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by Molly Parker, The Southern Illinoisan

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Southern Illinoisian. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Do you have a story about DCFS investigations? Do you live in southern or central Illinois? We want to hear from you for future stories.

I was raised on a rural route at the edge of the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. I didn’t know a single rich person growing up; we were all varying degrees of middle-class and poor. Still, I knew at a young age that some of the kids at my school went without some of the most basic necessities, let alone such extras as a new outfit from Walmart to start the school year. But it would be years before I fully realized the harshness of rural poverty — in particular, the ways isolation exacerbates financial challenges, as well as the lack of medical and social service providers and long distances necessary to travel to find them, often without any form of reliable public transportation. When poverty persists in a region, other problems take root.

After spending several years reporting in other states, in 2014 I returned to the region I had long called home. Since then, I’ve heard about how child abuse rates are higher in rural Southern Illinois than any other part of the state. And I wondered why these trends persist.

A year ago, ProPublica’s Vernal Coleman and Haru Coryne and I began looking for answers, which led to the story we published on Friday. Two findings, in particular, stood out to me: how often the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services’ staff returned to the same homes and how most of these families are investigated repeatedly not for abuse but for neglect, accused of failing to provide adequate food, shelter or supervision, or of exposing their children to dangerous situations, among other things. Our analysis found that both of these problems exist statewide. But the trends were most troublesome in Southern Illinois.

This may seem intuitive, given the region’s poverty. Many people living with low incomes provide adequately for their children despite their financial struggles, but poverty is widely considered a risk factor for neglect because of the added stressors it places upon a family. “In more situations than not, if you dig deep enough behind what is causing the neglect reports, poverty is a problem,” said Jerry Milner, a longtime child welfare official who led the Children’s Bureau under the Trump administration. “It goes unchecked, and then other things start happening in the lives of kids and families that may lead to something more serious.”

There’s a fresh conversation taking place in national child welfare circles about whether there’s a better way to help families facing repeated neglect allegations. Advocates for reform say direct financial aid and a robust array of community-based social services would benefit most far more than investigations that seek to determine fault, which can result in child removals to foster care. But politicians at the federal level have resisted investing in the kinds of changes the child welfare system needs, Milner said.

That is, in part, because “abuse and neglect” are so often mentioned in the same breath, making it easy to lose sight of the fact that they are not the same thing. “We’ve done a disservice in America by conflating the two,” said Jess McDonald, who headed DCFS during a tumultuous time in the 1990s, when Illinois’ foster care numbers reached an all-time high. As a result, “it makes you less sympathetic to these families cycling through neglect investigations.”

DCFS and child welfare agencies across the nation were primarily established to police abuse, and the tools they have at their disposal favor investigations and removals of children into foster care over family stabilization. Illinois, like other states, does have a program to keep families together, offering support services to parents when it deems it safe for the kids to remain in the home. But as even DCFS acknowledged to us, in Southern Illinois, those resources are fewer and farther between than in other parts of the state.

In a statement to The Southern and ProPublica, DCFS said that Illinois’ funding challenges, particularly during the administration of former Gov. Bruce Rauner, have resulted in fewer social service providers in the areas where they’re most needed. “I think it’s important for us to talk about the lack of resources in communities and the negative outcomes when you don’t have those resources,” DCFS director Marc Smith said in an interview. (Multiple attempts to reach Rauner for comment were not successful.)

What we found traveling across Southern Illinois over the past year, talking with families and the experts who work inside the system, is that parents who are repeatedly investigated for neglect often live in poverty, and many are struggling to provide for their children while dealing with weighty stressors on their lives, including addiction, depression or domestic violence. For too many, these cycles are generational.

One afternoon last fall, I sat in the kitchen with a Carterville mother as she prepared pizza rolls for her two children. She told me about how she’d fallen into a deep depression and turned to meth after her older child died in a car accident. She said she had been married as a young teenager and is a survivor of domestic violence. Despite DCFS’s repeated involvement in her life, she told me, she had yet to connect to the therapeutic help she needed. I met another mother from Dongola whose children were taken after a DCFS investigator found her home severely damaged by a leaky roof. The mother had made pleas to family and friends for help with fixing it dating back two years on her Facebook page.

Having given birth to twins last year, I am awash with a fresh wave of empathy for struggling, tired, overwhelmed parents. I love my children dearly, but when you’re sleep deprived and inexperienced, some days are long and hard — especially when my children are sick and the crying feels ceaseless, or when I’m stressed about bills and work obligations I can’t always meet. I don’t know how I would manage without a husband, a village of family and friends, a supportive workplace and enough money to hire babysitters on occasion so I have room to breathe.

So many of the parents I interviewed for this story have none of these luxuries.

Though we talked with many people, we centered our story on Alan Schott and his two daughters. Schott and the girls’ mother had been investigated at least 10 times. DCFS only ever substantiated claims of neglect against the family, and the girls were removed three times — and returned home three times as well. They are living with their father and great-grandmother today.

We chose to focus our story on the Schott family for a particular reason. News stories about child welfare tend to stake out one of two positions: They take agencies like DCFS to task for missing numerous and seemingly obvious red flags leading to a child’s death; or they draw attention to cases where children have been unnecessarily removed. Both of those situations are unfortunate, and deserving of attention.

But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking: What does DCFS do about cases where departmental and parental shortcomings collide in a gray area? These types of cases, though exceedingly typical, don’t receive the public policy attention they deserve.

There often aren’t any easy answers. But without adequate resources, DCFS is left with two bad options: either allowing chronic problems inside a home to fester to the point of crisis; or taking children from their families. Both options tear at the fabric of our communities. As the number of children in foster care across Southern Illinois has reached levels unseen for at least three decades, there’s urgency to ask these questions.

Help Us Investigate Child Welfare Services in Illinois

If you’ve recently been the subject of Illinois DCFS investigations, or had your children placed into foster care, we’re interested in talking to you about what was helpful that the system offered, and what wasn’t. Filling out our short questionnaire will help us do more reporting that matters to this community. We won’t be able to respond to everyone who reaches out, but we promise to read everything you submit. We take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting, and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

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Vernal Coleman and Haru Coryne contributed reporting. Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

by Molly Parker for The Southern Illinoisan and Vernal Coleman and Haru Coryne, ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Do you have a story about DCFS investigations? Do you live in southern or central Illinois? We want to hear from you for future stories.

On a September afternoon last year, a state child welfare investigator drove into Alto Pass, a village in the rolling hills of Southern Illinois, to the home Alan Schott shared with his then-girlfriend and his two daughters. Someone had called the state’s child abuse hotline, claiming that Schott was neglecting the girls.

Though they were only 6 and 8, the girls knew enough to know why the investigator was at the door. The neglect allegation was at least the 10th report made to the state that Schott or the girls’ mother, who Schott had split up with several years before, was failing to properly care for them.

Schott’s elder daughter pleaded with her dad to “show them a couple things,” according to a recording he made of the encounter. “Just show them that we have electric. Here, I’ll show you that we have electric.”

Schott knew why the investigator was there, too. At 12, he had been taken from his parents and placed in foster care with relatives, including his grandmother; he didn’t return home for about two years. And though, with each of his daughters’ births, he had vowed to not let them fall into the child welfare system, by the time the investigator from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services came that day, the girls had already spent more than 2 1/2 years in foster care, and had only been back with their father for six months.

The investigator told Schott that there were concerns he was using methamphetamine, and school officials said his daughters were showing up to school dirty, according to court records. When he refused to let the investigator into the home or take a drug test — both of which, by state law, he is allowed to decline to do — she called the sheriff’s office for help.

Then she took the girls into temporary custody, which is within the discretion of DCFS investigators, within certain guidelines, to do. They were placed into foster care with Schott’s grandmother, the same woman who had cared for him when DCFS determined that his own parents could not, and who had cared for his girls when they had been placed in foster care before.

“I thought you guys were supposed to be for the kids, and for the families, but all you guys do is take them apart,” a frustrated Schott told the investigator. His elder daughter echoed: “Yeah, that’s all you do. That’s all you ever do.”

Alan Schott sits in his daughters’ bedroom at his ex-girlfriend’s home in Alto Pass, Illinois. Schott’s daughters, now ages 7 and 8, were living with the couple until they were taken by Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in September 2021. (Whitney Curtis for Propublica)

The Schotts are among thousands of families across Illinois who have moved in and out of the child welfare system — repeatedly investigated but often without getting the help they need to stabilize their lives. From January 2018 through June 2020, 33% of all confirmed reports of child maltreatment — about 17,500 cases — involved households with at least two previous investigations, according to DCFS investigative case data obtained and analyzed by The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica.

In far southern and southeastern Illinois, the rural area marked by poverty and industry decline that the Schotts have long called home, the rate of repeat investigations was 42%, the highest in the state. The region is served by DCFS's Marion office and its satellite offices.

Seen one way, those numbers aren’t surprising: They show that many families that come to the attention of DCFS continue to struggle. But among child welfare officials and academics, the volume of repeat cases is a sign that the system is failing to live up to its mission not only to protect children, but to “increase their families’ capacity to safely care for them.” The pattern of repeated investigations involving a single family or child victim is called “recurrence.”

For decades, child welfare officials across the country have used recurrence rates as an indicator of an agency’s performance. Illinois has long had one of the highest recurrence rates in the nation, according to comparative data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (The most recent data available is for fiscal 2019.) The data measures confirmed maltreatment that recurs within six months, though both DCFS and the federal government note that there are caveats to the state-by-state comparisons because of differences in how maltreatment is defined and what circumstances prompt an investigation.

Recurrence is complex, driven by a variety of factors. But child welfare experts and families tied up in multiple investigations said DCFS’s resources aren’t adequate. Parents say that classes often aren’t helpful, drug counseling and mental health services can be hard to find, and direct financial aid is insufficient. And those problems have persisted for years.

For the past four years, DCFS’ inspector general, its internal watchdog, has called on the agency to ensure that families it has previously investigated are receiving the help they need. The U.S. Children’s Bureau, which provides funding and oversight to DCFS, has required voluminous corrective plans from DCFS detailing how it intends to improve child safety following investigations. The Illinois General Assembly and governor’s office have also pushed for improvement. When he took office in 2019, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered a review of the agency’s chief program intended to stabilize families and prevent recurrence, known as Intact Family Services, and promised to “change the direction of DCFS.”

Despite that pledge, Illinois’ recurrence rate reached a 10-year high in fiscal 2020, according to University of Illinois researchers, who monitor DCFS under the terms of a decades-old consent decree intended to improve the department’s handling of children in its care. DCFS itself acknowledged three times in its most recent strategic plan that its recurrence rates are “unacceptable.”

“It should be a wake-up call for all of us that the same families are experiencing the same difficulties over and over again,” said Jerry Milner, a longtime advocate for better child welfare policies and former associate commissioner of the U.S. Children’s Bureau in the Trump administration.

“Child welfare is going out, nothing is changing and we’ve got the same set of circumstances,” Milner added. “That should be a strong signal for us to look a lot deeper into what is happening.”

State Sen. Julie Morrison, a Democrat from Lake Forest, suggested the problem is largely invisible to lawmakers. She said the only reports legislators receive on families investigated on multiple occasions relate to child deaths; they don’t get information about the huge volume of repeat neglect investigations. She called that dearth of information a “glaring problem.”

DCFS director Marc Smith said Illinois’ mandates for professionals such as teachers and social workers to report maltreatment accusations are “very aggressive,” leading to increases in confirmed cases of abuse. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the problem, saying the agency will do everything it can to “reduce the recurrence abuse and neglect rate.”

Smith, a Pritzker appointee, emphasized that grappling with the poverty, unemployment and substance abuse that drive neglect is not DCFS’ task alone. He said DCFS, its sister human service agencies and the nonprofit organizations that share in the challenge have faced funding issues in large part because of Illinois’ persistent budget turmoil, particularly during the administration of Pritzker’s predecessor, Bruce Rauner.

Child welfare advocates say that federal and state lawmakers have failed to make more funding available to help families with chronic troubles, and in recent years the department has turned to the default tool for child welfare agencies: removing children from struggling families. That has fueled a 120% surge in the number of children in foster care across the Marion service area over the past decade, even as the total child population in the area has declined. Overall, when children enter foster care in Illinois, they linger there longer than anywhere else in the nation.

“Unacceptable” Rates of Recurrence

For two decades, DCFS has been called out for failing to address how often families reenter the child welfare system.

Department of Health and Human Services’s Children’s Bureau Federal performance reviews in 2003, 2010 and 2018 found that Illinois had failed to meet national goals regarding repeat child maltreatment.

Illinois’ DCFS In its 2020-2024 Child and Family Services Plan, the agency itself found that children and families “experience an unacceptable rate of recurrence of maltreatment and maltreatment in care that has been increasing over time.”

Illinois Auditor General In 2019, an audit ordered by the legislature identified numerous performance lapses that could contribute to recurrence. The 2021 follow-up found that DCFS had failed to implement several of the 13 recommendations from the 2019 audit.

University of Chicago In a May 2019 review ordered by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, researchers at the University of Chicago found that DCFS’s Intact Family Services program, which the state relies on to stabilize troubled families, was hampered by frequent policy shifts, miscommunication and insufficient follow-up for “high-risk” cases.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The school’s Children and Family Research Center, which monitors the agency’s performance under a federal consent decree, reported that Illinois’ recurrence rate reached a new peak of more than 14% in fiscal 2020, following nearly a decade of steady increases.

DCFS officials said in a statement that the agency has taken steps to address long-standing issues, including streamlining how allegations are processed, making faster assessments of cases and focusing on staffing. “We feel very confident that we've made a lot of adjustments to make sure that the services that our families get are thoughtful — that our case workers are empowered to do as much as they can in the environment in which they're working with families,” said DCFS Director Marc Smith. “I feel confident that progress is being made.”

So when a DCFS investigator showed up at Schott’s door in September to again try to determine if he was neglecting his children, there was a good chance they would return to foster care. Their journey through the child welfare system raises an important question: For all the attention DCFS has given this family — and the thousands of other families facing intractable problems such as poverty, joblessness and substance abuse — are his daughters any closer to finding stability than when the agency first entered their lives?

A Family Under Stress

Cases that lead to a child’s death have always made headlines and sent shock waves through the child welfare system. But beyond those headlines are far more children who survive chronic neglect, children deprived of the basic care a parent or caregiver is expected to provide.

“We chronicle the numbers of dead kids. We talk about them: So many kids died at the hands of their parents because of abuse and neglect. Those numbers are out there, and they’re horrific,” said Morrison, who chairs the Senate’s Health Committee. “But it’s the kids you’re talking about, who are surviving, that we fail to see.” After years of living in trauma, she added, those children leave home “not the people who they have the right to be.”

And at that point, she said, “now, you’ve got an adult who we’re looking at trying to help recover.”

At 34, Schott has dark blond hair, a mustache and beard, and big aspirations. He speaks softly, sometimes mumbling, and talks often about how he’d like to one day go to law school to help other parents caught in the child welfare system. But he has also struggled to get up in the morning in time to get his daughters on the school bus, forgotten appointments and cycled through low-wage jobs and periods of unemployment.

Schott’s youth was not easy. By his senior year in high school, he dropped out and spiraled into depression and addiction. His father was arrested on multiple occasions, including for making methamphetamine, and spent time in federal prison. At 19, Schott was arrested for drunken driving, and he subsequently racked up some two dozen additional criminal charges and several misdemeanor convictions, most of them for marijuana possession. As a young adult, “I was just drinking myself to death,” he said.

He was at a bar when he met the woman who would become the mother of his children. Although numerous attempts to reach her for this article, including through family and friends, were unsuccessful, public records paint a little bit of a portrait of her. She left school in the 6th grade, though she later got her GED and took courses to become a dental technician, court records show. She told a probation officer she first used marijuana in elementary school, and she has used methamphetamine and opiates. She has been arrested on numerous occasions and has convictions for such offenses as burglary, armed robbery and possession of methamphetamine. She had three children before she met Schott; in the years since they got together, the pair have split up and reconciled several times, but they have not been a couple for several years.

When their first child arrived in 2013, Schott vowed to be a good father and stay out of trouble. “I ain’t never felt love like that before,” he said. But a year later, the baby and her half-siblings were placed in foster care following a DCFS investigation that began when one of the children, then 5, was spotted riding her bike unsupervised with a 3-year-old friend a half-mile from home, according to court records. The children were returned to their parents a few months later, Schott said, and his second daughter was born shortly after.

Children’s bikes are stacked in the yard of the home where Schott’s girls were living when they were removed in September 2021. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

Over the next four years, DCFS investigated the family three more times for various allegations, including that the couple engaged in explosive fights in front of their daughters, provided inadequate supervision and used drugs, according to DCFS files that Schott obtained and shared with The Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica. (The files do not disclose who made the allegations to DCFS; the anonymity of people who make them is protected by Illinois law.)

DCFS did not substantiate those neglect claims. But that doesn’t mean the family wasn’t struggling. They were living in poverty with unstable housing and unreliable transportation.

In many ways, the child welfare system isn’t set up well to deal with families that cycle through investigations, often for neglect. Although neglect is frequently reported alongside physical or sexual abuse, 65% of substantiated repeat child maltreatment reports against families in Illinois involved neglect alone, according to a ProPublica analysis of case data from 2018 through mid-2020.

Neglect covers a broad range of conditions, including children being left at home alone while both parents are working; food or housing insecurity; failure to take children to the doctor’s office; substance addiction; or exposing children indirectly to violence.

Often, when an allegation of neglect is called in, the agency starts an investigation. Over the past three fiscal years, DCFS investigated about 254,500 cases. In about 23,000 of those cases, the allegations included forms of neglect that Illinois law considers potentially tied to poverty: inadequate food, clothing or shelter or environmental neglect.

If DCFS doesn’t remove the children, agency officials typically offer help to families through its Intact Family Services program, which can include substance and mental health counseling, domestic violence prevention programs and parenting classes. But families are not required to avail themselves of those services unless ordered to by a court, and the vast majority of families participate in no services at all — whether because they decline to use them or because the services aren’t available.

Since 2013, about 70% of the tens of thousands of Illinois children identified by DCFS each year as victims of abuse or neglect went without DCFS services, according to data compiled by the University of Illinois’ Children and Family Research Center. That’s in part, child welfare experts said, because child protective services have little to offer when poverty drives so many of a family’s troubles.

“When children aren’t receiving what they need, and it’s a neglect concern related to a family’s lack of resources, is child protection really the right response? How is that a helpful response?” asked Melissa Staas, a supervisory attorney with the Children and Families Practice Group at Legal Aid Chicago. “A better response is to support the family in accessing the resources they need.”

Schott and his family encountered these shortcomings firsthand, entering into cycles of investigations without effective interventions. (DCFS declined to discuss the family’s situation in depth, citing privacy concerns, although Schott had provided a waiver allowing it to talk to reporters about the family; the agency confirmed some basic facts about their case history.)

In the fall of 2018, when the younger girls were living with their mother, the older of the two missed several days of kindergarten, prompting a visit by school officials. When no one came to the door, the educators called the sheriff’s office for help, according to a deputy’s report. The responding deputy wrote that the interior of the home, a trailer that sat atop a hill overlooking a sewage lagoon in rural Jackson County, was covered in so much debris he had trouble walking around.

The trailer had two bathtubs — one containing food scraps, the other piled high with dirty clothes. The stove appeared to be the only source of heat, while parts of the trailer floor had rotted out. Records show DCFS later found that the girls’ mother had failed to provide adequate food and shelter.

DCFS took the girls into protective custody, then placed them with Schott’s grandmother, Peggy Schott, for the first time.

Peggy Schott sits in her living room. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica) An Agency Mismatched

In Southern Illinois, the Schott story isn’t unique. A 2020 report found that in the Marion service area, which covers 27 rural counties in Southern Illinois, “performance has been consistently poor” around recurrence for at least seven years. Over a five-year period, from 2016 through 2020, about 19% of children identified by DCFS as victims of abuse or neglect were the subject of a confirmed maltreatment investigation again within a year, according to University of Illinois data, compared with about 13% statewide. These figures likely underestimate the scope of the problem, as they don’t capture families that, though their repeat investigations were ruled to be unsubstantiated, still face challenges in the home.

The lack of support for parents in the region is one reason. Mental health counseling and other services often have waitlists or require traveling long distances to appointments, said state Sen. Terri Bryant, a Murphysboro Republican, who sits on a legislative subcommittee focused on child welfare. “A lot of it is the absolute inability to get the people down here the services that they need,” she said.

Many regional social service providers that DCFS sends parents to for help “don’t have the doctoral-level therapists with the deep experience that some of these families desperately need,” said Joanna Wells, a clinical associate professor and director of the Southern Illinois University School of Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic, which provides legal services to children in Jackson County.

One afternoon late last year, a woman appeared in court in Union County, which sits just south of Jackson County. Her children had been placed in foster care, and she’d been given a list of requirements she had to meet to get them back. Her lawyer told a judge the woman had completed all but one task: a class for parents whose children had been exposed to trauma. When asked why that task remained incomplete, the woman’s caseworker told the judge that the class was no longer offered. When it had been available, it was held 100 miles from where the mother lived.

“We need to have a service she can actually complete,” the judge said. Still, the judge declined to return the children to their mother, setting a next hearing for about five months later. The children, meantime, remained in foster care.

Peggy Schott’s house, where Alan Schott’s daughters were placed in foster care (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

Because of the depth of struggles many parents face, and the shortcomings of the system in the Southern Illinois region designed to address them, Wells said, “most cases do not close successfully.”

DCFS acknowledged families it deals with face greater challenges in some parts of the state, including Southern Illinois: Parents and caregivers in these underserved areas have fewer options for services, and often have to travel farther to take advantage of them. These regions tend to have higher rates of poverty, unemployment and drug use.

Smith, the DCFS director, tied those challenges directly to “aggressive” funding cuts to service programs, most recently during the Rauner administration. “Because those social services don’t exist in the community, an outcome of that is engagement with DCFS,” he said.

“We have to figure out, as a state, how do we get more resources in communities that are poor, that are rural, that are isolated and don’t have the support they need?” Smith said.

Multiple attempts to reach Rauner were unsuccessful.

Schott dealt with the fallout of those shortcomings. When DCFS took his girls from their mother’s home in 2018, he was in the middle of a three-week stint in jail connected to old charges for marijuana possession and DUI and couldn’t come up with $950 for bail. He figured he wouldn’t have any difficulty getting them back once he was released.

That wasn’t how it would go. With the girls placed in foster care after they were removed from their mother’s trailer, he became embroiled in court proceedings that would stretch on for 2 1/2 years as he worked to show he was fit to parent them. Though the process starts with DCFS, decisions about when to place children in foster care and when to return them are made by a judge.

Schott said that while his case wound its way through the legal system, he got little help from DCFS or Caritas Family Solutions, the private agency the state contracted with to manage the family’s case, in meeting the requirements imposed by the court for getting his daughters back. He was obligated to attend therapy, take parenting classes, submit to random drug tests and undergo a substance abuse assessment; the assessment from a drug treatment provider did not recommend further services, court records show. He was expected to find a job and a place to live; he had been living with his grandmother, but was no longer allowed to stay with her once the girls were placed in foster care there.

