NECIR reports on mismanagement at the Massachusetts Division of Administrative Law Appeals kicks off our series entitled “Taxpayer Watch,” a project aimed at examining the productivity, effectiveness, transparency and taxpayer service at New England government agencies. Each semester, a team of NECIR investigative reporting students will spend several months probing the performance of state and municipal agencies and produce stories for print, broadcast and web news outlets. Source material for all our findings such as databases, internal agency documents and even denials of public records requests will be made public as part of the project on our website.

We need your help. Ambitious citizen journalists are encouraged to contact NECIR with tips on these agencies and will have an opportunity to participate in the reporting and write about our findings on the “Citizen Muckrakers” section of our website. Please send in your story ideas and reporting leads to citizenmuckrakers@necir-bu.org. We value the input from citizens and taxpayers in keeping an eye on public funds being spent in New England.

Thanks,

NECIR staff