Ramshaw on geriatric care in state prisons, with Miller’s photo essay inside those walls; M. Smith interviews the state’s newest Supreme Court justice, Debra Lehrmann; Aguilar finds fewer Mexicans seeking asylum in the U.S; Galbraith sorts out the politics of pollution and whether our air is dangerous to breathe; Thevenot discovers authorities writing tickets for misbehavior to elementary school kids; Philpott reports on early hearing about political redistricting; Kreighbaum examines fines levied against polluters and finds they’re often smaller than the economic benefits of the infractions; and Stiles and Babalola spotlight some of our data projects from our first seven months online: The best of our best from May 31 to June 4, 2010.
Public Information Act
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Criminal Justice
Memorial Data
Since our November launch, we’ve published more than 30 web applications made from government records, including the most comprehensive public payroll database in the state, an interactive database with all 160,000 inmates serving time in the 100-plus state prison units, rankings of more than 5,800 public schools, a comprehensive list of every red-light enforcement camera in Texas, and databases with state-level fundraising and spending for members of the Legislature and statewide elected officials. Readers have viewed these pages more than 2.3 million times — more than a third of the site’s overall traffic.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Search Perry’s People
Search our updated database of Gov. Rick Perry’s more than 2,000 current appointees to state boards and commissions.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Paycheck U.
Today we’re adding another 17 agencies to our government salaries database, an extra 67,000 workers who collectively earn $2.9 billion in public payroll. The database now has records on more than 550,000 employees working at 62 of the largest state agencies, cities, universities, counties and mass-transit authorities.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: The Capitol in 3-D
The next legislative session is more than eight months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t explore the Capitol grounds — from your desk — thanks to Google Maps.
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Criminal Justice
TribBlog: Senators Get Social
With more and more state employees and elected officials using websites like Facebook and Twitter the onslaught of social media use within governmental bodies brings with it a lot of questions.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Come and Take Our Data
Records in the Texas Tribune’s data library are licensed under Creative Commons, which means you’re free to download them, remix them and republish them — so long as you comply with our simple terms.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Combs’ Open Data Center
Susan Combs’ new texastransparency.org includes an Open Data Center, where anyone can download dozens of raw data sets, much like the federal government’s data.gov.
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Criminal Justice
Data App: 5,800+ Schools Ranked
We’ve built a searchable database of public school rankings based on data collected by the Houston-based nonprofit Children At Risk. In contrast to the Texas Education Agency’s “ratings,” which rely almost entirely on the percentage of students passing the TAKS test, the rankings blend 12 different measures for elementary schools, 10 for middle schools and 14 for high schools — including TAKS results, ACT and SAT scores, AP exams, attendance rates, graduation rates and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students on every campus. How does your school stack up?
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Criminal Justice
Spies Like Us
Sign up for state agency e-mail alerts from, say, the Comptroller or TCEQ and they’ll let you know when meetings are being held and when proposed rules are ready for review. But click a link in those e-mails and they have the ability to see who looked at which rule and which web page and who didn’t look at all.