DCFS can provide families with up to $800 — or $2,400 with special permission from DCFS supervisors — in one-time emergency cash assistance to help with basic needs such as housing deposits, utilities and basic appliances when poverty conditions threaten to result in the removal of children or delay a family’s reunification. A 1991 consent decree that specifically addressed the issue of DCFS removing children into foster care because of poverty led to the creation of this cash assistance fund for families. That consent decree requires the agency to make reasonable efforts to remedy poverty-related conditions that are a factor in a parent retaining or regaining custody of their children.

Schott said DCFS never provided him or his children’s mother with cash assistance. “I asked them about helping her or helping me, either one, and they never helped us with anything,” he said.

DCFS confirmed that Schott qualified for the funding and never got it. The agency said Schott declined the help, telling his Caritas caseworker “he was employed and didn’t need any assistance.” Schott denied that he declined the help.

It is difficult to measure how many eligible families go without financial aid from the department, but data suggests that spending is not keeping up with need. From fiscal 2019 through 2021, DCFS closed investigations of roughly 19,400 families for poverty-related neglect. During that time, the department said it approved about 8,900 families for direct financial assistance. Families can qualify for funding even if neglect allegations against them are not substantiated. DCFS officials provided statistics showing that under Pritzker, the number of families in the Marion service area receiving financial aid has increased.

Schott’s aunt let him move into a vacant house she owns, about half a mile from where the girls were living with their great-grandmother on the outskirts of Murphysboro. But it needed renovations before DCFS would allow the girls to visit or move in, and he didn’t have a lot of time or money to make them.

He also didn’t own a reliable vehicle. He’d picked up work at a pasta manufacturing plant in Steeleville, 30 miles away from Murphysboro. To get there, he had to catch a van with other employees, which he said cost him about $60 a week. Getting to all of his appointments to fulfill the court’s orders required hitching rides and borrowing cars.

He also had to schedule his work shifts around in-person therapy and parenting classes, which met three times weekly in the early months of his case. He’d already taken the parenting class once before, when the children were previously in foster care, but he tried to make the best of it. “You can always learn things from what they’re trying to teach you,” he said.

But the drug test requirements made his schedule that much more hectic. At the beginning of his case, Schott said, the phone calls came about once a month, and they came without warning. When he was summoned, he’d have to find a way to leave work early and travel to Carbondale, about 40 miles away.

Schott completed the bulk of court-ordered obligations within about a year of his girls entering foster care. The court had set a goal of returning the Schott children to their parents within 12 months, so Schott figured he was close to getting them back.

But he wasn’t close. His daughters spent another 18 months — 30 months altogether — in foster care before he regained custody. This is not atypical. For the roughly 4,600 Illinois children exiting foster care in fiscal 2019, the latest year for which federal data is available, the median length of stay in the state’s custody was 31 months. That is far longer than any other state or district in the nation: Washington, D.C., was next at 21 months, and then Alaska at 20.

DCFS’s Interventions on Behalf of the Schott Girls:

• Number of investigations: at least 10
• Number of times children were removed to foster care: 3
• Number of times they were returned to the family: 3

In March 2021, the judge in the Schott family’s case terminated the mother’s parental rights, ruling she had failed to make reasonable progress toward the completion of mandated services. The judge returned the girls to Schott, starting with a two-month trial period. Schott remembers being filled with pride.

“I cried because that judge has been on my ass ever since I was 19 and got that DUI and stuff. I mean, she’s really been on my ass,” Schott said. “I never expected to hear that woman say she was proud of me or want to shake my hand or none of that. And that’s what she did at that court date.”

A Hard Transition

For Schott and scores of other parents, regaining custody marks a critical point in the life of their case. It’s a moment that “requires additional support from the agency, not less,” said DCFS officials in a recent report about its efforts to curb its recurrence rates.

But in that same report, the agency acknowledged that it doesn’t always give that transition the attention it deserves. “Returning children to parents also requires a significant amount of preparation,” the report said, “and the data suggest that is not happening, with an observed high degree of need for the parents and children, and the maltreatment happening soon after reunification.”

Schott said the girls’ return to his home didn’t come with much help. His caseworker met with him a few times; Schott said the meetings mostly involved assessments of his home and didn’t delve into the more routine, day-to-day challenges of parenting he encountered.

Schott found the transition difficult. He had little experience fixing his daughters’ hair or picking out their clothes for school in the morning. Because he routinely stayed up late, he had a hard time waking up in time to get them ready for school.

Books and DVDs belonging to Schott’s daughters sit on a shelf in their bedroom at Schott’s ex-girlfriend’s home. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

In late March 2021, just two weeks after the girls returned to Schott’s care, DCFS received a call that they were coming to school dirty. On the morning the report was made, the girls hadn’t shown up for school at all, and someone had gone to their home to wake everyone up, the agency was told. DCFS launched an investigation and learned of additional troubles.

The girls were frequently missing school, and when they did arrive, they were often late, the older girl without her glasses and backpack. Her schoolwork and behavior began slipping, it was reported to the agency. One of the girls told the investigator that the house had no hot water. Schott told DCFS that his hot water heater had broken and he was working to get a new one.

Asked about its response to the Schott’s family, Caritas directed all questions to DCFS. DCFS did not answer a question about what help was offered to the family during the transition, other than to say Caritas was providing unspecified services at the time of the investigation. Schott eventually obtained a water heater on his own, according to DCFS.

Schott’s Caritas caseworker told the investigator she visited the house regularly, and, while cluttered, it was not a safety risk for the children. She reported that the family was poor but said that she did not have other concerns. She said that, as for the father, he was getting a chance to raise his daughters. DCFS eventually determined that the allegation was “unfounded.”

Meanwhile, the court awarded Schott full custody in May and closed his case. In court records, his caseworker noted as strengths that he was willing to participate in recommended services to improve his parenting, that he had provided for a safe place for them to live together and that he “loves his children.”

Four months later — the day his daughter tried to show investigators that the electricity worked — DCFS removed the girls, sending them back to their great-grandmother Peggy’s. In a statement, DCFS said that the investigator made the decision to place the children into temporary protective custody because the investigator had been unable to observe the home or confirm that Schott was not using drugs. When Schott received the list of what he would have to do to get his children back, it was almost identical to the one he had just completed.

It’s the kind of situation that frustrates Jackson County State’s Attorney Joseph A. Cervantez, whose office petitions the court to place a child in foster care if it agrees with DCFS’s recommendation to do so. He said the system offers “the same thing over and over again. Whether there are good results or bad results, it continues to be the same.”

A Swing Toward Removals

In Illinois, as elsewhere, child welfare officials repeatedly turn to placing children in foster care to solve persistent problems in their homes. Removals peaked in fiscal 1997, when the state had more than 51,000 children in foster care. Those numbers fell dramatically over the following years and bottomed out in 2017, when the tally dropped to 14,000. Today, about 19,500 children live in foster care — the highest since 2002. Part of the issue is that calls to the agency’s hotline have shot up, leading to more investigations. But the foster care population has grown faster than the number of substantiated maltreatment investigations, suggesting that the response to maltreatment is swinging toward removing kids from their parents’ custody and placing them in foster care.

Unlike in the 1990s when Chicago and Cook County drove the state’s high foster care rates, prompting lawsuits against DCFS and reforms, increases over the past five years have been largely driven by less-populated regions across central and southern Illinois, and drawn far less attention.

Over the past few years, children from the Marion service area were placed into foster care at a rate four times higher than in Cook County relative to their share of the population. Across Illinois, 91% of children entered foster care for reasons of neglect rather than abuse in 2020, according to Child Trends, a national research organization that analyzes state child welfare data reported to the federal government.

The Illinois child welfare system, which includes DCFS, regional courts and social service providers, is struggling to manage the volume of new cases. A reporter’s observation of more than 10 hours of juvenile court in two Southern Illinois counties offered a glimpse into the upheaval. The reporter heard multiple stories that showed the system sagging under the strain of removals, including one child sleeping in a service provider’s office and another in a foster family’s bathroom due to a shortage of available foster care placements.

To DCFS’ Smith, the increasing removals are just one byproduct of rising DCFS engagement with families, and a “lagging indicator” of inadequate service options for families in need. Still, he stressed that the agency works hard to keep families together, petitioning courts to order kids removed from their homes into foster care only when there is an “urgent and immediate necessity.”

The burden of caring for children in the child welfare system frequently falls to relatives, who are often the first choice to serve as foster parents.

In Schott’s case, that role fell to Peggy Schott, an 87-year-old widow and Army veteran who had worked for three decades as a forklift driver. Her little white house is decorated with figurines outside, and framed pictures of family and Jesus Christ inside. It often smells of something she’s cooking. When the girls moved in with her, she placed a tiny table with two chairs for them in her kitchen.

But only weeks after they arrived, DCFS bounced them to another foster care home. The decision to place them with people who were not relatives caught the family by surprise.

On a Monday in early November, a Caritas caseworker called Peggy Schott to let her know the girls could no longer live with her. Schott had allowed her grandson to see his daughters without a Caritas worker present, as the agency required, according to a follow-up letter from DCFS explaining the move. Alan Schott had visited on a day when he and his grandmother had expected the caseworker to be there, and when she arrived the next day, Peggy Schott volunteered the information that her grandson had visited — evidence, she later said, that it had been an innocent mistake. She recalled the hour or so he spent with the girls as uneventful. The four of them had dinner together, and Alan Schott helped his daughters with their homework.

She could also point to positive reviews of her earlier care for the girls. Caseworkers had described her as a stable force in their lives. She made sure they went to school, were seen by doctors and attended therapy for emotional issues. Regardless, the caseworker told her someone would pick them up Friday to drive them to their new placement.

Peggy Schott had planned to keep the girls home from school that day and tell them what was going to happen. She hoped they could spend their final hours together doing something fun as a family. But while the girls were at school on Wednesday, a Caritas caseworker called and said she would pick them up at school. Someone would come by later to get their belongings.

Peggy Schott sits in the bedroom of one of her great-granddaughters. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

“It just upsets me because they’re just hurting those girls more and more,” Peggy Schott said that day, upon learning of the change of plans. “They’ve been through so much. And I mean, right now, they’re so mixed up. I just can’t comprehend what this is doing to those girls.”

She called the school, pleading to talk to the girls, or for someone to pass along the message to them that this wasn’t her decision. After she’d placed multiple frantic calls, a school official connected her to her younger great-granddaughter. “Grandma loves you and I’m going to miss you,” she told her on the phone. “But they’re going to take you away from me.” “OK,” a tiny, quavering voice answered back, the only word the child could muster before hanging up the phone.

The burden of breaking the news to the older child fell to her teacher. When Peggy Schott reached her other great-granddaughter, the girl bellowed between sobs, “Where are we going?” She didn’t know what to tell the girl; she didn’t know herself.

“Remember to say your prayers every night, OK?” she said.

Five months later, the separation had taken an emotional and financial toll. Peggy Schott was worried about the girls, and about her grandson, who was becoming increasingly distraught.

As his daughters’ time in foster care dragged on, Alan Schott began to sense them growing distant. “I don’t know what to do about this situation,” he said after one visit with the girls.

“I don’t know why they’re keeping my kids from me,” he added. “I need my kids. I deserve my kids.”

Alan Schott had the right to challenge the state’s neglect case in court and was given a public defender to represent him. But when he and his grandmother concluded that the lawyer wasn’t giving the case the attention they felt it deserved, Peggy Schott took more than $5,000 from her savings to hire an attorney.

Delays by lawyers for both sides pushed the proceedings back to mid-February, well past a 90-day deadline to have the case heard — meaning more time the girls spent in foster care.

Alan Schott arrived at the courthouse in Jonesboro on the morning of the hearing wearing a Carhartt jacket and work boots. He was nervous. Two days earlier, he’d met with his lawyer, who told him the case would be difficult to win.

For about two hours, Alan Schott listened as a teacher, the principal and the lunchroom supervisor from his daughters’ school detailed their concerns. They said that while living with their father, the girls had been registered for school several weeks late, and often showed up wearing dirty or torn clothes and with their hair matted. The school employees testified that the girls seemed hungry, finishing their lunches and often asking for seconds. “I still think about her every day,” the older girl’s teacher testified. “Is she OK? How’s she doing?”

Alan Schott and his grandmother said they had taught the girls to eat everything on their plates and that the girls had been well-fed at home.

Alan Schott’s lawyer, Charles McGuire from the Southern Illinois Law Center, questioned why more hadn’t been done to help the family when school officials grew concerned. “He was never given the chance to raise these children,” the lawyer said.

Judge Amanda Byassee Gott later explained how she agonized over coming to a decision. The case, she said, “quite frankly is a very close call by this court.” She said she was “very concerned” for the girls’ well-being under their father’s care. But the state, she determined, had not proved that he had neglected them.

Later that day, a caseworker drove the girls to their great-grandmother’s house, where Alan Schott and his daughters would stay until they could find their own home.

At left, a balloon Alan Schott gave his children when they returned home floats on the ceiling of their bedroom. At right, Schott brushes his younger daughter’s hair. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

DCFS was out of their lives again, with little to suggest that this most recent ordeal with the agency had delivered any stability. If anything, Alan Schott and his grandmother said, the experience felt more traumatic and disruptive than helpful. The girls were excited on the day they came home, but things got harder in the following weeks. The younger child, in particular, didn’t want to let her father out of her sight. The move back home also meant another school change, their fourth transfer in a year.

“It’s traumatizing to them, me, the rest of the family, and putting a burden on everybody,” Alan Schott said. “It’s crazy and they shouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

Alan Schott eats lunch with his younger daughter. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

About the Data: How We Analyzed Child Welfare Investigations in Illinois

To understand why DCFS investigates the same families repeatedly, the Southern Illinoisan and ProPublica obtained a database of cases from the department through a public records request. Reporters identified a specific population of families within this database: those with at least two prior investigations, regardless of when those investigations took place. They then focused on substantiated cases of abuse or neglect involving these families from 2018 through mid-2020. The resulting subset of cases represented families who continued to struggle despite repeated interventions.

By measuring repeat investigations at the family level, the newsrooms took a different approach from that of DCFS in its public reporting. Like many state child welfare agencies, as well as the U.S. Children’s Bureau, DCFS uses “recurrence” to track repeated cases of abuse and neglect. Recurrence measures the percentage of children subjected to maltreatment who experience a second report of abuse or neglect within a set period of time, e.g., 6 or 12 months. Yet definitions of recurrence vary among government agencies and researchers, and none of them fully captures those families who, regardless of short-term recurrence, accumulate multiple investigations over a period of years. Neither DCFS’s annual report nor research published by the University of Illinois (which monitors the agency) measures longer-term involvement with the agency in this way.

The findings have a few important caveats. By focusing on families with multiple prior investigations without regard for when those investigations took place, the analysis included families whose cases may have occurred years apart and involved different children. By only looking at instances of substantiated maltreatment, the analysis did not include families who have been investigated multiple times without ever having an allegation substantiated. The analysis does not include investigations of licensed child care facilities, such as group foster homes, residential treatment centers or day care providers, as well as non-licensed institutional settings like jails. Changes in the department’s case-tracking procedure prevented the reporters from examining cases opened before 2018. Nonetheless, for each investigation opened in 2018 onwards, the database detailed the number of prior cases involving that family, even if those prior cases were before 2018. Cases opened after June 2020 were too recent to have outcomes in the database and so were excluded.

Finally, data on child welfare investigations is complex. Families who receive services are more likely to experience repeat investigations, which may be attributable to, among other factors, increased surveillance by caseworkers, University of Illinois researchers note. Further, bias and false reports can contribute to recurrence, and child welfare experts caution that repeated investigations involving the same parent don’t always signal a problem within the household. The data reflects the way the department interacts with its most persistently troubled families — not the frequency with which Illinois families commit repeated acts of abuse or neglect.

Help Us Investigate Child Welfare Services in Illinois

If you’ve recently been the subject of Illinois DCFS investigations, or had your children placed into foster care, we’re interested in talking to you about what was helpful that the system offered, and what wasn’t. Filling out our short questionnaire will help us do more reporting that matters to this community. We won’t be able to respond to everyone who reaches out, but we promise to read everything you submit. We take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting, and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

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Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

This article was produced by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a former member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Conditions at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman state prison violate the Constitution, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence of systemic violations that have generated a violent and unsafe environment for people incarcerated at Parchman,” Kristen Clarke, the U.S. assistant attorney general for civil rights, said at a press conference. “We are committed to taking action that will ensure the safety of all people held at Parchman and other state prison facilities.”

The department began investigating Parchman in February 2020 after the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica reported on increases in grisly violence, gang control and substandard living conditions. The news organizations found that state lawmakers had known about these problems for years and had done little to fix them.

In one example, a cellphone video appeared to show a fight at Parchman. Prisoners can be heard egging on the violence. Prison officials declined to authenticate the video, but several inmates said it matched details of the facility. Prison authorities later reported that a man was killed around the same time the video was circulating on social media.

“I’ve got him in a chokehold,” one inmate boasts.

Another inmate cheers him on: “Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Dead. Oh, yeah. Dead. Deaaaaad.”

After the report, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and others called on the DOJ to investigate.

U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner of Oxford said: “Prisons have a constitutional obligation to keep safe the incarcerated persons who depend on them for their basic needs. Mississippi violated the rights of persons incarcerated at Parchman by failing to keep them safe from physical violence and for failing to provide constitutionally adequate mental health care.”

In a 59-page report, the DOJ said the prison had failed to protect inmates from violence at the hands of others, provide adequate mental health treatment or take sufficient suicide prevention measures. The report said penitentiary officials had subjected prisoners to “prolonged isolation in solitary confinement in egregious conditions that place their physical and mental health at substantial risk of serious harm.”

DOJ officials say they are committed to working with the state to ensure that prisoners’ civil rights are protected. Joyner told reporters that Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, who was appointed in 2020, has already implemented some changes.

Responding to the department’s allegations, Gov. Tate Reeves said, “We have made significant strides at Parchman in the last two years, everything from significantly reducing the number of inmates at Parchman all the way to working with the Legislature this year to get funding to increase the number of officers we have.”

Parchman has a long history of being one of the nation’s worst prisons, but by 2011, it had turned a corner. After ‌nearly four decades‌ ‌of‌ ‌court‌ ‌monitoring‌ ‌and‌ ‌an‌ ‌infusion‌ ‌of‌ ‌taxpayer‌ ‌dollars,‌ ‌new‌ ‌facilities‌ ‌had‌ ‌been‌ ‌built.‌ ‌Prisoner‌ ‌abuse‌ ‌had‌ ‌declined.‌ ‌A‌ ‌judge‌ ‌ended‌ ‌federal‌ ‌oversight‌,‌‌ ‌and‌ ‌Mississippi‌ ‌was‌ ‌once‌ ‌again‌ ‌entrusted‌ ‌with‌ ‌the‌ ‌care‌ ‌of‌ ‌its‌ ‌inmates.‌

In the years that followed, conditions at Parchman began to deteriorate. By 2017, accreditation for the prison had lapsed. Ron Welch, a Jackson lawyer who represented the state’s inmates until the monitoring ended, called the prison’s conditions an “unbelievable nightmare.”

The DOJ report said that Parchman inmates have been subjected to “an unreasonable risk of violence due to inadequate staffing, cursory investigative practices and deficient contraband controls,” adding that “these systemic failures result in an environment rife with weapons, drugs, gang activity, extortion and violence, including 10 homicides in 2019.”

Six homicides took place in 2020, three of them in a single week in January, when one inmate was stabbed 89 times, another 75 times and a third strangled to death, according to the report.

Another killing took place in October 2020, when several individuals stabbed an inmate 12 times in Unit 30’s shower. “The sole correctional officer assigned to watch the approximately 180 incarcerated persons in that area did not observe any signs of disturbance from her position in a tower removed from the floor,” the DOJ report said. “Approximately three hours after the stabbing, an incarcerated person alerted the officer that another incarcerated person needed help, and she called for backup. When help arrived, they found the victim unresponsive, and he was pronounced dead a few minutes later.”

An inmate told an investigator with the Mississippi Department of Corrections, or MDOC, that the killing was gang related. The DOJ report said state investigators blamed the death on a staff shortage but did not “investigate the alleged gang cause or take any interest in what happened to the apparently unrecovered weapon.”

The DOJ said this homicide illustrates how Parchman inmates are “on their own. It further demonstrates how MDOC’s cursory investigations fail to address the underlying causes for violence, such as gang activity, or the location of the weapon after the incident to prevent future violence.”

The DOJ cited MDOC’s “gross understaffing” in its report: “Although MDOC has made some efforts recently to recruit and hire more staff, Parchman has been operating with roughly half the needed staff since at least 2018.”

Because of that lack of staffing, the report alleged, two inmates in Unit 30 were stabbed on Jan. 21, 2020, but did not receive medical care until a dozen hours later when they were discovered. One inmate died later that day from skull fractures, rib fractures and other injuries. Another homicide took place just a few hours later.

Between 2014 and 2021, the number of correctional officers plummeted from 1,591 to 667. The inmate population shrank during that time from 21,919 to 16,945.

“The lack of supervision and staff presence on Parchman housing units creates an authority vacuum — where individuals incarcerated at Parchman rather than staff control the day-to-day operations of the units,” the report said. “As evidence of this absence of authority, persons confined to Parchman have openly defied contraband restrictions, posting photos of themselves on social media, or posting photos and videos of decrepit conditions in a cry for help. Unless MDOC institutes effective, necessary remedies to alleviate Parchman’s staffing and supervision crises, staff and incarcerated persons will remain at an unreasonable risk of serious harm.”

Even after succeeding in getting lawmakers to provide raises to correctional officers, Cain said it’s been difficult to recruit because of competition for workers.

The report said that MDOC fails “to identify incarcerated persons in need of mental health care. Parchman has too few qualified mental health staff to meet the mental health care needs of persons confined at Parchman, which results in serious harm.”

DOJ officials also said that MDOC failed “to identify individuals at risk of suicide and houses them — often unsupervised — in dangerous areas that are not suicide resistant.” In addition, MDOC fails to adequately train officers to identify signs and symptoms of suicidal behavior, the report said. Twelve individuals incarcerated at Parchman died by suicide in the last three years, all in single cells.

“The problems at Parchman are severe, systemic, and exacerbated by serious deficiencies in staffing and supervision,” the report said.

Former Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall repeatedly asked the Republican-controlled Legislature for more money to hire guards and to fix up Parchman’s maximum-security block, known as Unit 29, but the request went nowhere, despite MDOC saying publicly that the unit was “unsafe for staff and inmates.”

On New Year’s Eve in 2019, “a fight in Parchman’s Unit 29 sparked what would become a prison riot lasting several weeks,” according to the report. “In the months leading up to the riot, there had been widespread reports about unlivable and unsanitary conditions through Parchman; violent murders and suicides on the rise; staffing plummeting to dangerous levels; and mounting concerns that gangs were filling the void left by inadequate staff presence and gaining increasing control of Parchman through extortion and violence.”

Despite those crises, Parchman staff were “caught off guard, utterly overwhelmed, and ultimately unable to adequately and quickly respond to fighting and significant injuries in multiple buildings,” the report said.

DOJ officials say their investigation of conditions at South Mississippi Correctional Institution, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility is continuing.

