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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s decision to withdraw from a lawsuit against the state highway patrol has earned a sharp rebuke from his potential 2024 rivals, with candidates from both parties demanding he return campaign donations connected to companies suing the state. Bailey cited an unspecified conflict of interest for not being able to defend […]
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On an almost daily basis we are confronted with the choice of continuing to believe in the role, value and integrity of our government or conclude that it is irretrievably broken. At a minimum we must seriously ask: Are we at risk of succumbing to what appears to be inherent and intransigent dishonesty and hypocrisy […]
The post Beware of dangerous rip currents that threaten our government appeared first on Missouri Independent.
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Colorado’s halfway houses will get an independent financial audit for the first time in 20 years, after a ProPublica investigation found a lack of oversight contributes to a system where more people end up incarcerated than rehabilitated.
A new state law directs Colorado’s Division of Criminal Justice to hire a third-party auditor to evaluate the finances of halfway houses every five years, including the costs imposed on residents of the facilities. The findings of the first audits will be presented to lawmakers by July 1, 2025.
“The goal is to make sure [halfway house programs] are working the way they were intended and to evaluate if they have the funds to meet those expectations,” state Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, told ProPublica. “We need the necessary data to assess that.”
There are three ways people typically arrive in Colorado’s halfway houses: Some are sentenced by a judge to community corrections in lieu of jail or prison; others are finishing a prison sentence; and the rest are ordered to complete halfway house programs as a condition of parole.
This fiscal year, lawmakers allocated $87.7 million — nearly 16% of the state’s public safety budget — to the state’s 26 halfway houses. That money is funneled to local community corrections boards or governments that contract with either community or private operators to run the facilities.
A majority of these 26 halfway houses are owned by companies specializing in detention and community-based supervision. Three firms operate 15 of the facilities.
The new law follows a yearlong ProPublica investigation that found the facilities often imposed punitive policies on residents, while lacking adequate employment training and effective drug treatment programs and passing along costs that sank residents into debt. One barrier to reform, the investigation found, was a lack of transparency for lawmakers to gauge their effectiveness.
The system’s failures are costly as only 35% of people successfully complete a program and stay out of the criminal justice system for at least two years, according to state data from 2009 to 2021. The result is Coloradans are billed twice: first to fund residents’ time in halfway houses and again when they end up behind bars.
The last independent audits of the system occurred in 2001 and 2004 and were done by the Office of the State Auditor, an independent agency within the Colorado legislative branch. Those audits detailed a long list of concerns, including halfway house operators’ “low levels of compliance” with state standards and little enforcement of those standards by state or local regulators.
While the Office of Community Corrections oversees the system, 22 community corrections boards also regulate what happens at individual facilities. ProPublica found that many boards haven’t audited the facilities they oversee in five years, or ever, meaning operators make millions of dollars from state contracts with minimal oversight.
“Few boards actually provide any type of systematic program oversight,” auditors wrote.
In addition to the audits required by the new law, the Division of Criminal Justice will expand the scope of its internal audits — including access to nutritional meals, grievance policies, how early release is calculated and how facilities handle client property.
Tajuddin Ashaheed, a case manager at the Second Chance Center, an Aurora-based reentry nonprofit, said requiring financial transparency of halfway house operators is long overdue.
Facilities “operated for a long time in impunity,” said Ashaheed, who spent 10 years in prison and now serves on the state’s Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. “To have something, a program like community corrections, running with no real oversight, that’s absurd,” he said. “Twenty years? That’s ridiculous.”
How Much Do Halfway House Programs Cost to Run?The question of whether Colorado’s halfway house system is appropriately funded has been discussed by state lawmakers for at least the last two decades.
The Division of Criminal Justice, as well as legislative staff tasked with evaluating budgetary proposals, have struggled to calculate the cost of community corrections programs because many are run by private entities that aren’t required to report their finances despite receiving millions in taxpayer funding. Most of what’s known about their finances comes from self-reported data that is difficult to verify.
The audits mandated by the new law could help answer the question.
“If it turns out that the amount of funding isn’t adequate to provide the level of services that we are expecting or hoping for, then that will provide us information,” said Katie Ruske, the manager of the Office of Community Corrections. “We don’t really know what we’re gonna learn or find out.”
Justin Brakke, a nonpartisan senior legislative budget and policy analyst at the Colorado State Capitol, proposed the financial audits to lawmakers during a December briefing. A bipartisan group of four lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee sponsored the bill.
