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Stories by Josh Sweigart
541 area bridges rated obsolete
There are 541 bridges across southwest Ohio that are rated functionally obsolete by the government, state records show (See the full list and more details on each bridge here). This is the same federal rating given to the Skagit River bridge in Washington state that collapsed Thursday. Across Ohio, there ...
Husted: Voter fraud exists, not epidemic
A first-time tally of voter fraud across Ohio found 135 cases referred for criminal investigation following the 2012 presidential election, including 20 people who state officials say voted in Ohio and another state.The report, released Thursday by the Ohio Secretary of State, listed 22 referrals to law enforcement from southwest ...
State accuses 14 daycares of fraud, pulls funding
An unprecedented fraud crackdown has led Ohio officials to cut off payments to 14 child care centers since October — including one in Dayton and five in the Cincinnati area — for allegedly charging the taxpayer-funded program for children not in their care. These centers are accused of overbilling the ...
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 ...
When it comes to campus police, what happens at UD stays at UD
Investigations of theft, assault and even rape are handled by University of Dayton police who sometimes take people into custody or mete out punishment without any of the oversight expected of other police forces.Under Ohio law, private university police forces have and use broad discretion on whether to issue a ...
Beer flows, police follow in UD student ‘ghetto’
The University of Dayton issued more than 3,500 alcohol violations over a three-year period, outpacing much larger schools and raising questions about whether underage and excessive drinking is as much a part of the school as academics and basketball. The university’s disciplinary referrals for drinking trailed only Ohio State among ...
Charity for troops instead spent money on liquor, movies
The head of a local charitable organization claiming to help soldiers incarcerated for crimes allegedly committed during combat instead used donated funds at liquor stores, Redbox kiosks and for other personal purposes, the Ohio Attorney General said Friday. Riverside resident Cari Johnson, head of the charity A Dollar to Care, ...
Justice Dept. files suit against Cincinnati-based hospice chain
The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit this week against the nation’s largest for-profit hospice chain, based in Cincinnati, alleging the company wrongly charged Medicare tens of millions of dollars for care that wasn’t needed or wasn’t provided.VITAS Hospice Care has one location on Kettering Boulevard in Dayton that serves ...
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 ...
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 ...
Schmidt skirts legal bills by leaving Congress
Former U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, has avoided an order to repay roughly $500,000 that the House Ethics Committee ruled she wrongly accepted in legal fees from a Turkish-American group. The order stems from a U.S. House committee ruling that Schmidt violated House rules when she let the Turkish American ...
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, ...
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 ...
Church: Unwed, pregnant teacher fired for violating ‘morality clause’
A Kettering Catholic school teacher fired in December 2011 because of her unwed pregnancy was not discriminated against but was terminated because she violated a contract saying that she would comply with church teachings, according to a response to the former teacher’s lawsuit filed in federal court Monday.The filing by ...
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 ...
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