The DOJ is encouraging those with relevant information to contact it by phone at 833-591-0288 or by email at Community.MSDoc@usdoj.gov.

by Emily Hopkins and Andrea Suozzo

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

On Thursday, ProPublica added staff COVID-19 vaccination data to the Nursing Home Inspect database. The project already lets researchers, reporters and the public search deficiency reports and other data across more than 15,000 nursing homes in the U.S. Now, users can quickly compare staff vaccination rates across states and between nursing homes.

More than a year after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in nursing homes nationwide, the facilities have gone a long way toward blunting the virus’s threat to their most vulnerable residents.

Today, 88% of nursing home residents and 89% of employees are fully vaccinated, outstripping the rate among the general public. Even as cases soared to record levels in January with the rise of the omicron variant, the death rate of nursing home residents was a fraction of what it was during the surge at the end of 2020.

But with the pandemic now in its third year, thousands of workers have found a way to avoid getting vaccinated, claiming what experts say are questionable medical exemptions from a federal mandate for health care employees, which went into effect this year.

Although few reasons exist for claiming a medical exemption, nearly 20,000 nursing home workers nationwide, or about 1 in 100, have obtained them, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal data. That rate is three times that of nursing home residents, a notably vulnerable group, who didn’t get the vaccine for medical reasons.

Dr. Jana Shaw, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse who studies vaccine hesitancy, said she thinks medical exemptions are being abused. “Previous research has shown, as we started mandating vaccinations, people will find avenues to get out of the obligation of getting vaccinated,” she said.

For every million doses of the vaccines available in the U.S., there have been fewer than six incidents that were serious enough to warrant not getting the vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The consequences of an unvaccinated staff can be deadly. A recent study by a group of U.S. university researchers found that higher vaccination rates among nursing home employees could have reduced COVID-19 deaths among residents by nearly one-half during a two-month period last summer. The virus has now killed more than 150,000 nursing home residents and staff since the pandemic began.

About 1.7 million of 1.9 million nursing home workers across more than 15,000 U.S. facilities have gotten fully vaccinated since the shots became available in early 2021, according to CDC data as of late March. Since the announcement of a federal mandate for health care workers, more than 500,000 of those workers got their vaccinations, raising the national vaccination rate from 65% in September to 89% in late March.

But staff vaccination rates vary by state and by facility. One in six nursing facilities has a vaccination rate of less than 75%, according to CDC data. Nursing homes in Rhode Island, for example, have a vaccination rate of 99%; nursing homes in Montana have a vaccination rate of 77%.

Even in Areas With High Staff Vaccination Rates, Some Homes Lag

The percentage of staffers at each U.S. nursing home who were fully vaccinated as of late March. Each dot represents one nursing home.

Note: The vaccination rate is shown if a home reported data within the three most recent weeks. Data: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Andrea Suozzo/ProPublica)

The number of staff members who have claimed a medical exemption, meanwhile, has increased from about 9,400 when the mandate was announced to just under 20,000 as of late March. The data is self-reported by nursing homes and may contain some errors.

Many of the employees claiming medical exemptions cluster in the same nursing homes: In 27 of Ohio’s more than 900 nursing homes, over 15% of employees have claimed medical exemptions — more than in any other state. And in California, where only 4% of the state’s nursing home workers are unvaccinated, 23 facilities have claimed exemptions for 15% or more of their staff.

In more than a dozen facilities, a third to a half of the staff members have said they have a medical reason to forgo getting vaccinated. Those clusters have raised questions among scientists, said Tim Leslie, a researcher at George Mason University who has studied vaccination rates.

“That suggests some level of organization to achieve that outcome,” he said.

The CDC recommends that even people who had a nonserious allergic reaction to a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine take the full course. Only those with truly life-threatening allergies to the vaccine or one of its ingredients should avoid it, the CDC has said.

A far larger group — 164,000 workers — has declined to get the vaccine for another reason, which can include a religious objection. The federal government doesn’t track the number of religious exemptions.

Between medical exemptions and workers who refuse the vaccine for other reasons, more than 1 in 5 nursing home workers in Montana, Wyoming and Ohio have yet to get vaccinated — the highest rates in the country, according to the CDC data.

In a statement, the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living, which represents long-term care facilities, said nursing homes are committed to getting their employees vaccinated. It noted that unvaccinated workers must take precautions to prevent the spread of infection.

“Each hesitant staff member has their own unique reason(s) for choosing not to get the vaccine,” the statement said. “Despite rampant misinformation spreading online, the industry has made significant progress. We have found that it takes a multi-pronged, persistent approach to help increase vaccination rates.”

Facilities with unvaccinated workers face graduated penalties that could result in losing federal funding as a “final measure,” according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that regulates nursing homes. The agency has the data to identify facilities with unusually high rates of medical exemptions, but it has instructed state inspectors to review the exemptions only during routine visits rather than during special inspections. It could be months before visits are made to some facilities.

CMS has told inspectors not to examine religious exemptions.

The gaps in vaccination, the potential abuse of exemptions and the current enforcement program have advocates for residents concerned that too many nursing home workers will remain unvaccinated.

“If you don’t really believe it should be a mandate, don’t make a mandate,” said Tony Chicotel, a staff attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “If you do think it should be a mandate, then enforce it.”

In a statement, a CMS spokesperson said that the agency “remains pleased by progress to-date” and that its goal is to bring nursing homes into compliance rather than discipline facilities. It said, too, that exemptions “could be appropriate in certain limited circumstances.”

“No exemption should be provided to any staff for whom it is not legally required or who requests an exemption solely to evade vaccination,” the statement said.

At least one facility has been cited by state regulators for an employee claiming a false medical reason to forgo the vaccine. Inspectors issued a deficiency to Premier Washington Health Center in Washington, Pennsylvania, after an employee obtained a medical exemption for multiple sclerosis. The condition is not among those the CDC lists as qualifying for an exemption; the employee was later granted a different exemption, according to the state’s inspection report.

Officials at Premier Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

In Michigan, 20 facilities that until initially reported large numbers of exemptions are operated by NexCare WellBridge Senior Living, which has 26 nursing homes in the state, according to its websites. The company reported that more than 500 of its roughly 3,300 employees had claimed a medical exemption as of Feb. 27. Only 32 residents in those facilities didn’t get the vaccine because of medical reasons as of that date.

The company revised its data after ProPublica questioned it. The company’s facilities are now reporting 54 medical exemptions across 10 facilities; 16 facilities are now reporting no medical exemptions.

Holli Titus, a company spokesperson, said in a statement that exemption requests “are not indicative of the nursing home, but of our country’s (and certain regions’) overall vaccine hesitancy.”

“NexCare and WellBridge remain confident that state surveyors will find our vaccination records in order and in compliance with federal regulations,” she said, adding later that the reporting process for vaccinations “caused confusion” among nursing home companies. The company “will continue to evaluate the reporting process and make adjustments if more clarification becomes available.”

Leslie, the health researcher, said people who are reluctant to get vaccinated will seek ways around the mandates. He observed this among California schoolchildren after the state in 2015 eliminated a personal-belief exemption for vaccines kids must get to attend school. The following year, the rate of medical exemptions nearly tripled, according to his research.

Leslie found that the increase was even higher in counties that had previously reported the highest rates of personal exemptions, suggesting that some parents who were hesitant to get their children vaccinated had found physicians willing to grant them medical exemptions.

“We were surprised at the level of medical exemptions, and we were concerned that they had turned into another avenue for hesitant parents,” he said.

The nation’s nursing homes will soon face another challenge: waning immunity of those who have received COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized second boosters for people 50 and older and for some immunocompromised adults. But many nursing home staff members and residents still have not received their first booster shot.

Only 44% of nursing home employees have received a booster shot, driven in part by delays in their initial vaccinations. In contrast, 69% of nursing home residents have received their first booster.

Booster Adoption Lags Among Nursing Home Staffers Data: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Andrea Suozzo/ProPublica)

In its statement, CMS said that it considers workers who have completed the initial vaccine series to be fully vaccinated, a definition the CDC also uses, and that boosters remain optional. It did not say if it would require boosters in the future.

Dr. Brian McGarry, a health services researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who has studied the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in nursing homes, called lags in administering boosters to residents a “policy failure,” especially when compared with previous efforts to quickly get residents vaccinated in early 2021.

“The right time to do it would be before the omicron wave, and we missed the boat on that,” he said.

With that wave fading, most U.S. cities have relaxed coronavirus restrictions, even as experts warn that a more transmissible subvariant has become the dominant strain. That is prompting fears that another surge is looming.

“The mandate was the last push,” Shaw, the New York physician, said. “I don’t think we have much more left.”

Ruth Talbot contributed reporting.

by Ruth Talbot

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

On Thursday, ProPublica added staff COVID-19 vaccination data to the Nursing Home Inspect project.

The virus has killed more than 150,000 nursing home residents and staff since the beginning of the pandemic. Experts say that staff vaccination is a key part of protecting residents from outbreaks in their homes, but thousands of workers remain unvaccinated despite a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care employees. Some of those unvaccinated workers are claiming medical exemptions, which doctors say should be rare.

Nursing Home Inspect already lets the public, researchers and reporters search deficiency reports and other data across more than 15,000 nursing homes in the United States. Now, users can quickly compare staff COVID-19 vaccination and booster rates across states and between nursing homes.

Each state page allows users to sort homes by vaccination rate, making it easy to identify homes in your state with very low or very high vaccination rates. For each nursing home, a chart allows users to see how the home compares with both state and national averages.

Additionally, we have removed the COVID-19 case and death count data from the database because the figures were reported cumulatively and do not provide an accurate picture of recent outbreaks.

If you write a story using this new information, or you come across bugs or problems, please let us know!

by Karim Doumar

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was originally published in our data newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

One of the most basic functions of data journalism is to independently verify government officials’ claims.

So when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state officials started to boast that Operation Lone Star — a now multibillion-dollar initiative launched in March 2021 to battle cross-border crime — had resulted in thousands of arrests, multiple drug seizures and numerous referrals of unauthorized immigrants to the federal government for deportation, we asked for the underlying data. It was immediately clear that examining the operation’s achievements would be a challenge.

ProPublica’s joint investigative unit with The Texas Tribune partnered with The Marshall Project to collect and analyze the data state agencies were keeping about the operation and report out the findings. I chatted with Marshall Project data reporter Andrew Rodriguez Calderón to learn more about how the newsrooms used data to identify questions about the state’s narrative surrounding Operation Lone Star.

(By the way, The Marshall Project is an investigative newsroom focused on criminal justice. It produces incredible work that you can get it in your inbox by signing up for one of these newsletters.)

As Calderón told me, Texas’ Department of Public Safety sent records about Operation Lone Star last summer in response to requests from our reporters. But the data the agency initially gave us was a mess.

There were two releases that came from three different departments with dissimilar ways of recording arrests and charges. In most cases, each row of the data represented one charge (and it’s important to note that an arrest can result in multiple charges), but the way the charges were entered was not standardized or easy to understand. This made it nearly impossible to analyze.

A small sample of data the state provided last summer.

“We were trying to reconcile all of those datasets to turn them into one master representation,” Calderón said.

Four reporters — Calderón and his Marshall Project colleague Keri Blakinger, along with Lomi Kriel and Perla Trevizo from the ProPublica-Texas Tribune partnership — spent hours combing through thousands of rows and manually comparing the arrest data with the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and the Texas penal code in order to standardize the charges and then group similar charges into buckets.

That meticulous data review was both frustrating and galvanizing for the team of reporters, who wondered how Abbott and other state officials had drawn the conclusions underlying their nearly weekly public statements.

“We hadn’t been able to shape this data to be able to say something about it. So how were they doing it?” Calderón asked as he explained the process.

In November, the state sent the reporters new data that standardized the charges, making it easier to analyze. DPS officials asked reporters to ignore the previous data the agency released, saying it only included charges from some of the counties conducting arrests. The new dataset covered charges from Operation Lone Star’s launch in March 2021 through November, and it included counties beyond the border.

Now, the rows included a column classifying each charge as a felony or a misdemeanor, and there was a column with standardized charges. This meant that Calderón could run a simple script to help categorize the charges into groupings.

“Part of the goal of cleaning the data was for us to be able to classify them as drug charges or vehicle charges or violent charges or traffic offenses, that sort of thing,” Calderón said.

The state later sent us a second comprehensive dataset, which went through December, and then a third, which expanded the time period through January.

We used the third data set to conduct the analysis. Bolstering this data with additional reporting led us to these conclusions about the state’s claims:

• The state’s data includes arrests and charges that had no connection to the border.
• The arrest data includes work done by troopers stationed in the targeted counties before Operation Lone Star’s launch.
• Arrest and drug seizure data does not show how the operation’s work is distinguished from that of other law enforcement agencies.

In response to the findings, the governor’s office maintained that “dangerous individuals, deadly drugs, and other illegal contraband have been taken off our streets or prevented from entering the State of Texas altogether thanks to the men and women of Operation Lone Star.” But DPS and Abbott have provided little proof to substantiate such statements.

And the team found another wrinkle in the state’s narrative as it conducted its analysis. Reporters compared the three different datasets with one another, looking at how the data changed over time.

Calderón compared the different datasets the team had received from the state using what’s called an anti-join function.

A join function takes two datasets, finds matching rows and combines their columns. An anti-join does the opposite. Instead of adding sheets together, it analyzes two sets of similar data and outputs only the rows that are different between them.

Using this function, Calderón found that by the time DPS gave the news organizations the third dataset in January, more than 2,000 charges had been removed. The state stopped counting them toward Operation Lone Star after the news organizations started asking questions.

Asked by the news organizations why such charges were not excluded from the operation’s metrics at the start, DPS officials said they are continuously improving how they collect and report the data “to better reflect the mission” of securing the border. The officials said it wasn’t valid to say charges had been removed.

But in the explanation at the bottom of the story, reporters clarify:

The constantly changing nature of the database is not unique to Operation Lone Star. Methods for comparing datasets are commonly used and actively studied. It is valid to analyze changes in such databases (with the appropriate caveats) and to describe them as additions or removals. DPS itself told reporters the department “identified offenses that should be removed” in a December 2021 email about changes to Operation Lone Star data collection.

Basically: We stand by our analysis.

Being systematic about data and documenting every step might take time on the front end, but it makes the process more transparent, easier to replicate and stronger overall.

by Lomi Kriel and Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, The Marshall Project

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Border Updates to be notified when we publish stories about immigration and the U.S. border.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for newsletters from The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project.

In October 2005, Texas Gov. Rick Perry traveled to the border city of Laredo and announced Operation Linebacker, a new initiative that he said would protect the state’s residents from terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

Without pointing to evidence, Perry said such terrorist groups, along with drug cartels and gangs, were attempting to exploit the U.S.-Mexico border. A press release from the governor’s office said Perry warned that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, criminal organizations could “import terror, illegal narcotics and weapons of mass destruction.”

Perry said Texas would step in to fill the gaps left by the federal government, increasing state law enforcement presence along the border and providing new investigative tools. He stopped short of directly attacking President George W. Bush or the Republican-led Congress. “The state of Texas cannot wait for the federal government to implement needed border security measures,” Perry said, explaining that the state would use $10 million in funding that included federal grants for the operation. Two months later, the governor highlighted his border security efforts while announcing his reelection campaign.

Over the next 17 years, Perry and his successor, Gov. Greg Abbott, persuaded the Texas Legislature to spend billions of dollars on border security measures that included at least nine operations and several smaller initiatives. Each time, the governors promised that the state would do what the federal government had failed to: secure the border.

The pronouncements often coincided with their gubernatorial campaigns or times when they were considering bids for higher office. Perry and Abbott also ramped up their political attacks on the federal government during periods when Democrats held the presidency or a majority in Congress.

In 2007, with Bush still in office but Democrats in control of Congress, Texas allocated $110 million in state funding to border security. The figure swelled to nearly $3 billion last year as Abbott criticized newly inaugurated President Joe Biden, claiming Biden had not done enough to stop drug and human smuggling.

Texas Governor Receives Record Funding for Border Security

State funding for border security grew from $110 million in 2008-2009 to nearly $3 billion for the 2022-2023 budget cycle. The most recent legislative session marked the first time that the Texas governor’s office received the largest share of border security funding, representing nearly half of the appropriations for the two-year period.

Source: Texas Legislative Budget Board appropriations reports (Lomi Kriel, ProPublica/Texas Tribune. Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, The Marshall Project)

In launching Operation Lone Star in March 2021, Abbott claimed the initiative would “combat the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas.” About four months later, the governor also directed state police and the National Guard to arrest some immigrant men on criminal trespassing charges for crossing the border through private property.

Abbott, who is seeking reelection, expanded the operation in the past two weeks. He directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to inspect every commercial truck crossing into the U.S. through the state, a move that has drawn criticism for hampering border commerce. Abbott discontinued the inspections days later, saying he’d reached agreements with his Mexican counterparts to increase enforcement south of the border. Some of the security measures included in the agreements had already been in place in Mexico.

The governor also started busing immigrants, who are processed and released by the federal government, to Washington, D.C., on a voluntary basis. Abbott said both measures were in response to the Biden administration’s decision to bring an end, in May, to Title 42, a pandemic-era emergency health order under which most immigrants, including those seeking asylum, could be immediately turned away from the border.

An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project last month revealed that the numbers the state reported to demonstrate Operation Lone Star’s success have included arrests that had nothing to do with the border or immigration and drug seizures from across the state made by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation.

The way the governors and their administrations have tracked success has fluctuated over the years, offering little clarity into whether the state is closer to securing the border today than it was nearly 20 years ago.

Neither the governor’s office nor the DPS, the main agency leading border security efforts, can provide a full breakdown of the state-led operations since 2005, their duration, their cost to taxpayers and their accomplishments. Because the state has declined to provide such information, the news organizations compiled a partial list of recent border operations and their outcomes using news releases and media coverage, as well as reports by both the Texas Legislative Budget Board, the state’s top budget analysts, and advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

Perry could not be reached for comment through a representative. Abbott’s office didn’t respond to questions about tracking the success of the state’s initiatives and the continued need for border operations. Instead, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze repeated the governor’s claims that the latest operation was a response to the federal government’s failure under Biden to secure the border. She reiterated that Operation Lone Star kept “millions of deadly drugs and thousands of criminals and weapons” off the streets.

Department of Public Safety agents arrest a man for trespassing on private property as part of Operation Lone Star in Kinney County, Texas. (Verónica G. Cárdenas for ProPublica/The Texas Tribune) 2005 Operation Linebacker

Description: Launched to reduce border crime and violence, the operation was led by the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition, which represents law enforcement agencies across the region. The initiative allocated federal criminal justice grants through the governor’s office to local law enforcement for patrols in “high threat” areas. It sent at least 200 DPS troopers to the border temporarily, permanently assigned 54 DPS investigators to the region and deployed National Guard members to provide training for local law enforcement, according to the Associated Press reports and press releases from the governor’s office.

Stated reason: Perry pointed to the 9/11 attacks as justification for the operation. “Al Qaeda and other terrorists and criminal organizations view the porous Texas-Mexico border as an opportunity,” he said in a statement. The governor praised the federal government for providing 1,000 new Border Patrol agents and making other investments, but said the Republican-led Congress needed to do more.

End date: 2006

Cost: Roughly $10 million in federal criminal justice grants distributed through the governor’s office.

Claimed success: The initiative seized more than $3 million in cash, along with drugs worth more than $77 million and weapons valued at more than $36,200, according to a 2015 Legislative Budget Board report. The state’s budget analysts also noted a lack of consistent reporting on border security that they said made it difficult to determine whether funding was appropriately allocated or if the expected outcomes were achieved.

Reported concerns: A November 2006 analysis from the El Paso Times found that 16 participating sheriff’s departments spent federal dollars, intended to fight drugs and crime, to instead enforce immigration laws. Officers caught undocumented immigrants seven times more often than they arrested criminals, according to the newspaper. The El Paso Times also obtained state reports from the operation that did not show any terrorism-related arrests over a six-month period.

2006 Operation Rio Grande

Description: The operation aimed to “attack ruthless, transnational criminal enterprises and gangs,” Perry said in a press release. The initiative, which the governor launched in February, became the umbrella operation for several smaller measures. (Perry’s office counted the narrower initiatives as individual operations). Those measures deployed additional resources, including National Guard members, for approximately three-week periods to border regions including El Paso, Laredo and Del Rio.

Stated reason: Perry pointed to several incidents that had taken place in Mexico, including the arrest of four Iraqi men reportedly headed to the U.S., to justify the need for the operation. “There is not only great concern that the drug trade is becoming more aggressive, but that terrorist organizations are seeking to exploit our porous border,” Perry said at the time. “The state will not wait for Washington to take all the necessary actions.” The governor did not mention Bush or the Republican-led Congress.

End date: October 2006

Cost: Unclear. A spokesperson for Perry told The Brownsville Herald that as part of Operation Rio Grande, Texas sent nearly $25 million to local law enforcement agencies between October 2005 and September 2006, but the article did not specify how much was spent on individual operations. The funding was a combination of state and federal dollars.

Claimed success: On Oct. 17, 2006, Perry touted a crime reduction of about 60% in participating border counties. The El Paso Times reported that Steven McCraw, who at the time was the Texas Homeland Security director, acknowledged the figure did not prove there had been a sustained drop in crime or reflect issues such as criminals shifting their activities to another area. Instead, it represented the average decrease compared to the previous year in several counties where law enforcement “surges” had been carried out at varying times over a four-month period.

Reported concerns: Experts told the newspaper that Perry and state officials failed to account for other reasons that crime could fall before and after the operations or what types of crimes had declined. A Border Patrol spokesperson also told the newspaper that illegal border crossings had dropped dramatically before the state-led operations began.

2007 Operation Wrangler

Description: Launched in January, the initiative included the work of more than 6,800 local, state and federal law enforcement personnel. They focused on known “smuggling corridors” along the border and in areas hundreds of miles away such as Dallas. The operation deployed vehicle, marine and air support to the border.

Stated reason: Perry recognized Mexico’s newly elected President Felipe Calderón for cracking down on drug cartels, but cited continued violence in that country as a reason for ramping up border security funding. He said the operation was needed to “send a message to drug traffickers, human smugglers and criminal operatives that their efforts to exploit our international border will come at a great cost to them and their illegal operations.”

End date: July 2007

Cost: Unclear. A 12-day National Guard deployment under the operation cost $1.1 million, according to the Legislative Budget Board.

Claimed success: Perry said the initiative arrested “hundreds of criminals” and seized “thousands of pounds of illegal drugs” during the first “high intensity phase” that ran from Jan. 17 to Jan. 29. More than 2,770 people were sent to federal immigration officials for deportation and 136 people were detained on human smuggling charges during that period, according to the release. That April, Perry claimed another phase of the initiative had reduced crime by 30% in the El Paso area during a 30-day period. A review of news reports by ProPublica, the Tribune and The Marshall Project was unable to find evidence that the governor provided data to substantiate those claims.

Reported concerns: After about a week, the Mexican Consulate in Dallas raised concerns about racial profiling to the Dallas Morning News. A consulate spokesperson said dozens of people were stopped for traffic violations and illegally asked for their immigration documents. The spokesperson pointed out state and local officials were not authorized to enforce federal immigration law. In response to the allegations, a spokesperson for Perry’s office told the news organization that while the operation didn’t target immigrants, law enforcement officers were within their rights to call in immigration officials if they discovered people were in the state without authorization.