State Rep. Shannon Bird, the committee’s vice chair and a Democrat from Westminster, cited the need for greater transparency and accountability during a follow-up hearing, referencing ProPublica’s reporting on an overdose death at a Colorado Springs halfway house. Family members had called the facility pleading with staff to check on their loved one, but he was found dead the following day. The overdose death was the third to occur in an eight-month span at the facility run by ComCor Inc. and came after a string of limited-scope state audits that identified serious issues that went unresolved.
“That’s just one story. But it is sort of elevating this concern about how safe people are and the quality of the service that the state is getting,” Bird said during the December hearing.
Mark Wester, the executive director of ComCor Inc., said in response to ProPublica’s reporting on the death that staff followed all protocols and that an investigation by El Paso County employees found no deficiencies in the facility’s response to the incident. Wester denied ProPublica’s request to review the county’s investigation, and in response to a public records request the county said it found no documentation of such an investigation.
Since then, at least one other person has died of an overdose at a facility run by ComCor Inc. — which recently rebranded as Embrave — according to a coroner report obtained by ProPublica.
“Community Corrections including Comcor Inc is dealing with the increased threat of overdoses driven by fentanyl and other substances,” Wester said in a written statement. “In response to this trend, Comcor became a certified Harm Reduction Facility through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.”
Pete Carey, the executive director of El Paso County’s Justice Services Department, said in a written statement that the county is strengthening its oversight of community corrections facilities, including ComCor Inc. It helped create the 4th Judicial District Community Corrections Authority, which will oversee halfway house contracts instead of the local community corrections board, and has hired a compliance specialist.
“El Paso County is dedicated to ensuring that community corrections vendors comply with our standards and expectation for safety and security,” he wrote.
A New State Task Force Focused on ReentrySeparately, a new state task force will explore how to improve reentry services, including community corrections. The task force, which was convened by the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, a policy group within the state’s Department of Public Safety, had its first meeting on April 11.
Ashaheed, who will serve on the task force, said he hopes the group focuses on removing financial obstacles and assisting with career development, instead of low-paying jobs. But, he said, he is so far disappointed by the committee’s lack of racial and ethnic diversity — as well as how few of its members have experienced reentering society after incarceration.
Recent changes, such as the Denver City Council’s decision to cut ties with for-profit halfway house operators and replace them with more evidence-based programs, give him some hope, he said.
He wants the task force to build on “some of the positive changes that have happened,” Ashaheed said. “It’s still yet to be determined how well we’re actually going to do.”
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Within 48 hours of an investigation about children having to crawl under parked trains to get to school in an Indiana suburb, residents packed a public meeting to demand solutions, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety advisory, a bipartisan group of Indiana lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation pleading for change and Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw, got involved.
The investigation, a partnership between ProPublica and InvestigateTV, detailed the challenges communities face when they are besieged by trains that can block railroad crossings for hours or even days. The piece featured videos and photos of children climbing over and crawling under trains operated by Norfolk Southern; the images were rebroadcast by news outlets across America and beyond. Hundreds of readers reached out to ProPublica about their own experiences with blocked crossings, caused by trains from various companies.
Officials in the working-class commuter city of Hammond previously told ProPublica that Norfolk Southern had not been helpful in the years the company’s trains blocked its intersections. “To them, I am nobody,” Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. had said. But the day after the story was published, he got a call from Shaw, who told him he was shocked by the situation in Hammond and wanted to help fix it. “I don’t want to divulge too much about what we talked about, but if it works out the way I hope it does, it will be spectacular,” the mayor said.
A company spokesperson previously attributed the blocked crossings problem to the city’s location near the busy train hub of Chicago and to the fact that it sits between two major rail intersections that must remain open; moving a train forward or backward to clear Hammond streets would cut off the paths for other trains, which could belong to other companies. While McDermott declined to provide details about the 15-minute Thursday call, he said he hopes to have good news over the next month or two. “I’ve been screaming from the rooftops for a long time,” he said, “and it took that article to get people’s attention.”
On the same day last week, the railroad administration issued a safety advisory on blocked crossings, its second in a month coming in the immediate wake of ProPublica’s investigative stories on the rails.
After an investigation into the dangers of long trains on April 3, the agency issued an advisory on April 6 cautioning that railroads must “exercise due diligence” when building trains to ensure, among other considerations, that their weight is evenly distributed.
ProPublica’s story featured a 2017 derailment in Hyndman, Pennsylvania, that nearly blew up the community and forced an evacuation. The train was assembled with empty cars up front and the bulk of its weight bearing down on the rest as it made a steep, winding descent into the community. The force knocked a rail car off the tracks on a curve and caused more than 30 others to derail.
