Posts Tagged ‘Investigative journalism’

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TRAC!

July 7th, 2011

It’s been awhile and an update is overdue. I’m sad to say, I have just one more story in me for the Investigative Reporting Workshop – it should be coming in the next few weeks – but the good news is that I’ve found a new (work) home.

Later this summer, I’ll be starting at TRAC – which, if you’re not an investigative journalism nerd and aren’t familiar with, is short for Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a project of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. TRAC does a lot of things, but primarily they collect massive amounts of data about just what the government does everyday, and then publicizes their findings. Or, more formally, from the website:

“The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars and lawyers — with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government. On a day-to-day basis, what are the agencies and prosecutors actually doing?”

This is accomplished a lot of different ways, but a huge chunk of the data is obtained via FOIA, a personal passion of mine. I’ll be signing on for nine months as an investigative reporter, under a fellowship with Syracuse that runs through the academic year. We haven’t quite nailed down my duties, but I’ll certainly be posting updates on my new work here once I get going.

But I won’t be giving up my green reporting either – in the few months before the new job kicks off, I’ll be freelancing some stories at various places – again, I’ll be linking them here. And, to say that I have a lot of unfinished business from the Workshop is an understatement – one of my favorite things about working there was how each story spawned three or four new story ideas. And that’s not changing just because I’m leaving – I’ve got stacks of documents, tips and FOIA requests waiting to be returned, that have left me with material to write for months.

Hopefully, the stories will keep coming, and to all those who still contact me about previous stories, offer tips or want to talk about my presentations at Reynolds, keep emailing – I’ve always got time to talk.

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FOIA Real?

April 15th, 2011

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’ve got some FOIA problems – Treasury/Department of Energy and I don’t see eye-to-eye on some things. In fact, we don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, apparently, since a FOIA I filed 18 months ago has yielded nothing that I originally asked for.

I asked for all applications to the Section 1603 grant program, which I’ve reported on extensively, as well as a great deal of internal correspondence on the program and correspondence about press coverage, etc.

What I’ve gotten is a partial list of applicants (which wasn’t what I asked for) from December of 2009, and a sample application, mostly blacked out. You can view the partial list of applicants if you want to see who’s been going to the administration with their hand out, but be warned – the data is a bit dodgy: there are a lot of corporate names, LLCs, shell companies, etc., and some just downright bad data (someone filed their application with the “name” entry filled out with “not applicable” – there’s no other data because the administration has kept it under lock and key thus far.)

To make a long story short, the administration has told me it will cost at least $12,400 for copying and duplication fees to get the public documents I’ve asked for, and we’re stuck there, because that’s absurd. I don’t want copies and I don’t need copies – an electronic version of the public records is not only possible, it’s preferable -  but the administration isn’t willing to consider either of those things.

To read about my troubles in more detail, check out my latest blog post over at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

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Section 1603 now a $6.4 billion program

March 25th, 2011

A little update on the Section 1603 grant program – one of the stimulus bill’s largest and most direct programs for green energy. The ostensible purpose of the program was to create green-collar jobs for American workers by reimbursing developers of green energy projects up to 30 percent of the cost of their investment – in a direct, cash grant.

While, to a certain degree, it may have done that, it turns out the program rewarded developers of large scale renewable energy projects, and most of the jobs that were created, in the United States at least, were short-term construction jobs. Since the bulk of the companies that received the money were foreign, and the bulk of the equipment (like wind turbines) were purchased from foreign companies, who mostly do their production overseas, very few of the high-skill, high-pay manufacturing jobs that green energy development can bring ended up in the United States.  And, it turns out, quite a bit of the work on a number of the projects was done long before President Obama was ever elected, so what jobs those projects created had nothing to do with the stimulus.

The grant program was originally set to expire on Dec. 31, 2010, but when Congress passed an extension of the Bush tax cuts, they slipped in an extension of this program as well, and so the grant program continues to roll on – and continues to hand out money at a very fast clip.

It is now a $6.4 billion program, that has partially funded 2,194 projects. I’ve broken out some of the interesting facts about the program in the chart below (click for full size), or you can download the latest Section 1603 numbers yourself here (xls).


Treasury has actually released a fairly informative set of analysis updating on the progress of the program (available here in .pdf). But, a warning about the numbers you get from the Treasury site: they’ve stopped announcing recipients by project and are lumping all of a company’s awards together, so it’s increasingly difficult to tell where the money is actually ending up.

I have a FOIA filed with Treasury to try to pry even some basic information out of them about who exactly the money is going to, for what projects and what kind of jobs have been created, but I’m not holding my breath – I started the process 17 months ago and I’m still being stonewalled. Fans of FOIA fights stay tuned, I’ll be posting on that debacle soon!