Operation Border Star

Description: The initiative focused on reducing crime in targeted regions along the border by deploying local and state resources, including an undisclosed number of National Guard members, to coordinate with Border Patrol. The San Antonio Express-News reported in 2012 that the initiative provided money to law enforcement agencies along the Rio Grande for border-related expenses and aided information-sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Stated reason: Without providing proof, Perry claimed Mexican cartels were using gangs, like the Salvadoran group MS-13, to support their operations by “torturing, kidnapping and murdering citizens on both sides of the border.” Perry’s office wrote in a 2008 editorial that more than 430 people with “terrorist ties” had been arrested after crossing into Texas illegally since March 2006. A 2021 report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian organization in Washington, D.C., found that between 1975 and 2020, just nine people who were later convicted of planning a terrorist attack had entered the country illegally. Three of them came across the southern border, according to the report.

End date: Ongoing. The Legislative Budget Board wrote in a 2015 report that all border operations since October 2007 had been folded into Border Star.

Cost: Unclear. In 2007, the Legislature budgeted $110 million in state funding for border security. The allocation included money for Border Star, but it is not clear how much was specifically intended for that operation. The governor’s office awarded at least $43 million to local jurisdictions from 2008 through 2017 as part of Operation Border Star, according to records released to ProPublica, the Tribune and The Marshall Project.

Claimed success: Less than a month after the operation’s launch, Perry’s office claimed in a press release that the initiative had seized more than 11,000 pounds of marijuana, 35 pounds of cocaine and 7 pounds of methamphetamine. The governor also attributed the arrest of 170 unauthorized immigrants in that period to the initiative. Perry’s office claimed that a reduction in calls for assistance to local law enforcement reflected a decrease in criminal activity. The news organizations did not find media stories or reports examining his claims of decreases in criminal activity.

Reported concerns: The operation led to a high level of traffic enforcement, but few substantial drug seizures, according to an ACLU analysis of performance measures for 11 local law enforcement agencies. “Given that traffic stops do not yield effective results for combating organized crime, law enforcement would make better use of resources by investigating serious crimes,” the ACLU concluded in the report.

2012 Operation Drawbridge

Description: A program led by DPS, border sheriffs and Border Patrol that began by installing and monitoring 500 low-cost motion-detecting cameras on participating farms and ranches near the Texas-Mexico border. (The number of cameras has since grown to about 5,500.) As part of the operation, information is shared with federal, state and local law enforcement, who can respond when the cameras are triggered. The operation’s start date is unclear, but a news release by DPS stated that the initiative had had a sustained impact on human and drug smuggling since January 2012.

Stated reason: In announcing additional funding for the operation in October 2012, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said the cameras were needed to protect landowners harmed by drug and human trafficking.

End date: Ongoing

Cost: Unclear. In 2016, DPS pointed to $4.8 million in expenditures since 2012 after installing about 3,300 cameras. In 2021, the Legislature provided an additional $10 million for the cameras, according to state financial reports.

Claimed success: DPS said in an April 2015 news release that the operation apprehended more than 56,200 people and seized more than 112 tons of drugs. The agency didn’t include proof of those claims.

Reported concerns: State Sen. César Blanco, an El Paso Democrat who was a state representative at the time, was among those who questioned the state’s role in enforcing immigration and the security of the camera system. The operation was a continuation of a 2008 camera program that made only 26 arrests over four years at a cost of roughly $153,800 per arrest, according to the El Paso Times.

2013 Operation Strong Safety

Description: The operation consisted of a three-week deployment of DPS troopers, Texas military personnel and other state law enforcement to the Rio Grande Valley, according to DPS officials. The initiative focused on “conducting around-the-clock saturation patrols on, above and along the Rio Grande River to detect and interdict a substantial percentage of drug and human smuggling activity.” It also included roadside DPS checkpoints.

Stated reason: In a news release, DPS said the operation was launched to address “significant criminal activity,” a “significant number of commercial vehicles on the roadways” and “unsafe driving practices.” The agency tied the three target issues to cartels, saying “increases in Mexican cartel smuggling activity decreases the safety and security of the Rio Grande Valley.”

End date: Oct. 4, 2013

Cost: Unclear.

Claimed success: DPS reported to the state’s budget board that drug seizures in the Rio Grande Valley dropped when the operation was active, from Sept. 15 to Oct. 4, 2013, an indicator that state officials have at times presented as proof of success. The agency compared the three weeks of the operation to the previous three-week period and found a decrease of 49% in marijuana seizures, 42% in cocaine seizures and 95% in methamphetamine seizures, according to news reports.

Reported concerns: State Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from the Rio Grande Valley, was among several lawmakers who questioned McCraw in 2013 about the legality, cost and geographic scope of the initiative. Canales said his office had received about 100 calls that claimed DPS checkpoints targeted poor neighborhoods and immigrant communities. Neither DPS officials nor McCraw answered the lawmaker’s questions, Canales’ staff told the Texas Observer.

2014 Operation Strong Safety II

Description: Perry deployed 1,000 Texas National Guard members and hundreds of DPS troopers to the border in June to assist law enforcement in decreasing drug and human smuggling in the Rio Grande Valley.

Stated reason: The governor and DPS cited a growing number of Central American children coming across the southern border, many of them through Texas, beginning in 2013. They said the rapid increase directly benefited Mexican cartels, which profited from smuggling fees and exploited the fact that Border Patrol agents were diverted from their regular duties. Perry, who was considering another run for president, blamed President Barack Obama for the influx. “I don’t believe he particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure. And that’s the reason there’s been this lack of effort, this lack of focus, this lack of resources,” Perry said in a July 2014 interview with ABC News.

End date: Unclear. It morphed into Operation Secure Texas after Sept. 1, 2016, according to the Legislative Budget Board.

Cost: The estimated weekly cost was $1.3 million. It’s not clear how much was ultimately spent on the operation, but between 2014 and 2015, the Legislative Budget Board reported that the state spent about $124 million on Strong Safety II.

Claimed success: Perry boasted repeatedly about the initiative, saying Border Patrol apprehensions dropped as a result of the state’s operation. He did not explain how the state’s efforts led to decreases in federal apprehensions. In a report to the Legislature in February 2015, DPS also took credit, citing a decrease from 6,000 Border Patrol apprehensions in the first week of the operation to fewer than 2,000 after three months.

Reported concerns: While DPS touted seizing 150 tons of illegal drugs in six months, data obtained by the Austin American-Statesman showed the agency contributed to less than 10% of the operation’s drug seizures, with the rest coming from other law enforcement agencies, particularly the Border Patrol. Separately, Adam Isacson, a policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, told FactCheck.org that Operation Strong Safety’s role was “minimal at best,” and a report by his organization argued that a combination of the federal government sending more Border Patrol agents and a crackdown by Mexico on immigration from Central America likely contributed most to the drop in apprehensions.

2015 Operation Secure Texas

Description: The initiative included 250 additional DPS troopers permanently stationed in the border region, plus a company of Texas Rangers. It also funded aircraft, boats and vehicles, as well as surveillance cameras and a training facility to address “cross-border corruption and other criminal activity,” Abbott wrote in a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in September, the month the operation launched.

Stated reason: The initiative was a continuation of Operation Strong Safety, a multi-agency effort to “deny Mexican cartels and their associates unfettered entry into Texas, and their ability to commit border-related crimes, as well as reduce the power of these organizations,” according to DPS Director Steven McCraw.

End date: A Texas Monthly article said that the operation ended in 2018, but records obtained by ProPublica, The Tribune and The Marshall Project included a 2019 grant application to the governor’s office from Kleberg County that mentions additional workload under the operation as one of the reasons that the county wanted a prosecutor dedicated to border crimes.

Cost: In the letter to Johnson, Abbott said the bulk of the $800 million appropriated for border security in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 was dedicated to the operation. He did not give specific numbers.

Claimed success: DPS troopers assigned to the operation captured 7,508 pounds of marijuana, made 561 criminal arrests and issued more than 17,000 traffic citations from September through December 2015, according to presentations by the agency to the Texas Public Safety Commission.

Reported concerns: Lawmakers questioned the results of the operation during a public meeting of the Texas House Committee of Homeland Security and Public Safety in September 2016. “Are we actually more secure simply because we’ve done those things, and is there a number that will show us that in 2014 we were less secure?” asked former state Rep. Alfonso “Poncho” Nevárez, a Democrat from Eagle Pass. News reports from the time do not say if McCraw responded to the question.

2021 Operation Lone Star

Description: Under the operation that launched in March 2021, Abbott deployed more than 10,000 Texas National Guard members and DPS troopers to the border to combat drug smuggling and unauthorized immigration. For the first time, some immigrants are being arrested on state criminal trespassing charges after crossing into the U.S. on private property. The National Guard is also helping build border barriers and creating what Abbott and DPS call a “steel curtain,” a combination of vehicles, concertina wire and shipping containers, to deter anyone seeking to cross.

Stated reason: About two months after Biden’s inauguration, Abbott blamed the new administration for what he called an escalating crisis at the border. When the governor launched the operation, the number of people crossing into the state via the southern border had reached a two-decade high. Under Title 42, more than three-quarters of immigrants apprehended from January through March were immediately turned away.

End date: Ongoing

Cost: DPS estimates spending about $2.5 million per week for up to 1,600 troopers involved in the mission. The Texas Military Department estimates that the current deployment of 10,000 National Guard members will cost an additional $2 billion a year, nearly five times what the Legislature had budgeted for the deployment. The cost doesn’t include additional funding for related expenses such as jails, public defenders and grants awarded to local governments through the governor’s office.

Claimed success: State officials have touted more than 13,000 criminal arrests, tens of thousands of pounds of drugs seized and more than 230,000 unauthorized immigrants referred to the Border Patrol.

Reported concerns: An investigation by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and The Marshall Project found that the state’s claims of success have been based on shifting metrics that included taking credit for uncovering crimes that had no links to the border, work conducted by troopers who were in the region before the operation began, and arrests, drug seizures and immigrant apprehensions made in conjunction with other agencies. More than nine months into the operation, DPS told the news organizations that it had removed about 2,000 charges it deemed not related to border crime from a dataset of arrests credited to Operation Lone Star. The state faces several lawsuits and calls for investigation from Democrats, lawyers and advocacy groups following media reports detailing alleged civil rights violations and court rulings raising questions about the constitutionality of the trespassing arrests. Despite DPS and Abbott’s office highlighting human trafficking and smuggling arrests, the largest share of arrests are of people accused of trespassing on private property. The Army Times and the Tribune have also reported about poor working conditions and suicides among National Guard members deployed under the operation.

A military vehicle in Del Rio, Texas. (Verónica G. Cárdenas for ProPublica/The Texas Tribune)

Help Us Investigate Texas Border Security Initiatives

by Paul Kiel

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Nikki Spretnak loved being an IRS agent. Being able to examine the books of different businesses gave her an intimate view of the economy. But over the years, she became more and more conscious of a chasm between the business owners she was auditing and herself. It wasn't so much that they were rich and she, a revenue agent in the IRS office in Columbus, Ohio, was not. It was that, when it came to taxes, they lived a privileged existence, one that she, a mere W-2 recipient, did not share.

Over the past year, along with a team of my colleagues at ProPublica, I’ve spent countless hours scrutinizing the tax information of thousands of the wealthiest Americans. Like Spretnak, I’ve seen behind the veil and witnessed the same chasm. Doing my own taxes in the past was never a thrill, but only this spring did I fully realize what a colorless and confined tax world I inhabit.

For me, and for most people, filing taxes is little more than data entry. I hold in my hand my W-2 form from my employer and dutifully peck in my wages. Next come the 1099 forms that list my earnings from dividends or interest, and again my finger gets to work. The IRS has a copy of these forms, too, of course, making this drudgery somewhat pointless. By the end of it, there, in black and white, is my income.

The financial reality of the ultrawealthy is not so easily defined. For one, wages make up only a small part of their earnings. And they have broad latitude in how they account for their businesses and investments. Their incomes aren’t defined by a tax form. Instead, they represent the triumph of careful planning by skilled professionals who strive to deliver the most-advantageous-yet-still-plausible answers to their clients. For them, a tax return is an opening bid to the IRS. It’s a kind of theory.

In that tax world, nearly anything is possible. Stephen Ross is one of the world’s most successful real estate developers, a billionaire many times over, the owner of the Miami Dolphins. Ross, a former tax lawyer, once praised tax law as a particularly “creative” endeavor, and he is a master of the craft. His tax returns showed a total of $1.5 billion in earnings from 2008 to 2017, but he didn’t pay a dime in federal income taxes during that time. How? By mining a mountain of losses he claimed for tax purposes, as ProPublica reported. Look at Ross’s “income” for any of those years, and you’ll see numbers as low as negative $447 million. (He told ProPublica he abides by the tax laws.)

Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren owns a massively profitable natural gas pipeline company. But in an orgy of cake eating and having, he’s able to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from his company tax-free while reporting vast losses to the IRS thanks to energy-industry and other tax breaks, his records showed. (Warren did not respond to our questions.)

Based on those reported “incomes,” both Ross and Warren received COVID stimulus checks in 2020. We counted at least 16 other billionaires (along with hundreds of other ultrawealthy people, including hedge fund managers and former CEOs) among the stimulus check recipients. This is just how our system works. It’s why, in 2011, Jeff Bezos, then worth $18 billion, qualified for $4,000 in refundable child tax credits. (Bezos didn’t respond to our questions.)

A recent study by the Brookings Institution set out with a simple aim: to compare what owners of privately held businesses say they earn with the income that appears on the owners’ tax returns. The findings were stark: “More than half of economic income generated by closely held businesses does not appear on tax returns and that ratio has declined significantly over the past 25 years.”

That doesn’t mean business owners are illegally hiding income from the IRS, though it’s certainly a possible contributor. There are plenty of ways to make income vanish legally. Tax perks like depreciation allow owners to create tax losses even as they expand their businesses, and real estate developers like Ross can claim losses even on appreciating properties. “Losses” from one business can also be used to wipe out income from another. Sometimes spilling red ink can be lots of fun: For billionaires, owning sports teams and thoroughbred racehorses are exciting loss-makers.

Congress larded the tax code with these sorts of provisions on the logic that what’s good for businesses is good for the economy. Often, the evidence for this broader effect is thin or nonexistent, but you can be sure all this is great for business owners. The Brookings study found that households worth $10 million or more benefited the most from being able to make income disappear.

This isn’t just about a divide between rich and poor. Take two people, each earning $1 million, one through salary, the other through their business. Though they may live in the same neighborhood and send their kids to the same private school, they do not share the same tax world.

Under the current system, said John Sabelhaus, a former Federal Reserve economist and one of the study’s authors, “if you’re getting a W-2, you’re a sucker.”

This basic divide is also apparent in how tax laws are enforced. To the IRS, the average worker is an open book, since all their income is disclosed on those W-2s and 1099s. Should they enter an errant number on their tax return, a computer at the agency can easily catch it.

But that’s generally not true for private businesses. Such companies are often tangles of interrelated partnerships that, like densely grown forest, can be hard to penetrate. Auditing businesses like these “certainly is a test of endurance,” said Spretnak, the former IRS agent.

If she managed to solve the puzzle of how income flowed from one entity to another, she moved on to a stiffer challenge. It didn’t matter if what she saw made her jaw drop. She had to prove that the business’s tax geniuses had exceeded even what the generous tax laws allowed them to do. Often, she found, they had. Making her findings stick against a determined and well-funded opponent was her final hurdle.

By the time Spretnak retired in 2018, the IRS had gone from merely budget-constrained to budget-starved. Thousands of skilled auditors like her have left, not to be replaced. Audits of the wealthy have plummeted. Business owners have still more reason to be bold.

On the other side of the chasm from the W-2er, there’s still another tax world, one that’s even more foreign than that of business income. It’s the paradise of unrealized gains, a place particularly enjoyed by the major shareholders of public companies.

If your company’s stock shoots up and you grow $1 billion richer, that increase in wealth is real. Banks will gladly lend to you with such ample collateral, and magazines will put you on their covers. But if you simply avoid selling your appreciated assets (that is, realizing your gains), you haven’t generated income and therefore owe no tax.

Economists have long argued that to exclude such unrealized gains from the definition of income is to draw an arbitrary line. The Supreme Court, as far back as 1940, agreed, calling the general rule of not taxing unrealized gains an “administrative convenience.”

From 2014 to 2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans grew about $400 billion richer, according to Forbes. To an economist, this was income, but under tax law, it was mere vapor, irrelevant. And so this group, including the likes of Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, paid federal income taxes of about 3.4% on the $400 billion, ProPublica reported. We called this the group’s “True Tax Rate.”

Recently, the Biden administration took a major step toward the “True Tax Rate” way of seeing things. It proposed a Billionaire Minimum Income Tax for the ultrawealthy that would treat unrealized gains as income and tax them at 20%.

To say that the idea’s fate in the Senate is uncertain would probably be overstating its chances. It is nevertheless a landmark proposal. Instead of the usual talk of raising income tax rates on the rich, the Biden proposal advocates a fundamental rethinking.

In the tax system we have, billionaires who’d really rather not pay income taxes can usually find a way not to. They can bank their accumulating gains tax-free and deploy tax losses to wipe out whatever taxable income they might have. They can even look forward to a few thousand dollars here and there from the government to help them raise their kids or get through a national emergency.

You can think of efforts to change this system as a battle between the rich and everybody else. And sure, it is. But it’s also an effort to pull those other tax worlds down to the terra firma of the wage earner, to make it so a W-2 isn’t the mark of a sucker.

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A Colorado House of Representatives committee narrowly voted Wednesday to advance a bipartisan measure aimed at limiting homeowners associations’ powers to file foreclosure cases based on fines for community-rule violations, capping such penalties and increasing due process for homeowners.

Colorado law allows HOAs to seek judicial foreclosure against homeowners who are at the equivalent of six months behind on their routine dues, also known as assessments. But that total can include other charges, such as fines, late fees and collection costs — including the HOA’s legal fees.

As Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica reported last week, HOAs across the state have initiated more than 2,400 foreclosure cases — including those involving fines — from January 2018 through February 2022. Those cases continued during the pandemic, as HOAs were not subject to government moratoriums that prevented many mortgage lenders from foreclosing.

“It is absolutely heartbreaking to hear people losing their homes over fees,” said Rep. Edie Hooton, D-Boulder, who voted in favor of the bill. “I would like to see some real meaningful progress on the HOA laws in Colorado.”

House Bill 22-1137 would not stop HOAs from seeking to foreclose against homeowners who are behind on their routine assessments but would prohibit foreclosures in situations where the association’s lien against the home consists only of fines or the costs of collecting them. The proposal would also prevent HOAs from charging daily fines and would cap penalties at $500 per violation, the bill’s sponsors said.

“One person came to us and told us about a fee that started out at $150 and ended up being $3,000. So it racks up pretty quickly and accumulates, and we want to stop that,” Rep. Naquetta Ricks, D-Aurora, one of the bill’s sponsors, told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. “If you buy your property and you’ve been paying your mortgage, and now you have a small violation or a fee, is it right for an HOA to be able to foreclose and kick you out of your home? No, it’s not right.”

The Transportation and Local Government committee heard testimony on the bill in early March but did not take a vote until Wednesday. In the interim, the bill’s sponsors met with community stakeholders, including those representing the HOA industry.

Representatives for the Community Associations Institute, a trade organization for HOAs and their managers, told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that they support the overall goal of eliminating foreclosures based solely on HOA fines. But they oppose several provisions of the current proposal, including the cap on fines, while hoping to find common ground as the bill moves forward.

“This means that, if a homeowner wants to paint their house pink, has that request denied and does it anyway, the homeowner will be allowed to violate the rules for an extra $500.00 payment. The association’s only option to enforce the covenant will be to then take the owner to court. It’s better to levy a fine that actually makes breaking a rule unattractive,” said the Community Associations Institute’s Lindsay Smith, an HOA attorney.

The bill also requires HOAs to notify homeowners of delinquencies several times in different ways, including posting a notice on the home. HOA leaders have argued that such provisions could increase management costs. HOA homeowner advocate Stan Hrincevich said he disagrees with the argument that the proposal would result in increased costs for homeowners who pay on time, saying HOAs typically bill such costs directly to delinquent homeowners.

Rep. Kevin Van Winkle, R-Highlands Ranch, voted against the bill and told the committee that HOAs are run by volunteer boards, and that homeowners who disagree with the decisions being made in their community have the option of joining the board to change things. “This micromanages on such a microscopic level it’s actually quite incredible,” he said.

The committee passed the bill by a vote of 7-6, with several lawmakers pointing to the dozens of foreclosure cases filed against homeowners in the Master Homeowners Association for Green Valley Ranch as a call to action.

“It is imperative that we address this problem,” said Rep. Meg Froelich, D-Greenwood Village, who added that the issue is at a “crisis point.”

The bill will still need to clear the full House and the Senate.

by Sarah Alvarez, Outlier Media

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Outlier Media. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In response to reporting by Outlier Media and ProPublica showing how DTE Energy disconnected electric accounts for nonpayment during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Detroit City Council is calling for the power company to enact a one-year pause on electricity and gas shut-offs.

The resolution, passed at a City Council meeting on Tuesday, cites the findings of an Outlier-ProPublica story last month that analyzed disconnections in Michigan and found DTE shut off accounts 208,000 times between April 2020 and December 2021.

The investigation by the news organizations found that DTE’s rate of electricity shut-offs — disconnections as a proportion of customers — outpaced the six other utilities in Michigan that are owned by private investors and have their prices regulated by the state. Using federal data, the story also compared DTE’s electric rates with other similar utilities in the state. DTE’s residential rates were the second highest in Michigan.

The council began drafting a resolution a week after the investigation was published, and member Gabriela Santiago-Romero introduced it along with another colleague during the group’s most recent meeting. “She’s concerned about the prices of DTE rising and the burden that puts on residents of the city and of her district,” said Hank Kelley, a senior policy analyst for Santiago-Romero, who co-sponsored the resolution with council member Angela Whitfield Calloway.

Santiago-Romero tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday and was unavailable to talk.

“We’re still in a pandemic, evidenced by the fact that the council member was impacted just today,” Kelley said. “This impacts people’s ability to work and pay their bills.”

DTE has more than 2 million customers in its service area, which includes Detroit and covers most of Southeast Michigan. The company has told state regulators it has half a million customers living in poverty.

At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, DTE had the shortest moratorium on disconnections of any large utility in the state, three months. The council resolution asks DTE to voluntarily begin a new moratorium on shut-offs, “given the lasting economic impacts of the pandemic, thereby giving its customers some relief.”

The City Council sent its request for a moratorium to DTE executives and to its board of directors; the resolution also requested company leaders come before council to discuss the company’s rates.

Christopher Lamphear, manager of corporate communications for DTE, echoed the utility’s previous skepticism of moratoriums when asked about the council request. “Moratoriums are not always in the best interest of residents because they only allow debt to grow as energy use continues,” he said. “It is important to connect customers to the funds and assistance available, which DTE redoubled efforts to achieve when the pandemic began.”

Lamphear did not disclose how DTE will respond to the resolution. However, he said in an email that the city's Public Health and Safety Committee has invited DTE to provide a response at a future meeting.

He also said DTE is committed to its customers and has helped connect them to more than $100 million in assistance last year, while also forgiving $2.6 million in customer debt in 2020.

