in Washington spiked their staffs’ pay at the end of 2012, often by more than $10,000 a person, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of congressional pay data.The most generous bosses were defeated and retiring lawmakers on their way out the door, including U.S. Rep. Steve Austria, ...
Pension board members spend big on out-of-state conferences
Members of the state pension board that is sending three members to a conference in Hawaii have made 67 other trips over the past four years to New Orleans, San Francisco, New York and other vacation destinations, a Dayton Daily News investigation found. VIEW travel costs for retirement board members ...
Drunks drive up cost of free-ride program, cabbies say
Local cabbies blame fickle drunks for driving up costs in a county-funded program that pays for free rides home from bars and parties for Montgomery County residents on holidays such as this St. Patrick’s Day weekend. The ArriveSafe program cost the county more than $50,000 last year to provide rides ...
Agency missed chances to stop $400K in alleged theft from state, disabled
The Ohio agency responsible for caring for people with developmental disabilities missed multiple chances to catch a man charged with pilfering more than $400,000 from the state and agency clients over several years. Authorities say this lax oversight allowed Douglas Carter to write himself checks from an account that paid ...
Millions to be spent on beautification before program discontinued
Local governments plan to spend millions of dollars of state and federal transportation money in the next five years on projects involving more aesthetics than asphalt. The Dayton Daily News identified 10 projects in a drafted regional transportation plan with a total price tag of $4.2 million that make no ...
Local public employees paid to stay home
The Dayton Daily News contacted local governments and found varying levels of tracking of employees placed on paid administrative leave. Greene County, for example, keeps no centralized record of employees placed on administrative leave. The Daily News reviewed records to find out who was being paid to stay home since ...
Gov Watch: Park officers just didn’t have time to take criminal to jail
Park officers in northeast Ohio gave a new meaning to “catch and release” when after picking up a man on a felony warrant they dropped him off on a street corner in Cleveland because they didn’t have time to book him at jail. This is according to an investigation released ...
Senate even losing money on haircuts
America’s taxpayers are paying a hefty price for the well-groomed appearance of the U.S. Senate’s members and staff. Since 1997 the Senate Hair Care shop has consistently run deficits of about $340,000 annually, a taxpayer subsidy that is growing rather than shrinking. Critics point to the salon as another example ...
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