And as always, if you’re a reporter or regular citizen looking to understand the grant program better, feel free to contact me.

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Powerful Democrats help Chinese energy firm chase stimulus money

January 11th, 2011

I’m a little tardy in posting this, but in early December we published my most recent story on how stimulus dollars for green energy are being spent.

Since I first wrote about the issue, one project in particular has really driven the story in the national media: a proposed Texas wind farm that backers hope to build with Chinese-built turbines. The backers also hope to cash in as much as $450 million in stimulus grants for the project – despite the fact that most labor-intensive work, and the most highly-skilled jobs, will be created in China with the manufacturing of the actual turbines.

In my latest piece, I investigated the background of the project developers – as it turns out, the American investment firm driving the project consists of four very well-connected Democrats, including two registered lobbyists. You can read the story here, on the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s website, or the version published by our partners on the project, MSNBC.com.

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Blown Away Looks Back

October 26th, 2010

My Blown Away series for the Investigative Reporting Workshop has looked at how much money the stimulus grant programs for green energy sent overseas twice now (here and here), but last week we came out with most recent entry, which took things in a slightly different direction: a close look at the administration’s own claims on how the money was spent and how many jobs were created… here in the United States.

We followed our tradition of getting some pretty big name “old-media” partners to work on the story with us and help us with distribution (we went with the Financial Times and ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer on the last two, respectively) and this time, MSNBC.com partnered with us. I worked closely with their main investigative guy, Bill Dedman, on some close edits of the story, and in the end, they ran a version of the story and so did we.

Their version, which ran with the rather provocative title, “Hot Air? White House takes credit for Bush-era wind farm jobs” sat on top of their front page for most of the morning – which is pretty great, considering it’s routinely the number one most read news site. It also racked up over 1,600 comments on their site.

Or, you can read the more modestly-headlined version that ran on our Website (and a pretty nice looking interactive map put together by our data guy, Jacob Fenton.)

For those who are here looking for more info on the subject, I would highly recommend reading a series on the effectiveness of stimulus money put together by Anne C. Mulkern. It’s a big three-parter that goes far beyond what we wrote, but definitely start with the first story, in which Anne went after a similar question that I did (coincidentally, at almost the same time I did) focusing on how much and how effective the money spent on wind farms that were completed before the stimulus ever arrived o the scene really was.

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Flood of New Stories

May 26th, 2010

We’ve been really busy at the Investigative Reporting Workshop in the past two weeks, churning out at least five new pieces, including two new pieces I contributed to.

Today, AOL’s political news site, Politics Daily, published an article I wrote on the continuing domination of the U.S. wind industry by foreign companies – both developers and manufacturers. It didn’t break anything shocking – I’ve reported quite a bit on how successful foreign-owned wind companies have been in capturing U.S. tax dollars under stimulus programs designed to create green-collar jobs in America – but what’s really cool about the piece is that it’s the first joint-collaboration between the Workshop and Politics Daily’s sharp investigative team, PD Investigations.

It’s been a lot of fun working with the investigations editors, James Grady and Bonnie Goldstein – two long-time and well-respected investigative journalists (Jim also wrote Six Days of the Condor, and then helped write the screenplay for the Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor.) Having my piece run on a site that reaches 5 million unique viewers a month is a nice perk too. Hopefully, this will be the first in a long line of collaborations between the Workshop and PD…

To read more on the collaboration and the latest figures for the stimulus grant program, check out my new post on the Workshop’s Shop Notes blog.

Speaking of collaborations… last week, I lent my old pal Manuel Bewarder a hand compiling a piece on the U.S. lobbying activities of the top 50 German companies. A German-language version of the article ran in Die Welt, a German national daily newspaper, where Manuel is a reporter, and I helped craft an English-language version for the Workshop’s Web site.

But, I’m not the only one collaborating at the Workshop…

  • In today’s Politico, our resident broadband guru John Dunbar pulled the curtain back on how Comcast has been hiring former FCC employees – including former top aides to the FCC’s loudest critics of media mergers – to lobby Congress and regulators on allowing a merger with NBC Universal
  • Earlier this week, we finally published an incredibly thorough FOIA audit of the District of Columbia’s main agencies, including some neat tools to identify which agencies failed to provide what information. It was put together by our two amazing interns from Howard University, Melissa Noel and LeeSandra Alexandre, in collaboration with the D.C. Open Government Coalition.

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Get Paid To Listen To Me Talk About Reporting On Green Issues

April 16th, 2010

Covering The Green Economy June 28-30

Seriously. The good people at the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism have asked me to come out to their place at the Walter Cronkite School at ASU to speak at a the “Covering the Green Economy” Seminar on June 28.

I’ll be talking about green energy and stimulus and the challenges of covering the biggest piece of pro-green legislation. I’m up first thing Monday morning, but the conference goes for two more days and they’re lining up a stellar cast of journalists to speak.