He said the City Council is expecting an official response from DTE when the two sides meet, but the timing was undecided.

The Michigan Public Service Commission, the state body responsible for regulating utility companies, also received a copy of the council resolution. The MPSC declined to comment on the resolution but a spokesman said, “The MPSC remains focused on affordability for utility customers and improving assistance programs available for low-income customers.”

DTE has asked the MPSC to allow the company to increase electric rates in order to raise an additional $388 million in annual revenue. The MPSC has until October to decide whether to approve the rate increase.

The MSPC has approved six rate increases for DTE since 2011. In each case, the commission gave DTE about half as much as it requested. DTE’s last rate increase was in the beginning of 2020; the utility said it delayed asking for a rate increase until this year because of the pandemic.

DTE’s residential rate, measured as the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour, is the second highest among investor-owned utilities in Michigan, behind the Upper Peninsula Power Company, a utility with only about 50,000 customers in the northern part of the state. It is also higher than the price charged by the largest utility in each of the other Great Lakes states of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. DTE, however, points to monthly bills across the country and says those figures put it at or below the national average.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened in the current rate case, with an eye toward the impact on consumers. “AG Nessel agrees that energy affordability is essential and has been working hard at reducing or eliminating rate increase requests through advocacy before the MPSC,” her press secretary, Lynsey Mukomel, said.

As for shut-offs for nonpayment, Mukomel said Nessel’s office “is investigating these issues in DTE’s current electric rate case, which allows the office to conduct discovery on these very issues.”

by Max Blau

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Every year, thousands of Americans facing liver failure try to get new organs. Many of these are successful. But some experiences with the liver transplant process go wrong. The chances of success often depend on which hospital replaces your liver, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

Problems with liver transplants can occur before a transplant, during surgery or after the procedure. Medical experts said that issues might stem from failing to document that a donor’s blood type is compatible with the recipient or medical errors during surgery. There is also evidence that a disproportionate number of people of color do not get the help they need. We hope this questionnaire can help us make a more complete list of when, how and why problems occur.

We want to speak with patients who have faced adverse outcomes, as well as family members who lost loved ones to the medical process. We also want to speak with medical providers or regulators familiar with the process to better understand how it works.

Will you help ProPublica reporter Max Blau learn about the liver transplant process? If you have insights that could help guide our reporting, please fill out our brief questionnaire below.

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY: We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting, and we will not publish your name or information without your consent.

We are the only ones reading what you submit. If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips. You can message Max Blau on Signal at 224-436-2120 or max.blau@propublica.org.

by Nuala Bishari, San Francisco Public Press

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the San Francisco Public Press. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Tabitha Davis had just lost twins in childbirth and was facing homelessness. The 23-year-old had slept on friends’ floors for the first seven months of her pregnancy, before being accepted to a temporary housing program for pregnant women. But with the loss of the twins, the housing program she’d applied to live in after giving birth — intended for families — was no longer an option.

After several weeks in a hotel, which a prenatal program for homeless people had paid for while she recovered, Davis went to a brick building in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to apply for a permanent, subsidized housing unit. There, a case worker she’d never met asked her more than a dozen questions to determine if she was eligible.

Some of the things he asked: Have you ever been sexually assaulted while experiencing homelessness? Have you ever had to use violence to keep yourself safe while experiencing homelessness? Have you ever exchanged sex for a place to stay? “Those are the questions that really bothered me,” she said. “Whatever my experience is of being sexually assaulted, or what I had to do in order to stay safe on the streets, shouldn’t pertain to whether or not I deserve housing.”

That day, Davis was informed that the score she’d been given based on her answers to the questionnaire wasn’t high enough to qualify for permanent supportive housing. It was a devastating blow after an already traumatizing few months. “I thought, ‘You put me on the streets right now, mentally, I will kill myself,’” she said.

What Davis encountered with those questions is called coordinated entry, a system designed to match people experiencing homelessness with housing. In San Francisco’s system, applicants are asked 16 core questions, and their answers are given a point value which is then tallied. The total number is intended to reflect applicants’ vulnerability; currently, a score of 118 points means they qualify for one of the city’s permanent supportive housing units, which is subsidized by the government and comes with wraparound supportive services. Applicants with lower scores may qualify for rent assistance or a bus ticket out of town, but if they want housing in San Francisco, they have to wait six months before taking the test again.

Though the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has an annual budget of $598 million and the majority of that is spent on housing, there simply aren’t enough permanent supportive housing units available to accommodate the thousands of homeless people in San Francisco. (A 2019 survey estimated the number of homeless people at more than 8,000.) The threshold for approval is directly tied to housing availability, and right now, roughly one-third of people who take the assessment score high enough to qualify.

“It’s really prioritizing scarce resources,” said Cynthia Nagendra, the department’s deputy director of planning and strategy. “There has to be some prioritization, unfortunately, until we have some housing resource for every single person.”

Coordinated entry was meant to be a more objective tool than the previous system, which offered resources on a first-come, first-served basis. In contrast, coordinated entry aims to determine who is most vulnerable and who should therefore get access to the limited supply of available housing.

Through records requests, the San Francisco Public Press and ProPublica obtained the questions and scoring algorithm used in San Francisco’s coordinated entry questionnaire, which has never before been made public. The news organizations solicited feedback on that tool from front-line workers, academics and people experiencing homelessness. Some raised objections to how the questions were phrased. Others pointed out inequities in the scoring. And many more criticized the way it was administered, suggesting that the process itself — in which applicants are asked very personal questions by a stranger — might make it unlikely that already-distressed people would answer accurately.

In our interviews, it became clear that the survey fails to identify many of the vulnerabilities it was intended to catch. And what was supposed to be an objective tool winds up, as a result of how it’s written and administered, making it harder for certain populations — immigrants, young people and transgender people, among others — to get indoors, experts and advocates told us.

For Davis, that meant some of the hardships she was experiencing were overlooked. For instance, there was no question in the survey that would give her points for the losses she had just suffered. Failing to qualify for housing resulted in weeks of stress and instability while she recovered from the trauma of losing her children. Eventually, with the assistance of case workers at several organizations, she found a place in a transitional housing program for youth. But being told, during the lowest moment of her life, that she did not qualify for permanent housing left its mark. “It made me feel invalid in my own experience,” she said.

In response to these critiques, homelessness department spokesperson Denny Machuca-Grebe said in an email, “I want to make it clear that anyone who comes to our department for help should NOT ‘be left out.’” For those deemed ineligible for housing, he said the city offers other services; these may include shelter placements, relocation help and rental assistance. In general, the department had not responded to requests for comments about individual cases in the past, and it didn’t comment on Davis’ experience.

Excluded Populations

Coordinated entry was first implemented in 2018, after the Department of Housing and Urban Development began requiring regions that apply for federal homelessness funds to create a tool “to ensure that people who need assistance the most can receive it in a timely manner.” Much of the rest of the country adopted a tool called the Vulnerability Index, Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool. San Francisco developed its own set of questions, intended to determine which unhoused people are in greatest need of a home.

In the four years since the requirement was implemented, some cities and counties have reviewed their coordinated entry systems and uncovered trends such as significant racial or gender biases. A 2019 analysis of data from Oregon, Virginia, and Washington found that even though people of color were overrepresented in the homeless population, they tended to score significantly lower than their white counterparts, making it harder for them to access permanent supportive housing. The study recommended that HUD consider revising its coordinated entry guidelines to ensure that communities “equitably allocate resources and services.” This year, San Francisco started its own analysis of its coordinated entry process, and it expects to present the findings before the end of the year.

Nearly every expert we interviewed suggested that the experiences of people of color may not be fully reflected in their answers to the coordinated entry questions. San Francisco’s own data shows Black, white, Asian and Indigenous people being approved for housing at roughly equal rates. But Nagendra, from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, is looking into concerns that conditions that often make people of color more vulnerable are not being fully captured and that the numbers may not tell the whole story. “When you look at quantitative data, ours will show we are actually prioritizing people who are Black at an equitable rate. But when we talk to people, they might tell a different story,” she said.

Courtney Cronley, an associate professor of social work at the University of Tennessee who has written about racial bias in coordinated entry systems, pointed to one of San Francisco’s questions as an example of possible bias in action: “How many times have you used crisis services in the past year (for example, mental health crisis services, hospital, detox, suicide prevention hotline)?”

“Black people are less likely to use formal health care systems,” Cronley said. “They’ll reach out to family and friends and social support systems rather than going to the doctor. The doctor is not someone that they necessarily trust. These questions are biased towards persons who are white in our communities and biased against African Americans.”

The Department of Homeslessness and Supportive Housing has also said that very few transgender and gender-nonconforming people have been taking coordinated entry assessments. In a December 2021 meeting, Megan Owens, the department’s coordinated entry manager, presented demographic data on who was being assessed. She said that the number of people reporting those gender identities during assessments is “lower than in the best estimates of the homeless population.” In March, city data showed that transgender and gender-nonconforming people constituted only 2% of those taking assessments to try to get housing.

Critics of San Francisco’s coordinated entry system also say that one of the most basic questions, “How long have you been homeless this time?” leads to the exclusion of immigrants and younger people.

That question might sound simple, but it’s difficult for many people to say how long they’ve been homeless — and answering accurately can be critical to getting housing. That’s because San Francisco’s algorithm grants people more points the longer they have been unhoused: A person who has been homeless for more than 15 years receives 12 more points than someone who’s been homeless for one to two years. Anyone who says they’ve been homeless for less than a year gets zero points on this question. (On average, adults who qualify for housing in San Francisco report being homeless for six years.)

(Daniel Liévano for ProPublica)

Gayle Roberts, the chief development officer at Larkin Street Youth Services, a nonprofit serving young homeless people in San Francisco, said it is “common knowledge among social service providers that it [the coordinated entry system] is weighted heavily toward serving the needs of those who have experienced homelessness the longest.”

Laura Valdéz, executive director of Dolores Street Community Services, is one of several nonprofit leaders who questioned the efficacy of the system. “For many newly arrived immigrants, the way they literally interpret that question is since they’ve been here in San Francisco,” she explained. “So their scores are really low in comparison to other folks. But a large percentage of our immigrant community were unhoused in their home country.”

Valdéz also said the coordinated entry system can lead people living outdoors to accrue significant trauma before they qualify for permanent supportive housing. The program, she said, “requires people to stay in that system that is creating greater and greater harm to them for them to be able to score higher.”

The duration-of-homelessness question can also be tricky for homeless youth, defined as those between 18 and 24. In a 2019 count, they accounted for 14% of the city’s homeless population. Many young people are intermittently homeless, making it difficult to calculate the full length of that experience, said Dr. Colette Auerswald, a professor of community health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Maybe they stayed on their friend’s couch for five days and they were on a bus last night,” she said. “So they may be like, ‘Well, one day,’ but actually they’ve been in an unstable situation for a really long time.”

San Francisco’s homelessness department acknowledges this bias against young people seeking housing. In an attempt to address the age gap, the department included two questions that are only scored for people ages 18 to 24: “In the place you are staying, are you experiencing physical or sexual violence?” and, “In the last 12 months have you traded sex for a place to stay?” If they answer yes to either one, it provides a significant bump in their overall score: 12 points for each question. But if anyone older than 24 who has been sexually assaulted or has traded sex for a place to stay gets no points at all. (While the answers to these questions are only scored for 18-to-24-year-olds, they are asked of every person who takes the assessment. When asked why these questions were asked of people who could not receive points for answering, the department said it was for “data gathering.”)

Machuca-Grebe, the department spokesperson, explained that the question was added because “we have found that without the score placed on the questions for youth, they would be seriously under prioritized — leading to a disproportionate exclusion of youth.”

Davis was in the 18-to-24 age range when she first took her coordinated entry assessment, so those questions were scored. But she does not believe they should be asked at all.

“There’s not a single person that I can think of that is female-presenting that hasn’t been sexually assaulted while experiencing any part of their life, not just homelessness,” she said. “So you’re telling me that because someone hasn’t been raped, that she doesn’t get housing, and then she stays on the streets and then does get raped? And now she can? No, that doesn’t make sense.”

Questions From a Stranger

It is not just the wording and scoring of the questions that give experts pause. They also said that the way the assessment is given can fail to accurately assess a person’s vulnerability.

In San Francisco, all questions must be read by a trained staff member from one of the nonprofits that contract with the city to conduct the assessment. The questions are pulled up on an iPad or a computer. A drop-down menu offers a prewritten set of answers to select from, and the score is automatically added up by the software.

Coordinated entry assessments are frequently conducted in semi-public places, like a bustling office or a street corner under a highway. Applicants rarely have a preexisting relationship with the person asking the questions, and, due to understaffing at many nonprofits conducting assessments and the high number of people in need, there may not be time to build one.

“You really need to have interviewers establish rapport and relationship with the client prior to conducting or doing any assessment, because if they don’t trust interviewers, they’re just not going to talk to them,” said Cronley, the University of Tennessee professor.

The stakes are high: When an interviewer chooses the “Client refused” option from the pull-down menu of potential answers, the applicant receives zero points for that question.

Valdéz also sees lack of trust as a problem in the communities she serves. “Many of us would not feel comfortable speaking about our personal traumas, in 45 minutes, to a complete stranger,” she said. “My family experienced homelessness, and I can tell you right now, if I’m sitting in front of someone that I’ve just met, it is very unlikely that I would share that in an assessment.”

This was a concern voiced by Auerswald, the Berkeley professor, about the youth questions on violence and trading sex for a place to stay. She said the phrasing would not secure accurate results.

“My worries here is that a lot of young people are gonna say no,” she said. “And obviously, here, they really need to say yes. It’s one of their only hopes at prioritizing for housing, even though it’s a super traumatizing question.”

People’s personal interpretation of each question can affect their answers, Auerswald said. “A lot of young people who are trafficked would say no to this question,” she said. “They’d say, ‘Well I wasn’t raped, it wasn’t violent. I have someone taking care of me and I am paid or given something in exchange.’ Definitions of violence are different now. Violence is a lot of things. You can have sex under threat of violence, even if you don’t have a mark on you.”

Cronley said racial bias in child welfare and policing plays a similar role in determining how forthcoming people are willing to be when answering these questions.

“Black women are going to be more likely to fear that their children will be taken away from them if they report illicit behaviors, or if they report any sort of mental health challenges,” she said. “If you’ve got kids and you’re homeless and you’ve traded sex for money, you’re not going to tell them that you did that. No way.”

(Daniel Liévano for ProPublica)

Davis had enough experience with systems for homeless people that she knew not answering the questions was not an option. “I had no choice but to answer them or I couldn’t get into housing,” she said.

For some, though, the experience is so uncomfortable that they drop out of the process entirely. A native of El Salvador, Luis Reyes has lived in San Francisco for 30 years and been homeless for 10 of those. Reyes said he has taken the coordinated entry questionnaire twice — once in 2019 and again in 2020, right before the pandemic hit. Like Davis, he went to the brick building at 123 10th St., the city’s largest drop-in center for these assessments.

“There was a guy who did the assessment in Spanish,” Reyes said, through an interpreter, of his 2020 interview. “‘Are you incapacitated? Are you a senior citizen? Do you have AIDS?’” Reyes remembers him asking. “He even asked me if I was gay,” he recalls — a question that is not included in the coordinated entry assessment. Reyes answered no to all of the above and says he was then told he didn’t qualify for housing.

The experience discouraged Reyes, who was living in a shelter at the time of his second assessment. He decided not to take the questionnaire again. He has spent some months sleeping in his car, and more recently he stayed with his girlfriend at a senior living facility. But she’s not allowed to have guests, and soon he will have to return to the streets.

System Under Review

Across the country, cities and counties are starting to critically examine their coordinated entry systems. Last year, eight communities, including Chicago and Austin, Texas, studied the data on their coordinated entry results and discovered significant racial disparities. Both cities revised their systems using community feedback, redesigned their processes and wound up approving more people of color for services.

In San Francisco, 17,000 coordinated entry assessments were conducted between the launch of the system in 2018 and the middle of 2021. This year, the city announced it would be undertaking its own review to determine if the government is serving people equitably and if the housing options offered are a good fit for those in need. Nagendra, at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, is overseeing the city’s review.

“If things have gotten away from our overall intention and design, we can look at those things and figure out where we need to redesign, refresh, whatever it might be,” she said in an interview.

The city’s approach to its review is driven by data and leans heavily on interviews, which are being conducted in focus groups and through outreach at encampments. The agency plans to make the research findings public in late May.

Critics would like to see a more radical overhaul of the coordinated entry system and the way it is pegged only to the supply of housing.

Joe Wilson, executive director of Hospitality House, a community center for homeless people in the Tenderloin neighborhood, where the majority of the city’s unhoused population resides, explains the problem with that approach.

“This algorithmic-based decision-making process is designed to keep the problem small enough so we don’t have to truly address it,” he said in an interview. “They’re not filling housing based on need, they’re assigning it based on capacity. It is not logical, it’s not consistent, and it’s not effective.”

For example, families used to be required to hit 40 points to qualify for housing. In February, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing doubled that number to 80 points due to a shortage of family-specific housing. Owens, the coordinated entry manager at the department, estimated that the change would reduce the number of families who qualified for housing to between 50% and 60% of those taking the assessment, down from 75%.

Critics of the coordinated entry program have been proposing solutions as the city begins its review. In a February report, the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco’s largest nonprofit advocating for homeless people, recommended that the city “develop an assessment tool that categorizes people according to what type of housing would be the most suitable for their situation, instead of assigning them an eligibility score. This will tell us what type of housing and assistance is needed, versus how much housing we have.”

The organization also proposes letting case workers and housing providers work together to identify the best place to house an applicant. This approach, the Coalition argues, would create “a real-time housing placement system” that would more quickly bring vulnerable people indoors. This could help address the city’s chronic difficulty in filling the vacant units it has available: As the San Francisco Public Press and ProPublica reported in February, 1,633 people who had been approved for housing were still waiting to move in — some for months — even as more than 800 apartments sat vacant. At least 400 people had been on the waitlist for more than a year.

For those working on the front lines of the homelessness crisis, change to the coordinated entry system can’t come fast enough. Last July, in a meeting with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Wilson told a story about a client his organization had helped.

“We have an 86-year-old woman who has been homeless for 14 years who has not been prioritized for housing,” he said, noting that she took a coordinated entry assessment but did not hit the 118-point threshold for housing.

A key insight from that experience, he said: Algorithmic decision-making “moves us away from the absolute necessity of human judgment and human interaction in human services.”

by Abigail Kramer, THE CITY

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with THE CITY. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Mental health programs for children and adolescents will get a major infusion of funds in New York state’s new $220 billion budget, which passed Saturday after contentious negotiations over criminal justice issues.

Legislators approved significant reimbursement rate increases for community-based mental health programs, as well as bonuses for frontline workers. The budget also includes $10 million to address staffing and capacity shortages at state-run psychiatric hospitals, though it does not earmark funds to reopen beds that were shut down under a “Transformation Plan” rolled out by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. A measure proposed by the state Senate that would have committed New York to restore 200 state-run beds died in budget negotiations.

As THE CITY and ProPublica reported in March, New York has closed nearly a third of state-run psychiatric hospital beds for kids since 2014. Children in mental health crisis sometimes wait months for admission to the remaining beds, our investigation found.

“Governor Hochul has made addressing mental health issues a major priority for her administration,” wrote Jim Urso, a spokesperson for the governor, in an emailed statement. “With this level of meaningful and targeted investment, we can get those struggling with mental health issues the help they need.”

Some lawmakers say the investments do not go far enough. "Kids are languishing in emergency rooms or in acute care hospitals, waiting for the state beds," said Assemblymember Aileen Gunther, who chairs the state Assembly's mental health committee.

“We were flush with money this year,” Gunther continued. “We spent it on ‘Let’s give some money to the Buffalo Bills stadium before we make sure that every child has access to mental health care.’”

In all, the new state budget for the fiscal year through March 31, 2023, allocates $4.7 billion in operating funds to the state Office of Mental Health — a bump of nearly $800 million from the previous fiscal year. Funding will go up for a wide range of programs that serve children and adolescents, including residential treatment programs, crisis intervention teams for kids experiencing mental health emergencies, programs that bring mental health care into kids’ homes and a statewide initiative to integrate mental health providers into pediatricians’ offices.

The new money is intended to fill deep holes. In February, Gov. Kathy Hochul echoed what mental health care providers and advocates have contended for years: “For too long our mental health care system suffered from disinvestment,” she said.

As a result, mental health programs face chronic staff shortages, and children often sit on long waitlists for basic treatment — a problem that started before the COVID-19 pandemic but only grew worse as demand for kids’ mental health care spiked, our investigation found.

In a major shift, the budget makes hundreds of thousands of kids newly eligible for services like in-home therapy and planned respite care. These programs have historically been available only to low-income children on Medicaid, but will now be expanded to the nearly 390,000 kids on Child Health Plus, which covers children and adolescents whose family incomes are too high for Medicaid or who aren’t eligible for Medicaid because of their immigration status.

In theory, the expansion of eligibility is a big win for kids, said Alice Bufkin, the associate executive director for policy and advocacy at the advocacy group Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. But nonprofit mental health providers have struggled to serve the children who were already eligible, and they’ll need a lot more financial help to hire staff and serve additional kids, Bufkin said.

“We are at such a deficit in terms of capacity after years of underinvestment in the mental health system. We absolutely want to work with state leaders to build on these new investments and to recognize that there is a lot of work to be done to make sure kids can actually access the services they need,” Bufkin said.

“We’re on Life Support, and We Need to Be Resuscitated”

Like other health care providers, mental health programs in New York have faced critical shortages of staff during the pandemic. As THE CITY and ProPublica reported, state-run psychiatric hospitals are so short on nurses and social workers that many beds sit empty for months, even as acutely ill kids wait to get in.

Meanwhile, outpatient and community-based mental health programs — which struggled to stay fully staffed even before the pandemic — have seen an exodus of employees in the past two years. “We’re on life support, and we need to be resuscitated,” said Harvey Rosenthal, the CEO of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, at a New York State Assembly hearing on the mental health workforce in November.

That’s in large part because public and nonprofit providers can’t pay competitive salaries to clinical and other frontline staff, providers say. For many positions, community-based mental health organizations say they’re competing for employees with — and losing out to — fast food restaurants and retail outlets.

The new state budget attempts to stanch the bleeding, in part by doling out one-time bonuses to frontline health care workers, including mental health providers. Hochul proposed these spending measures as part of her plan to increase the size of the state’s health care workforce by 20% over five years.

“So to stop the hemorrhaging of health care workers,” Hochul said in her budget deal announcement Thursday, state officials need to stop talking about how “we owe them a debt of gratitude and pay them some of that debt. That means dedicating in this budget $1.2 billion for frontline health care worker bonuses.”

The budget also includes a measure, long sought by mental health agencies and advocates, that will provide a 5.4% cost-of-living adjustment in payments to service-providing agencies licensed by the state, including mental health and addiction programs. Under New York law, agencies that provide such services under contract with the state are supposed to receive a COLA every year, tied to inflation. However, the state budget has deferred the COLA nearly every year since the law was enacted in 2006 — a fact that has infuriated mental health advocates.

