Our Investigations
 April 29, 2012 |
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March 21, 2012A joint investigation by Teens in Print and NECIR
has discovered that personnel at 71 percent of pharmacies did not respond with the correct age or ID requirements needed to buy the emergency contraceptive pill. |
 March 25, 2012Massachusetts cities and towns are increasingly relying on a thinning pool of lottery revenues to bridge their budget gaps, deepening the shaky financial footing of many poorer communities that rely heavily on state aid, an analysis of lottery and local aid data by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found. |
 March 19, 2012Massachusetts ranks 10th in the State Integrity Investigation conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International, with a grade of C and a numerical score of 74. |
 March 20, 2012As the nation’s highest court prepares to hear oral arguments today on the constitutionality of sending juvenile killers to life in prison with no chance for parole, an unlikely trio of Bostonians is hopeful the justices move quickly to abolish the sentence. |
 February 19, 2012The record bill for last years’s outages-- that left hundreds of thousands of home and business owners in the dark across Massachusetts-- is just a symptom of potentially deeper problems with the reliability of the state’s electric grid, an investigation by the New England Center for Reporting has found. |
 February 22, 2012A state judge late today ordered the University of Massachusetts-Amherst police department to stop taping conversations in their new $12.5 million headquarters, following complaints from officers they were being secretly recorded for at least a year. |
 January 12, 2012An investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting shows that regulators in Maine and nearby states have taken months and even years to sanction facilities violating the Clean Air Act – even those the government itself has called HPVs, such as the Old Town paper mill.
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 January 29, 2012Massachusetts logged more than 75,000 in-school and out-of school suspensions in the 2010-2011 school year, a study of state education data by the New England Center for Investigative Journalism has found. |
 December 27, 2011Profound inequities have grown up in the Massachusetts juvenile justice system since passage of a 1996 law aimed at cracking down on juvenile “super predators’’ by requiring them to be tried in adult court, an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found. |
 December 16, 2011A shortage of lifesaving drugs used on ambulances and in emergency rooms is endangering patient lives and forcing some hospitals to turn to a thriving “gray market” of pharmaceutical re-sellers to obtain the scarce medications, sometimes at prices more than 1,000 percent above their original cost, The New England Center for Investigative Reporting has learned. |
 November 20, 2011For Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, the ka-ching being heard after the team’s championship season is simply icing on the cake for an extraordinary, decades-long run. With bare bones local investment, the elusive Buffalo-based billionaire and his Delaware North concessions empire have reaped hundreds of millions in profits off his Boston hockey and arena operations.
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 October 23, 2011Over the past 18 months, NStar, National Grid and other investor-owned utilities have spent more than $400,000 on lobbying against that legislation and either for or against several other industry-related bills in front of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, according to an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR).
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 September 25th, 2011Currently only a handful of Bay State communities, some of them with small police departments that don’t have enough officers to do details, use civilian flaggers on local street projects, according to a survey by The New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR).
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 August 14th, 2011Nearly half of all road and bridge projects in the state are over budget and more than one-third are not completed on time, an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) has found. The completion delays result in contract extensions that put thousands of extra work days on the state's construction calendar and millions of dollars in contractors' pockets.
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 July 23rd, 2011An analysis of boat registration and tax records has found that the state’s failure to change the system is costing cities and towns millions in potential revenue at a time when communities are struggling to fund critical programs.
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 June 19th, 2011Eighteen months after the Turnpike Authority and other agencies were rolled into the state’s new Department of Transportation to cut costs and duplication, the Patrick administration now predicts the merger will save about $2 billion over the next two decades – far less than the up to $6.5 billion in savings promised by legislative leaders. |
 May 23rd, 2011Massachusetts superfund sites are still toxic after nearly 30 Years and more than $1 billion towards chemical clean-up costs.
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 April 8th, 2011Internal government watchdogs and outside experts alike say the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is too lenient on the industry it is charged with regulating, often making decisions based on the industry’s profit margins rather than safety.