While there are lots of seminars and conferences for journalists, the Reynolds Center is putting this one together armed with a very generous grant and will be awarding all-expense paid fellowships to 20 local journalists. The intention is to send them back home with, “ information to help them recognize ‘greenwashing,’ track federal stimulus dollars designed to create green jobs and answer consumers’ most frequently asked questions about leading environmentally sustainable lives.”

Since I’ve started writing about green issues I’ve been shocked at how reporters (even at the highest levels of journalism) miss the boat on key issues. I’ve talked to a lot of other reporters and I’d say 90 percent of the time it’s not their fault if they don’t get it right – there’s an overwhelming combination of hype, scientific information and complexity involved in many green stories. Sorting out the truth – what really is working and what isn’t – and discerning the motives of the people who deluge your inbox with pro and anti press releases, isn’t easy.

I certainly don’t have all the answers but I’ve hit a fair number of brick walls and I’m happy to share my experiences – and the various story ideas that people email me on a fairly regular basis that I just don’t have the time or outlet to chase after.

More info on how to apply for a fellowship can be found at the Reynolds Center Web site.

how a combination of deluge of press releases in the average reporter’s inbox and general hype that swirls around

and there’s still time to apply for a fellowship to attend.

The

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$3.1 billion for 2,000 permanent jobs?

April 15th, 2010

Administration officials were on Capitol Hill yesterday to celebrate stimulus funding for green energy. However, previous Investigative Reporting Workshop articles found that as much as 80 percent of the money from a direct cash grant program that rewards developers of renewable energy facilities went to foreign companies – and they in turn were buying mostly foreign-made turbines.

But Matt Rogers, the top stimulus advisor for the Department of Energy, told members of Congress that the program has been a huge success. How huge? Cash grants totalling $3.1 billion under the program so far, he said. And, he said, the program, known as Section 1603 grants, hasn’t just been successful at giving away money, it’s been a successful job creation program.

“Tax programs are not actually required to report into federalreporting.gov, but the 1,603 recipients reported that these projects created 12,000 jobs last year, and if continued as expected would create 60,000 jobs across the life of the program,” he said.


As Rogers acknowledges, these are self-reported numbers by the very companies who are reaping billions of dollars in taxpayer money. If taken at face value, 12,000 jobs is a good thing – but going beyond face value: Rogers testified that 10,000 of those jobs created last year were in construction, and only 2,000 were in ongoing maintenance and operations. A job is a job in this economy, and wind construction jobs pay as well as any other construction job, but, on average, they only last nine to 12 months.

Assuming that all of the work done on wind farms that received cash grants under the stimulus was done last year (and not previously), many of those jobs don’t exist anymore. Knowing that much of the work happened well before the grant program started handing out money in September, and even before the stimulus bill was passed last February, it’s safe to say most of those jobs don’t exist anymore.

WAS IT REALLY THAT STIMULATING?

The wind energy industry denies the fact that much of the work was done well before the money started flowing – at issue because when the cash arrives in a recipients account it comes with no strings obligating future investment in the U.S. – and Rogers tried to downplay that fact by pointing to a review of the grant program (pdf) done by the DOE’s Berkeley National Laboratory. The report, which did find the program had some stimulative effect (and didn’t seem to be suffering too much fraud involving applicants claiming facilities worked when they did not), estimates that without this particular grant program about 2,000 megawatts of wind energy would not have been installed.

But, the same report finds, about 3,700 megawatts of wind energy were installed that would have been installed anyway.

In response to the Investigative Reporting Workshop’s articles, the report also looks into domestic job creation and found that the grant program “has supported about 62% of the maximum number of (short-term) job-years that it could have possibly hoped to support.” Putting aside the report’s assumption that 60 percent of turbines installed under the project are domestically made (even industry lobbyists only claim “nearly 50 percent” of turbine component value is made in this country), 62 percent still works out to a grade of “D”

EVEN MORE MONEY HEADED TO GREEN ENERGY

But one of the most interesting details slipped into Rogers’ testimony was not his spinning of how well the $3.1 billion grant program has worked so far, but how much bigger it’s going to get. When the program was announced Sept. 1,  Rogers and a Treasury official told reporters it was a $3 billion program – with the potential to expand if it was successful.

According to Rogers, the program is now expected to dole out, “an estimated $16 billion in renewable energy generation payments-in-lieu of tax credits.”