“For every year of his tenure, former Governor Cuomo robbed State-contracted human services workers of their mandated statutory COLA, depriving these workers of over $700 million in raises, and balancing the budget on the backs of low-wage workers and nonprofit community organizations,” the Human Services Council, which represents dozens of New York City nonprofits, wrote in January.

In response to a request for comment from Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the former governor, sent the following statement: “Every budget is defined by the revenue you have and — if you intend to be fiscally responsible — reasonable growth that can account for future economic downturns and avoid fiscal cliffs. We never had bags of money from the federal government that enabled billions upon billions in new spending in an election year budget. I wonder what will happen once the Washington gravy train dries up?”

In her January budget proposal, Hochul said that the 5.4% COLA, which is primarily intended for employee recruitment and retention, would provide “immediate fiscal relief” to mental health providers, “enabling them to offer more competitive wages to their staff.”

Advocates say that the COLA and workforce bonuses are a great start, but it remains to be seen how big a dent they will make in the workforce crisis. “I know of an agency that has 270 job openings,” said Andrea Smyth, the president of the New York State Coalition for Children’s Behavior Health. “Right now, they post them and they get no one to apply. Does this amount of money get 270 people to apply — or does it get 15? That’s undetermined.”

Smyth added, “That said, this is more than we’ve gotten in decades.”

Some of the funding increases in the budget were made possible by an influx of federal COVID-19 relief money. An additional $111 million came from a financial maneuver that advocates say Cuomo could have made use of but didn’t. Under its Medicaid contracts, the state can claw back money from managed care insurance plans that fail to meet minimum spending requirements on mental health and addiction treatment for Medicaid recipients. In this year’s budget, the state will use two years’ worth of recouped money to fund increased reimbursement rates for mental health and addiction treatment clinics.

Advocates for community-based mental health providers hope the recouped funds signal an intention by the Hochul administration to increase oversight of managed care plans that participate in New York’s Medicaid program. “The state needs to step up surveillance, monitoring and enforcement of all the provisions that are in place to protect Medicaid beneficiaries and to guarantee access to care,” said Lauri Cole, executive director of the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, which represents more than 100 mental health agencies.

“It’s about oversight of benefits that save people’s lives,” Cole added. “There should be nothing complicated about that.”

by ProPublica

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Periodically, we get a glimpse into the financial lives of the ultrarich. A pro athlete signs a huge contract, a tech CEO sells a boatload of shares in their company, or a billionaire heir unloads a Manhattan penthouse. Based on these nuggets of information, the media speculates as to how much income the rich might bring in every year. But nobody actually knows.

Thanks to an analysis of its unprecedented trove of IRS data, ProPublica is revealing the 15 people who reported the most U.S. income on their taxes from 2013 to 2018, along with data for the rest of the top 400.

The analysis also shows how much they paid in federal income taxes — and it demonstrates how the American tax system, which theoretically makes the highest earners pay the highest income tax rates, fails to do so for the people at the very top of the income pyramid. The top 400 earners pay noticeably lower tax rates than the merely rich; and, if you include payroll taxes, a married couple making $200,000 a year could end up paying higher tax rates than a person making $200 million a year. (The full analysis is here; it includes selected names beyond the top 15.)

Names That Won’t Surprise You

Scan the names on the list of the top 15 income earners and you’re certain to recognize several names — or at least the names of the companies they founded. Bill Gates hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft for over a decade, yet he still earned the most during the years we studied, reporting an average yearly income of $2.85 billion — and an effective federal income tax rate of 18.4%. Steve Ballmer, his former colleague, is also a well-known public figure, both for his time as Microsoft CEO and his current ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team. Ballmer’s average annual reported income of $1.05 billion landed him in the 10th spot on the list, and his effective federal income tax rate was 14.1%. The other side of the PC/Mac wars is represented here by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Her average reported income of $1.57 billion ranked fifth-highest; she paid an effective tax rate of 14.8%. (ProPublica sought comment from everyone mentioned in this article. Nobody disputed the numbers cited here. Unless otherwise noted, representatives for people named in this article either declined to comment, declined to comment on the record or did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another well-known billionaire sits just below Gates on the list: Media and tech mogul and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, with an average reported income of just over $2 billion, paid an effective income tax rate of 4.1%, by far the lowest rate among the top 15. (A spokesperson told ProPublica for an earlier article that Bloomberg “pays the maximum tax rate on all federal, state, local and international taxable income as prescribed by law,” and cited Bloomberg’s philanthropic giving.)

The presence of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — either the first- or second-wealthiest person in America, depending on the day — won’t shock most people, but Bezos’s annual reported income during these years of $832 million put him only at number 15. He paid an effective tax rate of 23.2%; as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.

Who Are These Others and Why Are They Paying Higher Tax Rates?

Tech billionaires dominate the top 15, but hedge fund managers account for a full third of the names on this list, and some of their incomes were just as huge. Most of them paid relatively high effective tax rates, especially compared to most of the tech sector representatives. Hedge fund managers often make their money through short-term trades, which are taxed at a much higher rate than when tech titans cash in on long-term investments.

The highest-earning hedge funder is Ken Griffin, founder of the Chicago-based firm Citadel. From 2013 to 2018, he reported an average income of nearly $1.7 billion, putting him fourth on the list. Griffin paid a tax rate of 29.2% during these years. (A spokesperson for Griffin said the tax rates in the IRS data “significantly understate” what Griffin pays, because they were lowered by charitable contributions and do not reflect local and state taxes. He also said Griffin pays foreign taxes, which aren’t included in IRS calculations of effective tax rate.)

Israel Englander, co-founder of Millennium Management, paid at a 30.8% rate, while the co-founders of Two Sigma Investments, David Siegel and John Overdeck, paid tax rates of 31.6% and 34.2%, respectively.

Some of this variation in rates reflects how people structure their businesses under tax law. Income earned by publicly traded corporations is taxed at the company level. When it’s passed on to big shareholders, such as tech billionaires, it can come in the form of dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. By contrast, the income from some manufacturing companies and hedge funds flows directly to company owners, who pay taxes on it, resulting in higher effective tax rates on average.

Where Are the Heirs?

Lists of the world’s wealthiest individuals are always heavily populated by heirs, ranging from descendents of old money to scions of more recently minted fortunes. Dozens of heirs made ProPublica’s list of 400 biggest income earners. Descendents and relatives of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, claim 11 spots.

The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, also have multiple members in the top 400. Perhaps the best known is Betsy DeVos, who served as U.S. secretary of education during the Donald Trump administration. With a reported annual income of $112 million, she was the 389th-highest earner in this period.

Much like the tech titans who top the list, most of these heirs get their income from dividends or long-term investments, which are taxed at a lower rate. Their effective tax rates ranged from as low as 10.6% for Betsy DeVos to a high of 23% paid by Walmart heirTom Walton.

Don’t Forget the Deductions

Another key way that some top earners reduced their tax liability was to claim significant deductions, often in the form of large charitable contributions. This is particularly true for wealthy investors who are able to make their donations with shares of stock. Thanks to a generous provision of the tax code, they can then deduct the full value of the stock at its current price — without having to first sell it and pay capital gains tax.

Michael Bloomberg achieved a tax rate of 4.1% from 2013 to 2018 by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions. From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $400 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes. The 2018 tax overhaul limited that deduction to $10,000 — but also introduced a huge new deduction for pass-through companies that Bloomberg benefited from.

Wait — What About the Celebrities?

The earnings of actors, musicians and sports stars are a subject of nonstop scrutiny in the media, yet few celebrities cracked the list of the top 400 earners, which would have required them to report annual incomes of at least $110 million.

ProPublica’s trove has data on many celebrities. One who came close to the top 400 is basketball superstar LeBron James, who averaged $96 million a year in reported income. Grammy-winning singer Taylor Swift also came within reach of the top 400, averaging $82 million in reported income during these years. Actor George Clooney would have had to double his average income of $55 million to crack the top 400.

THE TOP 15

Here are the details on the top 15 income earners. Read the full analysis of the top 400 here.

For the full list of America’s top 400 income earners and their tax rates, along with our methodology, click here.

Help Us Report on Taxes and the Ultrawealthy

Do you have expertise in tax law, accounting or wealth management? Do you have tips to share? Here’s how to get in touch. We are looking for both specific tips and broader expertise.

by Paul Kiel, Ash Ngu, Jesse Eisinger and Jeff Ernsthausen

by Stephen Engelberg

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

On Aug. 26, 2021, a suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with explosives and ball bearings in the packed crowd outside Kabul’s international airport. Shrapnel sliced through the air, killing 13 American service members and an estimated 160 Afghan civilians.

In the hours after the attack, officials reported that a second assailant had sprayed the crowd with automatic weapons fire, increasing the casualty toll in what was one of the deadliest attacks on American forces in the 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

As so often happens in such cases, the U.S. military’s initial account raised more questions than it answered. The Marines scrambling to evacuate civilians as Taliban forces swept into Kabul had been explicitly warned of a possible suicide attack that very day. Yet they seemed to have failed to take basic security precautions. Republicans seized on the bombing as evidence that the Biden administration had bungled its first foreign policy challenge, failing to forsee how quickly the Taliban would overwhelm the American-backed Afghan government.

The story cried out for the sort of investigative reporting we have done previously on the U.S. military, looking into subjects like the spate of fatal accidents involving the Navy’s 7th Fleet. Pursuing such stories can be challenging. They often take longer than expected and the military’s propensity for classifying the details of its missteps inevitably complicates the reporting. The relentless pace of the news cycle can mean that public attention will move on to The Next Big Thing by the time we can explain what really happened in the last one.

So it was with Abbey Gate. The fall of Kabul was followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We published our grippingly told story on the same day as Western news outlets began reporting that Russian soldiers had committed atrocities in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.

Still, I hope readers will make time to read this unforgettable investigation.

The piece we published is unusual in that it was done in collaboration with Alive in Afghanistan, a nonprofit news agency launched in the days after the fall of Kabul that employs local reporters to give greater voice to Afghans caught up in a struggle of global and regional powers.

Our partnership meant that the story of Abbey Gate was told from the perspectives of both the Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban and the ill-prepared Americans at the airport scrambling to facilitate their escape. Such reporting is unusual in war zones. Typically, correspondents are lucky if they can find and interview a handful of witnesses to a traumatic event like a suicide bombing.

In fact, the idea of taking a hard look at the bombing was initiated by editors at Alive in Afghanistan. Their Kabul-based reporters had heard multiple reports that some of the deaths outside the airport were the result of friendly fire as Western soldiers shot at what they thought were Islamic State gunmen in the crowd. Some of the medical personnel who treated casualties from Abbey Gate said they believed they saw injuries that could only have been caused by bullets.

Alive in Afghanistan pushed to find further evidence in Kabul, a tricky task in a city newly under Taliban control. Two ProPublica reporters, Josh Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien, began the painstaking work of finding and interviewing U.S. service members who were guarding the Abbey Gate checkpoint on Aug. 26.

Corroboration for the friendly fire theory proved elusive. Forensic experts differed on whether it was possible for a doctor, even one experienced in wartime injuries, to distinguish between damage caused by a ball bearing and that caused by a military-grade bullet. U.S. officials acknowledged that a small number of rounds had been fired but insisted they had been aimed over the heads of the civilians.

ProPublica and Alive in Afghanistan tracked down six doctors in three hospitals who believed they had seen bullet wounds. None were interviewed for the Pentagon report that concluded all of the deaths were due to the explosion. In an earlier story on the attack, we interviewed Dr. Hares Aref, a senior surgeon at Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, who said he had operated on three civilians from Abbey Gate whose legs were wounded by bullets. “We had patients with bullet injury in this attack, it’s clear,” he said. Aref based his conclusion on what he had seen treating victims of countless Kabul bombings. “My proof is my experience.”

While the issue of whether civilians were hit by U.S. fire remains contested, our recounting of the events made clear the extent to which the forces overseeing the evacuation were put in an untenable position.

U.S. officials acknowledged that they did not launch a large-scale evacuation until days before the fall of Kabul. Units that became central to the operation had not been included in the planning process and had not specifically trained for it. And while military officials knew the airport was difficult to defend and susceptible to attack, by the time Marines arrived, it was too late to adequately fortify the airfield.

In the final hours before the attack, U.S. commanders decided to leave open unguarded pathways to Abbey Gate. It is believed the bomber took advantage of such a route to make his way to the site of the explosion.

Our interviews documented the chaos at the airport on the day of the attack. U.S. Marines acted as de facto immigration officers and were left to interpret vague policies with little guidance, struggling to decide who to let into the airport and who to leave behind. They told our reporters that communication breakdowns and a lack of food, water and shelter led to preventable civilian deaths. Afghans perished from heat exhaustion. Some were crushed to death while waiting in line.

In the end, the scene at the airport was a microcosm of America’s experience in Afghanistan. The military’s hasty planning, rooted in optimistic assumptions, proved no match for the reality of a society in collapse.

As you follow the war in the Ukraine, it’s worth taking some time with this grunts’- and civilians’-eye view of how wrong a military operation can go.

by Lizzie Presser

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Spurred by a ProPublica investigation, three organizations that represent children in foster care filed a lawsuit last week in New York State Supreme Court against the state’s Office of Children and Family Services over new regulations that establish a “Host Family Homes” program, charging that they create a shadow system that will deprive children and parents of their rights.

The ProPublica story, published in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine in December, documented how, across the country, caseworkers are diverting children from formal foster care into what some scholars call “shadow foster care,” in which the legal protections of the formal system disappear. Parents who are investigated for allegedly mistreating their children agree, sometimes under coercion, to place their child with a relative, friend or volunteer family as an alternative to government foster care. Child welfare departments then often skirt their legal duty to keep children at home or thoroughly monitor the informal arrangements; the shadow system also strips families of access to free lawyers, judicial oversight and court-mandated services to attempt to reunite families.

The New York state regulations, which were adopted at the end of last year, allow placements in the homes of strangers without any court involvement, in so-called voluntary arrangements. The state describes the program as “temporarily supporting a family when a parent has made a determination that he/she is unable to care for their child” and has made an informed agreement “to allow a host family to care for his or her child as a way to avert the need for more child welfare intervention.” Similar to foster care, the rules call for monthly check-ins by the agencies that the state authorizes to perform this work; but unlike foster care, placements continue without oversight from a court.

New York statute already provides for formal voluntary placements that include safeguards that hold the state to account for the decision to take a child into a placement, for the care of the child while in the placement and for the services offered to help the family reunite. This lawsuit alleges that the host homes program subverts existing law by failing to provide these same protections.

Under the new rules, there is no requirement that the agency first provide preventive services, no requirement to attempt to place a child with kin, no requirement to receive court approval of the placement, no appointment of counsel and no mandate to provide services for reunification. Advocates who oppose the regulations say that they create a pathway for the state to avoid paying for the support that it does in the formal system to help stabilize families, like assistance for housing and subsidized child care.

The host homes program in New York came about after a faith-based organization, Safe Families for Children, approached the state. The volunteer-based group, which was not featured in the ProPublica story, has chapters in the majority of U.S. states and offers Christian “host homes” to struggling parents as an alternative to the child welfare system. Safe Families for Children says it has helped more than 25,000 children across the country with a 95% reunification rate.

But a 2021 report on Safe Families for Children in Illinois, co-authored by Mark F. Testa, a professor emeritus of social work at the University of North Carolina, found that some caseworkers there were using it as a “way-station for separating children from their parents.” He found that if left uncorrected, the program could have the opposite effect to its intended aim to preserve family integrity.

Safe Families for Children did not respond to requests for comment. In 2020, David Anderson, its founder and executive director, told Michael Fitzgerald at The Imprint: “The idea is, how do you build this as a social movement versus just a program? It’s built on the idea of trying to make the safety and protection of our children all of our responsibility, not just the child welfare system.” The organization did not have a way to track how the children in the program fared on outcomes, like educational progress or emotional well-being, according to The Imprint.

The New York rules do not allow a host home to take in a family member if that family is subject to an open child protective services investigation. But Josh Gupta-Kagan, a University of South Carolina Law School professor and the author of “America’s Hidden Foster Care System,” has documented how hidden foster care can occur after an investigation is closed. The rules permit host families to keep children for up to six months, with the possibility of additional six-month extensions that could go on indefinitely. It also puts no limitation on out-of-state placements.

“The rights of parents are clearly preserved in the regulations in multiple provisions,” Laura Galt, the director of the New York City chapter of Safe Families for Children, told ProPublica. The New York regulations made no mention of funding for host home agencies and the Office of Children and Family Services declined to comment for this article, citing the pending legislation.

Lawyers for Children, The Legal Aid Society of New York and the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo Inc., the organizations that filed the lawsuit, charge that the program is unlawful. In public comments, attorneys, child-welfare experts and judges voiced concerns over the proposed regulations. Many questioned the “voluntary” nature of these placements. Diane Redleaf, an Illinois-based lawyer who coined the term “shadow foster care,” wrote that the word “‘voluntary’ carries little weight whenever the child protection system is either directly or indirectly involved in a family.”

ProPublica’s story exposed how children who had been diverted into shadow foster care in Cherokee County, North Carolina, had suffered from extreme consequences, like homelessness and alleged sexual abuse. Without any court oversight, parents struggled to appeal the informal placements and reunify with their children.

“The ProPublica article made it abundantly clear for us how problematic these regulations are and the actual impact that it will have on individual children,” said Betsy Kramer, special litigation director at Lawyers for Children. “For us, it was all sort of theoretical before, and this article made it very real.”

Kramer believes that if the lawsuit is successful, it could have broader implications for Safe Families for Children chapters across the country and other shadow foster care practices that bypass the statutory framework for voluntary placements.

“This program will separate families without any assistance to prevent the separation or reduce the length of the separation and without any of the protections in place to make sure the separation isn’t traumatic to the child.”

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by Dale Russakoff and Deborah Sontag

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The state of Pennsylvania has agreed to pay $865,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that its state troopers routinely and unconstitutionally pulled over Latino drivers, demanded their “papers” and held them and their passengers for pickup by federal immigration authorities — a practice that escalated markedly after President Donald Trump took office in 2017.

The complaint, filed by the Pennsylvania ACLU and drawing in part on a 2018 series of ProPublica articles published in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer, detailed cases of state troopers stopping and then detaining immigrants under the auspices of federal immigration laws, which it alleged they had no authority to enforce. The immigrants were engaged in ordinary, legal activities, according to the complaint: traveling to see family members, driving to or from work, buying a soda in a state police barracks, awaiting medical help following a traffic accident or, in one case, returning from a job interview accompanied by a wife who was nine months pregnant.

Three of six incidents recounted in the complaint were carried out by one state police officer, Luke Macke, whose practices were revealed in the ProPublica articles.

“Our investigation found that the six incidents described in the lawsuit were the tip of the iceberg, reflecting a pattern of discrimination by state troopers against Latinos and people of color,” said Vanessa Stine, immigrant rights attorney for the Pennsylvania ACLU. “Racial profiling and discrimination have no place in law enforcement.”

The complaint alleged that the police actions violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional protections against racial and ethnic discrimination and illegal searches and seizures.

The settlement in Marquez, et al. v. Commonwealth, et al., signed on Wednesday, includes state payments to 10 plaintiffs, attorneys fees and extensive changes in state police policies. The new rules bar officers from stopping drivers based on their suspected nationality or immigration status, and from asking drivers about their immigration status unless it relates to a criminal investigation. They also state clearly that the state police department “does not have jurisdiction with respect to civil immigration enforcement.”

At the time of the ProPublica series, the state policy was significantly different. The Trump administration was ramping up immigration enforcement, and many states and municipalities were enacting explicit limits on how officers questioned immigrants or communicated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Others formed partnerships with ICE that deputized local police to enforce immigration laws.

Pennsylvania did neither, providing no guidance to troopers on how to handle encounters with undocumented immigrants, a state police spokesperson told ProPublica in 2018. Individual troopers decided on their own whether to question drivers and passengers about immigration status, summon ICE, or hold immigrants without a warrant until ICE arrived, according to ProPublica’s investigation.

In the year after Trump took office, these practices helped the regional ICE field office covering Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia tally more “at-large” arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal convictions than any of the 23 other field offices in the country. These were immigrants picked up in communities, not at local jails and prisons. The state police did not track these encounters, so there was no system for monitoring their impact.

“The whole central Pennsylvania area is like the opposite of a sanctuary city,” Anser Ahmad, an immigration lawyer, told ProPublica at the time. “Cops are out there looking for people.”

The agency’s new policy requires the department to keep records of all traffic stops, arrests and detentions of foreign nationals and to make them available to plaintiffs’ attorneys for a year.

“I am confident these changes to policy and training will ensure the department is in compliance with current case law,” said state police commissioner Robert Evanchick.

According to the ACLU, none of the officers named in the complaint were disciplined, and all remain on the force. A state police spokesperson said the department does not discuss disciplinary matters. Macke, who did not respond to requests for comment in 2018, has not responded to a request for comment for this story.

Almost all of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit ended up in deportation proceedings after state troopers turned them over to ICE. According to the complaint, all “suffered substantial damages including emotional trauma and distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and financial damages, some or all of which may be permanent.” The ACLU said all remain in the U.S.

One of the incidents in the lawsuit involved Rebecca Castro, the only U.S. citizen among the plaintiffs. She was driving her boyfriend (now husband) Carlos Amaya Castellanos and a co-worker to a construction job in Maryland when Macke pulled them over in May 2018. Castro provided her driver’s license, registration and insurance, which should have ended a legal encounter. But Macke contended that her truck and trailer looked suspicious. She asked what could be suspicious about an open-air trailer. Rather than respond, she said, he turned to investigating the immigration status of her passengers — evidence, according to the complaint, that the traffic stop was “impermissibly based on Ms. Castro’s and Mr. Amaya Castellanos’ perceived race, color, ethnicity, or national origin.”

According to the complaint, Macke held the three of them without a warrant for 90 minutes, demanding their identification and forcing all, including Castro, to submit to telephone interrogations with an ICE officer. Two ICE officers arrived soon after, arrested Amaya Castellanos and his co-worker and placed them in deportation proceedings. Macke had Castro’s vehicle towed, leaving her at the roadside without transportation.

“We were going to work. We weren’t doing anything else. Because of the simple fact that he saw we were Hispanic, he thought this was his lucky day and he was going to take all three of us,” Castro said, fighting back tears, in a video posted to Instagram. “But it turned out I was a citizen. He couldn’t take me. So that’s why I decided to fight the case — so that it didn’t happen to other people — because honestly the officers don’t get the damage they’re causing.”

Update, April 8, 2022: This story has been updated to include a Pennsylvania police spokesperson's comment that the department does not discuss disciplinary matters.

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS, with data analysis by Sophie Chou and research by Mariam Elba, ProPublica

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This is the beginning of an ongoing reporting project about homeowners associations in Colorado. If you have experiences with a Colorado HOA, we want to hear from you.

In a year when it felt like everything had gone wrong, a knock at Miesha Ross’ door one December day brought more bad news.

“There was a process server who came and knocked on my door and served me with a foreclosure notice,” Ross said, “and of course I freaked out.”

Ross had already had a string of bad luck in 2017 — a car wreck and a period of unpaid maternity leave after the birth of her third child left her struggling to pay the bills. She said she worked with most of her creditors to catch up. Getting served with a foreclosure case that day caught her by surprise.