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 April 3rd, 2011 A week before opening day, 85 percent of this season’s Red Sox tickets are already sold, making the average fan's chances of getting a decent seat at face value slim. |
 April 3rd, 2011New England’s electricity consumers and nuclear plant owners have poured close to $1 billion dollars into a federal waste fund for the past three decades in order to to finance the permanent storage of thousands of tons of spent fuel from the region’s reactors. The payoff? A cavernous, empty, $11 billion hole in a Nevada mountainside. |
 March 27th, 2011In an effort to preserve profits, nuclear power-plant operators in New England are stuffing more and more spent nuclear fuel rods into already crowded storage pools that many believe are more dangerous than the reactors. |
 March 27th, 2011At a time when Massachusetts is spending nearly $100 million a year on prisoner health care – nearly double the cost from 2001—rising complaints about inadequate care are exposing taxpayers to even steeper long-term costs. |
 March 20th, 2011Across Massachusetts, mental health agencies are feeling the strain of cutbacks that have ripped nearly $85 million from the state’s Department of Mental Health budget since 2009. |
 February 27th, 2011Records from the Office for Civil Rights show that New England colleges and universities have rarely been reprimanded for their handling of sexual assault or harassment complaints.
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 February 20th, 2011From political action committees to gubernatorial candidates to county prosecutors, Massachusetts campaign cash spent in 2010 topped $77 million, paying for everything from a county club membership, tuxedo rentals, expensive car leases, makeup artists, cigars, hundreds of floral arrangements and much more. |
 January 27th, 2011 At a time when more people than ever depend on food stamps to put a meal on the table, food stamp fraud by Massachusetts retailers is going largely unchecked because limited resources and the lack of a state law have made it hard for local authorities to investigate and prosecute unscrupulous merchants. |
 December 19th, 2010 Records detail thousands of reports of safety slips in Bay State air travel. |
 November 21st, 2010 Lawmakers fail to follow through on oversight law for sheriffs. |
 October 17th, 2010 State fails to bolster oversight. |
 June 27th, 2010 Did Lowell Police rush to judgment in a case that captured the state’s attention? |
 June 17th, 2010 Racial Profiling or Free Speech? |
 May 24th, 2010 One Boston Street. A string of foreclosures. Millions in mortgage dollars lost. How did it happen? |
 April 20th, 2010 An investigation by The Christian Science Monitor and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found that individuals and businesses who are feeding a $700 million global market in offsets are often buying vague promises instead of the reductions in greenhouse gases they expect. |
 February 25th, 2010 Officials at the University of Massachusetts Amherst this week acknowledged that they allowed a student who confessed to raping a friend on campus last fall, a felony, to remain enrolled and avoid significant discipline. |
 January 2nd, 2010 Over the past decade, the Salvation Army of Massachusetts has bought at least $4 million dollars worth of spacious homes in some of the most sought after communities in the state to house its top officers, including paying $799,000 for a white Colonial in Needham for the charity’s state commander. |
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"Taxpayer Watch" series: |
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 March 23rd, 2011 An NECIR investigation results in $161,000 in fines against five state road construction companies. |
 December 3rd, 2009 The Massachusetts Highway Division has handed out millions in federal stimulus dollars for roadway construction to companies that have defrauded taxpayers, polluted the environment and have paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines for violating workplace safety laws... Read MoreThe NECIR Stimulus Project Gets National Attention See the story on CNN.com |
 November 5th, 2009 NECIR continues its "Taxpayer Watch" series updating its previous reporting on the mismanagement of the Massachusetts Division of Administrative Law Appeals to reveal that the former head of the agency, who was forced to resign, is still being paid $6300 each month to work from home. |
Massachusetts regulators lag behind rest of New England in disciplining mortgage brokers and lenders
 September 14th, 2009 Check out our investigation into why the Massachusetts Division of Banks ranks dead last among New England states when it comes to disciplining mortgage brokers and lenders. |
 August 7th, 2009 Governor Deval Patrick’s appointee to run an agency that makes critical decisions about the status of licensed professionals and the pensions of state retirees abruptly resigned last week amid a massive backlog of cases and complaints about her management of the office. |
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