Cross-posted at “Shop Talk”

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Legislating “Blown Away” Away

March 4th, 2010

On March 3, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Casey sponsored an amendment to the stimulus – which they’ve dubbed the “American Renewable Energy Jobs Act” – in direct response to the investigative report “Blown Away” that I wrote for the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

The legislation – and a request that the administration impose a moratorium on all new Section 1603 renewable energy grants until the legislation is passed – have caused a certain amount of consternation among some of the lobbying groups affiliated with the industry. (Interestingly, the labor groups that would stand to gain workers, and who do their own fair share of lobbying, are mostly lining up behind Schumer.)

So what does the legislation say? It has three main points:

1.) Discretion: The way Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is currently written, there is no discretion when it comes to granting money. The text of the current law(pdf) is actually quite simple – if you built a renewable energy facility within a certain time frame, and you can prove that to the Department of Energy, the Treasury will cut you a check for 30 percent of your legitimate costs. Within seven days of being awarded a grant, the money is deposited in your account – no matter who you are or what you plan to do with it.

So, if you submit an application and you spell your name right – you get the money. The government has no choice.

The proposed amendment changes the words, “Upon application, the Secretary of the Treasury shall,” to: “Upon application, the Secretary of Treasury may…”  In theory, that one-word change would mean filling out the application correctly doesn’t guarantee a grant – if the Treasury thinks there is a good reason to stop the grant, they’d have the power.

2.) “Buy American”: One of the most common questions I get about my article is: “What about ‘Buy American’? Doesn’t that apply?” The answer is, no. The stimulus bill’s “Buy American” package requires the iron, steel and manufactured parts in a project be American-made, but applies to public works projects. These grants are actually fairly complicated financial mechanisms that are being granted in lieu of tax credits – they are in a totally different realm. And to be fair, that’s not because of a loophole written into this law – “Buy American” provisions existed in federal legislation long before the stimulus and programs like this one were exempt before.

Schumer’s proposed amendment would alter that.

The American Wind Energy Association, an industry lobbying group supported by many of the foreign companies we named in our report, has raised a concern that requiring turbines purchased with grant money through this program be 100 percent American-made would kill the industry and put as many as 50,000 out of work. If only the “Buy American” provision were that airtight. It’s not a secret that the “Buy American” provision as it exists in the ARRA is defanged – it can be sidestepped if the head of the federal agency in charge of the program determines buying American would:

  • “inconsistent with the public interest.”
  • the iron, steel or manufactured materials are, “not produced in the United States in sufficient and reasonably available quantities and of a satisfactory quality.”
  • Or, “inclusion of iron, steel, and manufactured goods pro- duced in the United States will increase the cost of the overall project by more than 25 percent.”

So, basically, if you have a really good reason why it would hurt America to buy American… or if you can’t find the product you’re looking for here in America… or it would cost a lot… you don’t have to. And agency heads have been granting waivers of the “Buy American” provisions with relative ease and quite broadly. But, when they do, they’re required to post a notice in the Federal Register.

The reality is “Buy American” doesn’t impose draconian restrictions, but it does require notification and some light explaining if you choose to sidestep it. (The full text of the ARRA’s “Buy American” provision.)

3.) Accountability: Beyond the relatively light level of accountability that would come with a “Buy American” provision, Schumer’s legislation would also require the Treasury to do some job count math before issuing a check. Instead of just checking off that the applicant has a renewable energy facility built in the appropriate time frame, the government would have to count the jobs preserved or created domestically. As I understand it from reading the proposed legislation, the result of this analysis wouldn’t alter an applicant’s ability to get money, but it would require the person signing the check to be aware of where the jobs are being created. And then report back to Congress on those numbers.

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PolitiFact Checked

February 23rd, 2010

Sarah Palin noted my reporting in her FaceBook post on stimulus last week – or at least an Investor’s Business Daily editorial that cited my article. My reporting on the subject of stimulus dollars for green energy has found that the administration and wind industry lobbyists haven’t been entirely upfront about where American tax dollars for green energy are ending up – but Palin didn’t quite get it right either. In her post, she wrote:

“We were promised it would provide ‘green jobs’ for Americans, but 80% of the $2 billion they spent on alternative energy went to purchase wind turbines built in China!”

Almost. Eighty percent of roughly $2 billion has gone to foreign companies – most of it to American subsidiaries of foreign companies involved in the development of wind farms here in the United States. Some of it also went to subsidiaries of foreign developers of geothermal plants. It’s entirely possible, and in fact almost certain, that more went overseas if you looked into the ownership of all the other forms of renewable energy.

Many of those foreign-owned wind farm developers bought foreign-built turbines – we counted 1,219 of 1,807 erected under the program – and some of those turbines were partly built with Chinese components, but no Chinese turbine maker is responsible for any of the turbines that received funding.

I could go on in greater detail, but, thankfully, Pulitzer Prize winning Web site PolitiFact, also took notice of Palin’s post. They fact-checked her statement – and much of my reporting – and they clear the matter up in great detail (and with a great deal of credibility) in an item posted today.

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