“I’m like, ‘OK, I worked something out with the mortgage company,’ and that’s who I would think would be able to foreclose,” Ross said. Instead, the notice was from her homeowners association, the group that takes care of the upkeep of her community of townhomes.

“I had no idea that an HOA could foreclose on you.”

That knock at the door marked the start of a four-year legal fight between Ross and the Timbers Homeowners Association I Inc., which governs a complex of 394 units in Aurora, southeast of Denver.

Ross, a single mother, filed for bankruptcy twice, in 2017 and 2019, to try to catch up on her debt to the Timbers and save her home. She has since paid more than $5,600 to cover the HOA’s legal fees, an expense the association is allowed to pass on to members. She has worked to keep up on her monthly HOA dues, though a few times she was late. The association’s attorney recently filed a motion to have her bankruptcy dismissed, saying she has not made timely payments. Ross is fighting back, asking a judge to declare she has paid enough.

“I can understand if I wasn’t making any payments at all and just refused to pay,” Ross said. “I’m paying, and you’re still coming after me.”

Ross’ story illustrates the enormous power that Colorado’s more than 10,000 HOAs wield over homeowners. Many HOAs require residents to make routine payments, called assessments, to cover common expenses such as landscaping, trash pickup, water and sewer services, and amenities like neighborhood pools, clubhouses and playgrounds. In townhouse and condo communities like the Timbers, where assessments are $355 per month, those payments often also cover community insurance.

Under state law, HOAs can initiate foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who owe money to them, and their actions aren’t subject to any oversight from regulatory agencies.

The state estimates that more than 2.6 million residents — nearly half of Colorado’s population — live in homes governed by a homeowners association. Those HOAs filed more than 2,400 foreclosure cases from January 2018 through February 2022, according to an analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica.

During that same time, the analysis shows, at least 215 cases initiated by HOAs have resulted in sheriff’s sales in which the homeowners lose possession of their property.

Miesha Ross, outside her home at the Timbers, has brought her HOA balance to zero twice, only to see it climb again when the association added fees to her bill. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal governments issued moratoriums on most foreclosures by banks and mortgage lenders, prompting a significant slowdown of the proceedings nationwide. The national association of HOAs similarly recommended pausing foreclosures. But HOAs had wide discretion to make their own choices, and in Colorado, roughly 450 HOAs filed more than 730 foreclosure cases from April 2020 through July 2021.

Lindsay Smith, chair of Colorado’s legislative action committee for the Community Associations Institute, a trade organization for HOAs and their managers, said she typically advises HOAs against foreclosure except as a last resort. But she acknowledges it’s a “very effective” way of getting homeowners to pay when other collection efforts fail.

The data shows that the vast majority of Colorado’s HOAs have not taken the extraordinary step of foreclosing against homeowners at all in the past four years. But there are pockets where associations are turning to the so-called last resort of foreclosure again and again.

One such pocket is Green Valley Ranch, one of Denver’s largest HOA communities, with more than 4,000 units.

Town hall meetings, protests and petition drives sprung up in recent weeks after residents learned that dozens of homeowners there have faced foreclosure since 2021. Court data shows that the Master Homeowners Association for Green Valley Ranch has filed 79 cases since 2018.

The office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has called the foreclosures at Green Valley Ranch a sign of the “far reaching, unchecked powers” of HOAs in the state, and he has said he supports ongoing legislative efforts at the Colorado Capitol to limit those powers.

A tenth the size of Green Valley Ranch is the Timbers, an HOA that has filed 41 foreclosure cases against 31 homeowners since 2018.

The Timbers HOA’s board of directors and its property manager told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that the association’s collections practices have helped reduce by two-thirds a $200,000 shortfall in membership dues as of 2017, and the community has been able to complete a mounting list of repairs and maintenance that had long been delayed.

But the board and property manager declined to discuss the details of the foreclosure cases the Timbers has filed in public court.

“Stories like the one you are pursuing are always one sided. From social media to the actual local news media, HOAs, management companies, boards, and managers are demonized,” said Craig Miller, a representative from the HOA’s property manager, The Colorado Property Management Specialists, in an email. He said he would “happily provide details” if owners signed a consent form witnessed by a notary public.

Ross did just that. Three days later, the property manager again declined to give details, asking for even more paperwork.

In a statement, the board said it generally works with homeowners who fall behind on their bills to avoid legal action.

“The Timbers would rather work with and communicate with its members to resolve delinquency issues than rely on legal action. Over the years we have implemented payment plans and other tools that allow a member to regain their good standing,” the board wrote. “Unfortunately, not all our members with outstanding obligations are willing to work with us to utilize these options, which can result in legal action being taken.”

“They Can Take Away Your Home”

When people purchase houses in an HOA, they sign documents that bind them to obey the association’s covenants — and to pay fines, and possibly even collection costs, if they don’t.

“They don’t understand that they’re giving up, in essence, control of their property to a separate entity, the association. And if people don’t understand that from the very beginning, then bad things can happen,” said Jose Vasquez, a supervising attorney who represents low-income clients involved in housing disputes for Colorado Legal Services.

Some HOAs are responsible for expenses like street paving and lighting that might otherwise fall to local governments, and Smith said HOAs can’t pay for that kind of work if homeowners are not keeping up.

“We need to be able to provide the services that we are required to provide, and that means that we have to collect,” Smith said. “And sometimes that’s not as pretty as you might hope.”

Residents of Green Valley Ranch attended a town hall meeting in March to discuss HOA foreclosures. (Brittany Freeman/Rocky Mountain PBS)

The Timbers HOA’s board and its property manager pointed to the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominiums in Surfside, Florida. Later reports said the condo association had not set aside enough funding to complete urgent structural repairs, and the association was in the process of billing homeowners to pay for the work when the tower collapsed. The HOA industry at large looks at the Surfside disaster as an example of what can happen when there is not enough funding coming in from an association’s members to fix what is broken.

“Some associations have no choice but to stop funding maintenance, repair, replacement, and/or reserves. Over time, this can lead to delayed maintenance and deterioration of the buildings, landscaping, and other elements in the community along with the property values of such homes,” the board and property manager said in a statement.

When residents don’t pay, HOAs can file liens against their property. And Colorado law allows HOAs to seek foreclosure on their liens when residents are at the equivalent of six months behind on their routine assessments. That total may encompass more than the assessments themselves — it can include late fees, interest and legal fees, and fines for other violations, such as dead grass or faded exterior paint.

When a foreclosure order is granted by a judge, the local sheriff’s office sells the property to the highest bidder. The minimum price is set by the HOA, based on what the association and its attorney say they are owed, and the HOA also places a bid for that amount. This means the HOA itself can win the auction and purchase the property, potentially allowing the association to sell or rent the unit to turn a profit. Sheriff’s sale records show HOAs statewide have purchased at least 36 properties at foreclosure auctions since 2018.

At most of those auctions, homes were sold at far below fair market value. (Sheriff’s sales don’t extinguish any mortgage that may be owed, so the original homeowner may still owe a mortgage unless the new buyer pays it off or the lender proceeds with its own foreclosure action.)

Traditional foreclosures, handled by public trustees and typically brought by mortgage companies when homeowners fall behind on their payments, are far more common than HOA cases. More than 13,000 traditional foreclosure cases were filed between 2018 and early 2021 in Colorado. But the debts in those cases are often far larger.

Colorado does not regulate HOAs, and little has been known about how often the groups litigate against homeowners. The local industry organization said it does not keep track of how many foreclosures HOAs initiate in Colorado.

The state’s quarterly foreclosure reports — which are no longer being created due to state budget cuts during the pandemic — do not include HOA foreclosure numbers at all. A state office created to inform consumers and lawmakers about HOAs confirmed that it does not track the numbers either.

Several Timbers homeowners said they kept up with their mortgage but still faced losing their homes because they fell behind on their monthly dues.

“At first it was denial, like, ‘Oh, that’s just a threat. They can’t take away your home.’ And then, as things progressed, [we realized], ‘Yes, they can take away your home,’” said Timbers resident Mary Kunic.

Kunic and her husband were served with a foreclosure lawsuit from the HOA in 2018, 12 years after she purchased their townhouse. Kunic doesn’t know many of the details of what happened because she said her husband, who died in 2020, handled the situation. But she said he had to borrow roughly $10,000 to pay off the HOA and keep their house.

Kunic, 49, said she didn’t know until she was contacted by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that her home came within three days of being auctioned off at a sheriff’s sale. She also didn’t realize how much of the payment her husband made had gone to paying the HOA’s legal fees.

Mary Kunic saw some of the court documents from her foreclosure case for the first time when she was contacted by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. (Julio Sandoval/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Court documents show the Timbers obtained a default judgment for foreclosure of the Kunics’ home in the amount of $5,311.50, but only $480 of that total was actually owed for assessments, late fees and lien fees. The remainder represented legal costs of more than $1,800 and attorney’s fees of nearly $3,000, payable to the HOA’s collections attorney, Tammy Alcock. After the sheriff’s sale was scheduled, Alcock added another $1,920 in post-judgment attorney fees to the total.

Vasquez, who has not represented any of the Timbers homeowners interviewed for this story, said it is common for homeowners facing HOA foreclosure to see large legal fees added to their bills.

“In many homeowners association cases I’ve seen … the bulk of the amount that the association is trying to collect is attorney’s fees,” Vasquez said. “If you have a situation where you have all these additional fees that they’re now being charged, it makes it much more difficult for the homeowner to preserve their home.”

Of the $5,311.50 default judgment that the Timbers won against the Kunics, only $480 was for assessments, late fees and lien fees. Alcock Law Group, the HOA’s attorney, was owed $2,987.50 of the total. (Obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica)

Although Kunic gave the Timbers written consent to answer questions about the legal fees applied in her foreclosure case, the HOA said it could not comment unless she could prove that she was the court-appointed personal representative of her late husband’s estate.

“I could attend the next HOA meeting with his urn of ashes and ask them to talk to him themselves,” Kunic said.

In general, the Timbers said it cannot pay its bills if homeowners are not keeping up on theirs, and that allowing some people to fall behind is “unfair” to those who pay on time. And Kunic said she understands the HOA’s perspective.

Although her foreclosure case was closed years ago, she still worries about keeping her home. She works long hours as a nurse, but she fears she may not be able to keep up with the increasing HOA dues and other expenses without her husband.

“They have said a couple times at HOA meetings that, if people don’t like certain parts about the structure, they can move,” Kunic said. “Where could I afford to go?”

“It Scares Me That They Can Have So Much Power”

A key box hangs from the front door of a corner unit at the Timbers, next to a broken doorbell camera. A gap in the blinds shows the inside is empty.

The previous owner, John Saffer, moved out hastily last fall after his townhouse was sold at auction to a real estate investor for $15,282.

Saffer said he lost his job in 2019 and filed for bankruptcy to avoid foreclosure from his mortgage lender. After his bankruptcy case was closed, the HOA filed to foreclose, and Saffer said he did not have the funds to fight it.

“When buying a house, it seems all of them have some kind of HOA, and it scares me that they can have so much power,” Saffer said.

“I sunk $15,000 to $20,000 into a house,” and instead of building equity, he said, he “got nothing back from it.”

Saffer’s property is one of three Timbers properties sold at sheriff’s sales since the start of the pandemic, during a period when the HOA has been funding repairs to the common areas of its property.

The units at the Timbers were built in the 1970s. The complex covers 55 acres of the sprawling suburb of Aurora.

The Timbers’ 394 units are governed by a homeowners association. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

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Over the years, the community has needed repairs but did not always have enough funds to do the work.

“The Timbers had mounting capital maintenance obligations, such as the replacement of 40-year-old water lines that were routinely bursting at great expense and inconvenience to our members, 40-year-old asphalt which was rapidly turning our parking lots into gravel, necessary roof replacements, and significant repairs [needed] to one of the association’s swimming pools which made it unusable,” the board said in a statement.

Eventually, the community voted to take out a $3 million line of credit to try to complete necessary repairs and maintenance.

The community had gone without a dedicated property manager for 13 months before it hired The Colorado Property Management Specialists in 2017. That same year, the HOA transitioned to a new collections attorney: Alcock Law Group.

The board said in a statement that, before 2017, the HOA shared the cost of collections with a law firm, leading to shortfalls that continued to grow because “the collections company was not sufficiently motivated to find and collect outstanding amounts.”

In contrast, Alcock’s website says, “Our goal is to provide aggressive representation to bring the rate of delinquent assessments down by striving to collect not only the delinquent assessments but also all attorney fees and costs incurred by the Association quickly and efficiently.”

Records show close ties between The Colorado Property Management Specialists and Alcock.

The property management firm works with 26 communities, according to its website, and court records show Alcock has represented 15 of them in foreclosure litigations. Fourteen such cases, including the action against Ross, were filed on behalf of the Timbers in the final months of 2017, after Alcock was hired. By comparison, records show the HOA had filed just one foreclosure case in all of 2016. The Timbers board confirmed it hired Alcock on the advice of The Colorado Property Management Specialists.

Alcock declined an interview. Instead, she said in an email, “I take direction from the Association’s Board through its property manager pertaining to the commencement of lawsuits for judicial foreclosure and matters regarding settlement.”

The HOA’s collections efforts continued through the pandemic, despite the recommendation by the Community Associations Institute that associations adopt a moratorium on foreclosures through July 2021 and “waive late fees and penalties for owners who face temporary financial hardships due to COVID-19.”

The Timbers said it adopted a temporary COVID-19 resolution that “offered extended payment plans to any homeowner who requested assistance due to COVID.”

But that resolution did not stop the HOA from seeking to foreclose. Court records analyzed by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica show the Timbers filed 17 foreclosure cases from April 2020 through July 2021. Only two much larger associations sought to foreclose more often during the same period. The Timbers filed another three cases in January.

Unlike banks and mortgage lenders, HOAs have had wide discretion to foreclose on homeowners during the pandemic. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS) “Our HOA Is Broken”

One day in December, Edward James sat at his computer in the cramped home office in his Timbers townhouse.

“News at the Timbers,” James titled his document, as he had for years when he wrote an independent newsletter for the community. Beneath it, he typed the words, large, bold and underlined: “OUR HOA IS BROKEN.”

James would never finish his newsletter or share it with his neighbors. He died of COVID-19 a few weeks later at the age of 73. But he left behind a collection of records showing how he and his wife nearly lost their home, purchased more than 30 years ago, in a dispute over payment due dates during the pandemic.

James’ widow, Janet, lamented how much time he spent at the end of his life fighting with the HOA.

“He got so stressed and he wanted to move away from here. And I told him, ‘I can’t,’” Janet James said. “It was a miserable couple of years for both of us. Him, because he wanted out. Me, because he was so upset and so stressed.”

That stress began with a disagreement over $25 late fees.

The Timbers’ collection policy states that payments are due on the first day of the month, and those not paid within 30 days are subject to late fees. Month after month, Edward James paid online through the HOA’s website and saved his receipts showing he paid within 30 days.

Janet James said her husband studied the HOA’s rules and argued when he did not feel they were being followed. (Alexis Kikoen/Rocky Mountain PBS) Left: Photos of Edward James. Right: Janet James holds an installment of her husband’s independent newsletter about the HOA. (Alexis Kikoen/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Yet The Colorado Property Management Specialists assessed late fees on the James account in each of those months, telling him that the payments were posted on the date it received them rather than the date James submitted his payment. Records show the company waived several late fees for James and then told him that, if he wanted to avoid further fees, he needed to pay earlier in the month.

James continued paying the full amount of his monthly assessments but did not pay the late fees or additional $10 processing fees being added to his account. When he argued against the fees, the company accused him of harassing behavior and sent him letters warning that he would be fined for failing to treat the board and its vendors with “respect, courtesy and dignity.”

Because he was not paying off his balance, the late fees continued to accumulate monthly, and eventually the HOA placed a lien on the property and turned his account over to Alcock.

“My husband was very stubborn. … He wasn’t going to pay it, even though it was very minor,” Janet James said. “He felt like [if] he did the right thing, it would all be OK. And it wasn’t OK.”

Records obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica show James emailed his receipts to Alcock, writing, “From these documents I hope you can tell CPMS they have no case.” Alcock responded, telling James his delinquency stemmed from missing his May 2020 assessment. He then emailed her a receipt showing he had in fact made that payment early. Two months later, in February 2021, she filed a foreclosure case on behalf of the Timbers.

In an email, top, Alcock explained to Edward James that his delinquency stemmed from missing his May 2020 assessment. He responded with a receipt, bottom, bearing a handwritten note and showing he had in fact made that payment early. Two months later, Alcock filed to foreclose on the James house on behalf of the Timbers. (Obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica)

Upon being served the lawsuit, James emailed Alcock several times making settlement offers. But he did not respond in court, which allowed the HOA to secure a default judgment for foreclosure and schedule a sheriff’s sale of the James home.

Janet James said she and her husband borrowed money from a relative to pay off the total owed and avoid the foreclosure sale, signing a settlement agreement in which the couple agreed to pay more than $7,700 — an agreement that specifically stated that “the amount of attorney fees and costs charged in this matter are reasonable.”

That final amount included more than $7,000 in legal fees and costs billed by Alcock Law Group. The couple’s account ledger shows that all they owed the HOA at the time they reached the settlement was $725 — a total that Edward James continued to dispute.

Even after signing the agreement, James sent a letter to the HOA’s board demanding the Timbers, The Colorado Property Management Specialists and Alcock repay all of the expenses the Jameses incurred in their effort to avoid foreclosure.

Alcock responded with a letter of her own.

“These comments demonstrate a clear and deliberate effort to damage my business and my professional reputation. I expect an immediate retraction and apology without which I will consider legal action of my own,” Alcock wrote.

In a final act of defeat, James emailed Alcock an apology.

It’s clear, between his newsletter that often criticized the community’s leadership and his protests over late fees, that Edward James and the HOA had a contentious relationship.

Janet James provided the HOA with written consent to answer questions about her case, but the Timbers said it could not comment because she had not signed the liability form it had written or provided a separate authorization from her late husband’s personal representative.

In an email, Alcock also said she could not respond to detailed questions about James and other homeowners since “most of your questions would require that I violate the attorney client privilege regarding communications with my client or would violate my obligations under state and/or federal law — neither of which I will do.”

Janet James said she bears no ill will toward the Timbers HOA’s board or its property managers. Instead, she wants a change in state law to give homeowners more of a chance to prevail in these kinds of disputes. She said there’s a sad lesson in her late husband’s fight against the HOA.

“You can’t win,” she said. “Save your house and pay [the fees], or get the law changed.”

“My Mom Didn’t Buy That House 40 Years Ago to Have It taken Right Out From Underneath Her”

Not even death can stop a foreclosure proceeding.

Jayne Wilson was one of the first group of Timbers homeowners when she moved to the community in 1978.

“She liked it,” said Betsy Wilson, Jayne’s daughter. “It had a pool — which in Colorado, it’s not the norm — and the tennis court, and the basketball court. She loved to host people, all of us over there on her back porch.”

Wilson stayed in her townhouse until 2020, when her health began to suffer and her memory started to decline. She moved in with her daughter, who said she took over paying her mother’s bills but did not notice that the HOA payments were no longer automatically coming out of Jayne’s account.

Jayne Wilson died in April 2021, on her 86th birthday. A few months later, Betsy said she found some mail indicating her mother’s home was scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure auction.

“I had no idea that it was going on,” Betsy said.

Betsy Wilson with a photo showing her late mother, who was one of the first people to buy a home at the Timbers. (Alexis Kikoen/Rocky Mountain PBS)

The Timbers declined to answer questions about Jayne Wilson’s case without a liability waiver, and Betsy Wilson was unavailable to sign the form.

But court records show Jayne Wilson was never served in person with the foreclosure papers from the Timbers. A process server wasn’t able to find her, so the court allowed the HOA to publish the notification of the foreclosure case in the local newspaper instead. Other notifications about the court process sent to her in the mail were returned undelivered.

Wilson’s family had to pay more than $17,000 to stop the auction, including more than $5,600 in legal fees.

“I realize that they hadn’t been paid, but it was a mistake, and she had paid it all those years faithfully,” Betsy said. “I’m certain that my mom didn’t buy that house 40 years ago to have it taken right out from underneath her.”

“Isolation and Shame Don’t Solve Problems”

In a committee room at Colorado’s state Capitol in early March, lawmakers heard stories from homeowners asking the state to place limits on the fines, late fees and legal fees that can cause a small HOA debt to snowball into one so large that it costs someone their home.

“Taking someone’s home away should be the last resort,” said Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat. “The practice persists because attorneys are paid from the proceeds of selling the house, further reducing homeowners’ equity. These predatory practices must be stopped.”

Ricks is sponsoring a proposal aimed at removing an HOA’s ability to foreclose for nonpayment of fines and fees from covenant violations like grease stains in driveways and unmowed grass.

But some HOA representatives and members of the Community Associations Institute told lawmakers that the proposed limits would simply increase costs for homeowners. The legislation is being amended by its sponsors and is currently set for a committee vote next week.

Andrew Mowery, an HOA homeowner advocate and blogger who is part of a group of homeowners from across the state who helped shape the legislation, said stories like those at the Timbers illustrate a need for reform.

“We are not just doing this for a few anecdotal stories from some malcontents. This is something affecting a large number of people. The sunshine of the day needs to shine down on this and expose this,” Mowery said.

Some of the Timbers homeowners who have faced foreclosure said they only recently learned that so many of their neighbors have also been sued by the HOA.

Kunic said she decided to share her story because she wants to help. She said she’s hoping to join with neighbors to start a community food pantry to help ease some of the burdens that many in the community seem to share.

“Isolation and shame don’t solve problems. And I want to help be part of the solution so that other people don’t end up three days away from losing their home,” Kunic said.

About the Data: How We Compiled Information on Sheriff’s Sales and HOA-Initiated Foreclosures

Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica’s analysis of sheriff’s sale data was compiled by collecting documents kept by sheriff’s offices and county clerks around the state and by reviewing sheriff’s sale documents filed in court.*

The news organizations’ analysis of foreclosure cases brought by HOAs depended on a database of over 2,400 such cases filed between Jan. 1, 2018, and Feb. 28, 2022. To build this list, we first obtained, via a public records request to the Colorado state court administrator’s office, a list of all foreclosure cases that were categorized by the state as “Other than rule 120 (FC)” or R5. These are two categories for judicial foreclosure cases, which are not initiated by mortgage lenders. We then scraped additional information on those cases from the Colorado Courts Public Access Terminal. Because we found inconsistencies and misspellings in the court records, we used a combination of the OpenRefine tool and manual labor to clean the data by combining multiple versions of the same plaintiff name and removing spelling errors. We then used keywords to identify court cases relating to HOAs. We used a public records request to the Department of Regulatory Agencies to obtain data on HOAs’ registrations with the state. In an effort to concentrate on residential properties rather than shared vacation homes, we excluded cases involving HOAs that have indicated that their communities include timeshare units.

Colorado Homeowners: Do You Have Experience Dealing With an HOA? Help Us Investigate.

by Nicole Santa Cruz

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Josh Tate was sentenced in 2017 to 10 years in prison for getting caught with drugs multiple times, his wife, Claire Tate, tried not to dwell on the moments he would miss with their two young kids. She didn’t see the purpose in sending Josh — who had struggled with a meth addiction for years but never been convicted of a violent crime — away for so long.

“You can’t punish a drug addiction out of somebody,” Claire Tate said recently.

Never miss the most important reporting from ProPublica’s newsroom. Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.

Last year, state legislation supported by prominent conservative groups seemed to offer Josh Tate a chance to serve a larger portion of his sentence at home after completing education and self-help programs.

Claire and Josh began making plans, big and small, for once he was out of prison: going to a grocery store, visiting a hot dog stand in a small southern Arizona town, taking the kids to the beach.

One man had the power to delay their early reunion: Steve Twist. Twist has never held elected office. But over four decades the Arizona victims’ rights advocate, adjunct law professor and former assistant state attorney general has had an enduring impact on policies that created one of the nation’s most punitive state criminal justice systems.

As he had done several times before, Twist worked to torpedo the early release bill, meeting with lawmakers and sharing a list of concerns, including fears that people convicted of certain violent crimes would qualify for release.

Across the country, states both liberal and conservative have taken steps to reduce their prison populations. Similar efforts in Arizona have been incremental. The state established mandatory minimums for people who commit multiple and violent crimes; combined with a law that requires almost every prisoner to serve 85% of their sentence in prison — with the exception of people, like Josh, convicted of drug possession, who still serve 70% — this makes Arizona’s criminal justice system one of the harshest in the nation. Locking up so many for so long comes at a high price: Only four states spend a bigger share of their budgets on corrections.

Organizations and lawmakers attempting to change the state’s sentencing laws have blamed their failure on the tight grip Twist and his allies hold on criminal justice policy in Arizona.

In the 1970s, first as a lobbyist for Arizona police chiefs, then as a lawyer for the Arizona Legislature, Twist helped rewrite the state’s criminal code to make sentencing more punitive. Later, as an assistant state attorney general in the 1980s, he continued to push for harsher laws that kept people in prison even longer. In the 1990s, working for the National Rifle Association, he helped enact similar policies in other states, including requirements that people serve at least 85% of their sentenced time, imposing life sentences after a third conviction for a violent felony, enforcing the death penalty and allowing young people to be charged as adults.

In more recent years, those who have worked with Twist and observed him closely said he remains a gatekeeper for criminal justice policies in Arizona. This continuing influence comes not only from his past work but also his relationships with governors, lawmakers, state supreme court justices, county prosecutors and other victims’ rights advocates. When proposals threaten laws he helped enact, he draws on this network to pressure lawmakers to oppose reform legislation.

“So many people defer to him,” said Pat Nolan, founder of a criminal justice reform group at the American Conservative Union Foundation. “His influence is felt behind the scenes, it’s not out in the open.”

Claire Tate in Sierra Vista, Arizona, with her kids and a family picture showing her husband, Josh Tate, who is incarcerated (Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica)

Those who have worked with Twist and observed him say it’s not clear what has driven his passion for criminal justice issues. He has said in previous interviews that his work as a prosecutor helped him understand “the plight of crime victims in our system.” And when Twist opposes changes to sentencing laws, he usually references crime victims. This work has made him a nationally recognized figure in the victims’ rights movement, including being honored by the Department of Justice in 2020 with a Victims’ Rights Legend Award. And it’s given him stature in Arizona’s political establishment.

Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor who wrote a textbook with Twist about crime victim law, said he doesn’t know of a personal experience that shaped Twist’s views. “I think Steve just thinks it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Heather Grossman, a domestic violence survivor who was shot in the neck in 1997, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down, said that Twist has been a “lifesaver” for her and her family. Twist has connected Grossman to resources, mentored her son, and helped when her insurer refused to cover her 24-hour nursing care.

“He’s such a good person, and I can only think he works for the best kind of justice,” she said. “He’s one of the best people I know.”

Twist did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests to be interviewed or to comment for this story.

Twist and his allies have claimed that Arizona’s sentencing laws reduced crime, even as evidence mounts that such policies are not only inhumane and costly, but also ineffective.

Grant Woods, who died last year, defeated Twist in the 1990 Republican primary for Arizona attorney general. In a 2021 interview with ProPublica, Woods described the candidate he faced as someone who he believed had “decided very early in his life that the best way to provide public safety is to figure out who is committing crimes and to lock them up as long as you can. And I don’t think he’s really changed much since then.”

After the Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives passed its early release bill in February 2021 with overwhelming support, Claire Tate began unpacking her husband’s clothes from a storage unit and telling friends at church that he would be home soon.

Later in the legislative session, rumors began to spread among lawmakers that a revised version of the bill would lead to the release of child sex traffickers, which lobbyists for the bill said was untrue. Efforts to debunk the rumors failed, and the Legislature adjourned without taking final action. Josh remains locked up.

For some, including the bill’s Republican lead sponsor, state Rep. Walt Blackman, its failure was the latest example of Twist defeating any proposal that would dismantle laws he helped shape.

“All lines go to him,” Blackman said.

“Leading a Charge to Lock Offenders Up and Throw Away the Keys”

Twist graduated from law school in 1974, as much of the nation was beginning to panic over rising crime. That year, the rate of serious crime — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft — jumped 17%, the largest increase in the 44 years that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had collected statistics.

In a special address to Congress in June 1975, President Gerald Ford urged lawmakers to enact measures to control crime.

That year, a commission was at work revising Arizona’s criminal code, which dated to its territorial days. A Tucson Citizen editorial called the old laws “outdated, ambiguous and ineffective.”

Twist got a job as a lobbyist for the Arizona League of Cities and Towns who represented the Arizona Police Chiefs Association. He left that job to work for the Arizona House of Representatives, where, as he described it, he became a “principal drafter” of the new criminal code as it was debated by lawmakers.

The code was rewritten in modern language; some anachronisms, such as rules regarding dueling, were deleted. But more importantly, the code’s purpose was reframed: Sentencing should have a “deterrent influence,” it stated. The new laws also limited judges’ discretion by imposing mandatory prison time for repeated felonies and violent crimes.

“Without Steve this couldn’t be done,” the chair of the House Judiciary Committee told a reporter at the time.

In 1978, months before the code was to go into effect, a South Carolina consulting firm hired by the Department of Corrections to develop a plan to ease prison overcrowding released a report critical of the new laws. The report’s author, Stephen Carter, predicted they would contribute to a prison population increase from about 3,000 to at least 10,000 over a decade.

The auditorium at the Alhambra prison complex in Phoenix, Arizona, was converted to hold 43 beds to address overcrowding. The photo ran in a 1988 report about the state’s prison system. (Sean Brady/The Arizona Republic)

By January 1988, the prison population had exceeded those projections, with more than 11,000 people incarcerated across the state. Arizona had run out of space in its prisons and was housing prisoners in tents, warehouses and trailers.

Twist changed jobs again in 1989, becoming chief assistant to then-Attorney General Bob Corbin, a job in which he continued to be a fixture at the Legislature.

Chris Herstam, who served as a state representative for eight years starting in 1983, recalled seeing Twist and others from the attorney general’s office huddled for hours in the House Judiciary Committee chair’s office. “They were leading a charge to lock offenders up and throw away the keys,” Herstam said. “They were very much into victims’ rights in an attempt to reduce crime dramatically and put the bad guys in jail, period. That was their mission.”

As Twist began working with victims of crime, his interest in their issues deepened. He wrote Arizona’s Victims’ Bill of Rights, a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 1990 that guarantees crime victims certain rights, including the right to be informed of criminal proceedings and to be present in the courtroom.

However, resistance to the massive increase in incarceration was building. In 1992, a criminal justice research group released a study that concluded the rewritten criminal code’s broad descriptions of crimes and narrow sentencing provisions had gone too far in shifting power from judges to prosecutors. The report’s authors recommended eliminating mandatory minimums and returning to sentencing ranges that would allow judges to decide an appropriate punishment.

“It shows what was a sincere effort at achieving harmony in sentencing,” wrote the report’s author, Kay Knapp, was “instead producing anarchy.” Knapp was a former U.S. Sentencing Commission director.

The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council attempted to refute Knapp’s findings with a report of their own. Authored by Michael Block, a professor of economics and law at the University of Arizona, the report argued that getting tough works and that Knapp’s report was unbalanced. Block, who would later co-found the BASIS charter schools chain, told a joint legislative committee that punishment in Arizona was in line with the rest of the nation.

That year, the committee recommended rehabilitation be added as a purpose of the criminal code. The panel also proposed restoring judges’ ability to adjust sentences.

Those recommendations were ignored. Instead, Gov. Fife Symington proposed ending parole in Arizona and replacing it with “truth in sentencing,” which would require people in prison to serve a minimum of 85% of their sentences. Lawmakers passed the measure in 1993.

At the time, a new NRA program called CrimeStrike said it had helped Arizona officials enact the harsher penalties.

CrimeStrike’s director: Steve Twist.

Arizona’s Incarceration Rate Far Outpaces National Average

During the decades Steve Twist helped shape the state’s criminal justice policy, Arizona saw a rising prison population.

(Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau) A National Platform

In the 1990s, CrimeStrike bought full-page ads in magazines and newspapers touting its mission to “put real justice back in our criminal justice system.” Not only was crime a threat to personal safety, the pitch went, it was also “the greatest threat to your Second Amendment right to own a gun. It is their violent misuse of firearms that makes your firearms the target for gun-ban groups, anti-gun politicians and the media.”

At the 1994 Conservative Political Action Conference, Gary Kreep, then the executive director of the U.S. Justice Foundation, a conservative legal issues organization, introduced Twist as CrimeStrike’s director and the person who had recently helped craft “precedent-setting” legislation to abolish parole in Arizona.

When Twist took the stage, he issued a rallying cry to the CPAC crowd: “We simply cannot give speeches about this any longer. We have to become an army, a coalition across America to tell politicians that the time for reform and change and getting tough is now, because getting tough works.”

Twist had a national platform to spread the ideas he had developed in Arizona.

CrimeStrike claimed it helped pass “truth-in-sentencing” laws in Mississippi and Virginia, and worked on “three strikes and you’re out” laws in California, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington. In Texas in 1993 and Mississippi in 1994, the group pushed for billion-dollar bonds to build new prisons, according to media reports. CrimeStrike volunteers “publicize the records of judges and politicians whom they see as being soft on criminals,” the Houston Chronicle reported. The group also advocated for constitutional amendments for crime victims like the one passed in Arizona.

Other opportunities for Twist to influence criminal justice policy across the country followed.

The 1994 Crime Bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton provided grants for building and expanding prisons to states that required prisoners convicted of violent crimes to serve 85% of their sentence. That year, Twist teamed up with Block, the University of Arizona professor, to co-author the “Report Card on Crime and Punishment,” which they claimed was “the first comprehensive historical review ever accomplished of crime and punishment in the states.” The report was done for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded group that brings together conservative state lawmakers and representatives of corporations to develop and disseminate copycat legislation.

(ALEC has since changed course on criminal justice policy, including publicly supporting the proposed 2021 Arizona sentencing reforms that Twist opposed.)

The 1994 report card cited federal crime and imprisonment data from 1960 to 1992 to argue that six of the states with the largest increases in incarceration rates for violent crime were also among the states with the biggest declines in violent crime. “The message here is unequivocal. Leniency is associated with higher crime rates; getting tough brings crime rates down,” the report stated.

Experts dismissed Twist and Block’s methods and conclusions. Alvin J. Bronstein, the founder and then-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, called it “voodoo criminology.”

Marc Mauer, former executive director of The Sentencing Project, a D.C.-based group opposed to mass incarceration, said the report — which received media coverage nationwide — influenced conservative lawmakers by “doing their homework for them,” providing a “research-based” report to support model legislation they could introduce in their home states.

Mauer said there was no direct link between the rising imprisonment and declining crime rates Twist cited as proof that his approach was working. Mauer said that it was misleading to compare the crime rise from 1960 to 1980 with the decline from 1980 to 1992. Mauer said that crime reporting in 1960 was “very sketchy” in many places, and many crimes weren’t reported to police. By 1980, reporting had improved.

“Any serious scholar would have to say there was an increase, but we can’t be sure of the scale of the increase, because we don’t know how many crimes were not reported back then,” he said.

And studies that followed would find no strong connection between longer sentences and crime rates.

A 2004 report by the American Bar Association criticized mandatory minimum sentencing, noting the sharp increase in the time people were serving in prison: Between 1980 and 1992 those imprisoned served an average of 18 months, while from 1992 to 2000 it jumped to an average of five years. The report noted the harm done to minority communities by widespread incarceration and urged lawmakers to find alternatives.

In 2012, a Pew Center on the States study found that for a substantial number of people in prison, there is “little or no evidence” that longer sentences prevent crime. And in 2014 the National Research Council concluded that the increase in incarceration might have reduced crime, but the magnitude was uncertain. The research council said that policymakers should reconsider their sentencing policies because of the “social, financial and human costs.”

Virginia Mireles, who has been in and out of Arizona prisons five times since 1996, said the threat of longer sentences didn’t deter her from stealing to feed her drug addiction.

At her home in Mesa, Arizona, Virginia Mireles recreated a bulletin board she made in prison for comfort. (Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica)

The name of the judge who handed down Mireles’ first sentence will forever be imprinted in her mind: Judge Deborah Bernini sent her to prison for a year for possession of $10 worth of heroin.

But prison didn’t offer anything to treat her addiction. Mireles continued using heroin when she wasn’t incarcerated, saying that at one point she felt her only purpose in life was to be a “dope fiend.” The most recent time she was arrested, in 2013, she had stolen $27 from a neighbor’s wallet while he was in the shower.

“I needed gas, I needed my fix,” she said. “And I needed lunch money for my kid.”

When police showed up at her Tucson apartment, she admitted stealing the money, but said she intended to repay her neighbor when she got paid at midnight. Still, Mireles was charged with second-degree burglary and sentenced to six-and-a-half years. While she was incarcerated, the prison’s addiction programs had long waitlists so she read self-help books instead .

Two of her three children have since had contact with the criminal justice system. Her son has been in prison and her daughter was recently released from jail.

“So what are we keeping people safe from? You’re not just sentencing that person, it’s their family as well,” said Mireles, who has now stayed away from heroin for nine years and, in her free time, volunteers in the community and advocates for criminal justice reform.

Repeating Arguments From the 1990s

Twist has continued to use the same arguments he’s used since the 1990s to defend his ideas despite mounting evidence debunking them.

In 2019, Twist addressed the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission as it evaluated how to best collect and analyze data on the state’s criminal justice system.

Hear Steve Twist Speak to the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission

Twist distributed to the commission a chart showing the state’s prison population and crime rate from 1974 to 2017. Overall, as the prison population rises, the crime rate declines. It echoed the fundamental argument of his 1994 “Report Card on Crime and Punishment”: Increasing incarceration reduces crime.

“For those people who say that our current system hasn’t resulted in more public safety, I urge them just to consider the chart,” Twist said. He pointed out that the correlation is not causation, but said the chart shows a “powerful social correlation,” as the prison population has increased while the crime rate decreased.

“But these are more than numbers. These are tens of thousands of our fellow citizens who were not harmed by crime,” he said.

Donna Hamm, founder of Middle Ground Prison Reform, an Arizona prisoner advocacy group, was present at the meeting as Twist credited lengthy sentences for the decline in crime. Twist’s arguments that truth in sentencing is effective “clash with reality,” she said, but commission members — mostly police or prosecutors — nodded in agreement as they listened to the person Hamm calls the “godfather of the sentencing code in Arizona.”

“You have to sit on your hands and listen to him say those things,” Hamm said of Twist.

“But it’s almost worse that there’s no formal questioning or even challenging. It’s like no one is even looking at the charts.” Hamm continued: “These are the people in control. These are the decision makers. These are the influencers.”

“The Invisible Hand of Steve Twist”

Those who have challenged Twist’s ideas come to learn of his role as a gatekeeper over criminal justice policies in Arizona.

In 2011 and 2012, then-state Rep. Cecil Ash introduced 17 bills related to the criminal justice system, including legislation to relax mandatory sentencing and to give people in prison a chance to earn early release for good behavior. Ash, a former Maricopa County public defender, said he had seen his clients accept plea agreements rather than go to trial solely because of the long sentences they would face if they lost in court.

He said he was told by other lawmakers, “That’s been done before, you know, you’ll never get anywhere,” and that a fellow Republican lawmaker cautioned him privately that it “wasn’t healthy” to advocate for criminal justice reform.

None of the bills passed.

Ash said that Twist didn’t openly oppose his proposed reforms. He didn’t have to. Twist instead relied on a network of connections built over decades to do the work.

Twist announces his candidacy in the 1990 Republican primary for Arizona Attorney General, which he lost. Despite never holding office, he has continued to wield political influence. (Steve Marcus/Arizona Daily Sun)

“From the very beginning,” Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk opposed Ash’s efforts, the former lawmaker said. Both are longtime Twist allies. Polk said Twist hired her in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, and she considers Twist a personal friend. Montgomery, now a state Supreme Court justice, has described Twist as a mentor and his best friend.

Polk described Twist as a “very thoughtful, balanced individual” and said they discuss legislation with each other. She said they both favor diversion programs that allow people to complete treatment and reentry programs that help formerly incarcerated people integrate back into society. (Montgomery said as a sitting justice it would be inappropriate for him to comment.)

Twist has other powerful connections. His son, J.P. Twist, ran Doug Ducey’s successful campaigns for governor, and is political director for the Republican Governors Association. His wife, Shawn Cox, is head of victim services at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and serves on the county’s commission that recommends candidates for appointment as trial court judges. Steve Twist co-founded the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy and advocacy group that is active at the Arizona Legislature, as well as Arizona Voice for Crime Victims, a nonprofit that provides free legal representation to crime victims.

The Legislature in 2014 added a $2 fee to fines levied by the state’s Game and Fish Department and directed the money to nonprofit groups that work with crime victims. At the time, the Arizona Capitol Times noted Arizona Voice for Crime Victims would be the only beneficiary. The nonprofit has since received nearly $4 million from the fund, records show.

In a recent court filing, defense attorneys raised questions about the relationship between Arizona Voice for Crime Victims and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, alleging a conflict of interest. In a motion responding to the claim, the nonprofit called the attacks “unfounded.”

Cox, J.P. Twist and Arizona Voice for Crime Victims CEO Colleen Clase did not respond to requests for comment.

Democratic former state Rep. Diego Rodriguez said Twist’s network of allies gives him “more influence than any Republican legislator when it comes to sentencing reform.” Lawmakers listen to Twist because of his influence with the governor, he said.

“It’s not their communities that are being drained of resources,” Rodriguez said, referring to the disproportionate impact of incarceration on minority communities.

In 2021, Arizona had the nation’s highest rate of incarceration for Latino people, according to The Sentencing Project. It ranked fifth for Black imprisonment.

Emails obtained through a public record request show Twist’s influence in the office of the governor. In 2020, he was part of a group of business leaders on regular conference calls with Ducey to discuss the governor’s COVID-19 pandemic response. In late 2020, as the governor’s office prepared for an upcoming legislative session, Twist was asked to help develop the governor’s agenda. That month, Twist was invited to meet privately with Ducey. Recently, Twist signed on as campaign chair for Anni Foster, Ducey’s general counsel, who is running in a special election for Maricopa County attorney.

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Caroline Isaacs, executive director of Just Communities Arizona, a group that works on public safety policies that don’t involve the prison system, said she repeatedly hit walls as she pursued sentencing reform at the Arizona Legislature. In 2020, Isaacs joined like-minded groups to pursue a citizens’ initiative to expand earned release credits and restore judicial discretion, among other things.

Twist opposed the measure. An op-ed he co-wrote with former U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl leaned on arguments Twist has made for decades: “Crime was skyrocketing during the 1960s and 1970s under the system to which the proponents want to return. But since the bipartisan reforms in 1978, crime rates have plummeted.”

Voters never got a chance to decide the measure. Then-Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall and Heather Grossman, an advocate for victims of domestic violence, among others sued to challenge the petition signatures. The initiative was kicked off the ballot.

LaWall, known as a tough-on-crime Democrat during her 24 years as Pima County attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.

Grossman confirmed to ProPublica that Twist personally asked her to join the lawsuit. Twist has worked as an attorney for Grossman’s foundation for victims of domestic violence, Haven of Hope.

“That’s the invisible hand of Twist,” Isaacs said.

Maintaining the Status Quo

When Walt Blackman was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives, one of his priorities was to reform sentencing laws. A self-described “staunch” conservative Republican and man of faith, Blackman said he believes people convicted of nonviolent crimes should have a chance to redeem themselves.

Blackman kept hearing that if he wanted to pursue criminal justice reform, he should first meet with the “guru” on the subject, Steve Twist. It was clear Twist was considered a gatekeeper, he said.

“My first impression of Steve Twist was that he had an agenda. And his agenda didn’t line up with mine,” Blackman said. But, he noted, “he didn’t come out and say, ‘Don’t work on criminal justice reform.’”

Arizona state Rep. Walt Blackman in his office in Phoenix (Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica)

During Blackman’s first session, in 2019, he introduced a bill that would ease the requirement that people serve 85% of their sentences, expanding credits for good behavior and participating in programs and treatment. The legislation didn’t receive a hearing.

In 2020, he introduced another version of the bill. That year it passed in the House unanimously but died when the session was cut short by the pandemic.

In 2021, Blackman was appointed chair of the House Judiciary Committee. During the committee hearing, conservative groups testified in support of the legislation. Boaz Witbeck, the state director for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political action group, called the bill “common sense reform,” noting many states had gone much further to reduce sentences for nonviolent crimes.

The House passed the bill in February of that year, around the time Twist was emailing senators about his concerns with the legislation.

In one letter, he said he was in favor of “meaningful criminal justice reform that does not compromise public safety, nor the rights of crime victims.” He claimed that crimes such as female genital mutilation and sex trafficking would receive reduced sentences under the bill.

Blackman said that Twist’s concerns were addressed in a scaled-back version of the bill that was resurrected in the House Appropriations Committee.

Twist didn’t appear satisfied with the results. The goal posts kept moving.

“When it looked like the bill had a chance to pass, that’s when he did a full on ‘poison pill,’” Blackman said.

The Maricopa County attorney testified in favor of the revised legislation. But then, a rumor began circulating, falsely claiming that the bill would allow the early release of child sex traffickers. The county attorney’s office emailed lawmakers attempting to debunk the rumor.

The bill died, and Blackman didn’t propose reforming sentencing during this year’s legislative session.

“Arizona is not ready for real criminal justice reform as long as Steve Twist is in Arizona,” Blackman said.

Claire Tate still follows efforts to reform Arizona’s criminal justice system, but now knows not to get her hopes up. Her life, she said, remains on hold. The kids got bikes for Christmas in 2020, but she hasn’t taught them to ride because she doesn’t want Josh to miss that milestone. Claire, who moved in 2019, sometimes walks into her kitchen and is struck with the thought that Josh has never been in that room.

Claire has tried to keep moving forward. When her eldest son, Elijah, wanted to wear a tie to church, Claire watched a YouTube video to learn how to tie it.

Letters sent between Claire and Josh Tate during his incarceration (Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica)

“This has all been just peppered with a lot of loss and a lot of pain,” she said.

Because the pandemic restricted visitation at Arizona prisons, Claire and her kids haven’t seen Josh in person for more than two years.

She has saved all of what she calls the “big” things. Someday, they’ll go to the beach, a petting zoo and see the redwoods. Josh will be out of prison next July.

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Mollie Simon contributed research.