“FRA has noticed a rising trend in recent incidents,” the agency stated in its advisory, “where train build and makeup have been identified as a potential cause or contributing factor.” The agency described six “significant incidents” in the past two years; three involved the release of hazardous materials. The agency listed six recommendations for companies to follow, including updating their train makeup policies, procedures and guidelines; making sure crews are appropriately trained; establishing a system to monitor and assess train makeup, with a focus on identifying and addressing risks; and enhancing investigation procedures to address train makeup as a potential contribution to the cause of an incident.
“Personnel should be encouraged and empowered to adhere to train makeup policies, procedures, and guidelines, even if it delays a train,” the agency said in its recommendations. Federal investigators said that CSX, which ran the train that derailed in Hyndman, allowed its workers to ignore best practices for assembling trains if they were pressed for time. The company said it has since reformed its train makeup policy.
After ProPublica’s April 26 investigation on blocked railroad crossings in collaboration with InvestigateTV, the railroad administration issued another safety advisory on April 27, doubling down on its warnings about long trains and raising the problem highlighted by the story. “Blocked crossings near schools are especially critical safety hazards due to the potential for children to cut through the idling trains,” the advisory said.
Children climb over a parked freight train to reach their school in Hammond. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)The agency asked railroads to identify crossings that could be affected by longer trains and to work with communities and first responders to prevent, or at least minimize, the impacts. “These actions could include: identifying alternative routes for critical emergency response needs, establishing and maintaining clear lines of communication between the railroad and local authorities, or developing protocols for resolving concerns surrounding emergency response and blocked crossings,” the advisory said.
A railroad administration spokesperson said the agency had been working on the April 27 safety advisory prior to ProPublica’s April 3 story on long trains. ProPublica began asking the agency questions about the impact of long trains in May 2022.
The advisories are significant for a number of reasons, said Grady Cothen, a former railroad administration attorney who has written a widely cited white paper on the challenges of operating longer trains. While they cannot compel companies into action, they serve as a paper trail that a safety officer at a railroad can point to when advocating that it operate more carefully, he said. They also connect the dots in a way that raises public awareness and validates community concerns.
Federal and state officials have expressed a strong desire for the railroad administration to have more power. On Thursday, 10 Indiana lawmakers, including eight Democrats and two Republicans, sent a letter urging U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to tell the railroad companies that children’s lives should matter more than profits.
“Our children should not have to risk their lives just to make it to school in the morning,” the letter said. “Our educators already have a full plate — now we expect them to stand watch, crossing their fingers that their students will make it home alive.”
The lawmakers want the railroad administration to have the authority to compel rail companies to keep crossings clear. That power would come from Congress. Currently, the agency can’t so much as fine a railroad for blocking a crossing, let alone make it move the train. U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, introduced a bill in March that would prohibit companies from blocking crossings for more than 10 minutes and allow the agency to fine repeat offenders. The bill has not gotten bipartisan traction.
Two additional rail safety bills, both bipartisan, are also working their way through the House of Representatives. The bills call for measures such as increasing fines for safety violations, requiring companies to provide advanced notice to first responders for trains carrying hazardous materials and reducing blocked crossings. The top democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee told ProPublica he supports both measures.
“Communities in my district and across the country have had first responders unable to respond to emergencies in time because increasingly long freight trains are blocking roadway access,” Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said in a statement. “We need a rail safety hearing and then a prompt vote on the bipartisan rail safety bills introduced in the House and the Senate.”
Wednesday’s meeting in Hammond was hosted by the Indiana Department of Transportation and focused on a proposed overpass, which would alleviate traffic challenges when crossings are blocked and ease access for first responders, who are regularly held up by trains. It will not help many of the children who walk to and from school, because its entrance would force pedestrians to walk at least a mile out of their way to reach it.
Just hours before the meeting that afternoon, children climbed over a 1.5-mile-long train that was blocking their paths home. Kenny Edwards, the Indiana legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART, told the crowd of about 150 people that he watched the scene unfold. “This doesn’t have to continue,” he said, generating applause as he called for railroad companies to reduce the lengths of their trains. The ones that park in Hammond can block five or six intersections at once.
Among those gathered were Carlotta Blake-King, a school board member who called the images she saw “horrendous”; middle school teacher Teresa Maciel, who wondered why the road had to move instead of the tracks; and John Ratajczak, a longtime resident who once had to hop the trains as a kid. He said the overpass is not the fix the students need. “Where they’re putting it,” he said, “it’s not going to help.”
What didn’t get discussed at Wednesday’s meeting is the possibility of an additional overpass in the neighborhood just for pedestrians and located in the area where children climb the trains. The city estimates it would cost somewhere between $3 million to $5 million to build and would require Hammond to acquire private property using eminent domain.
The U.S. Department of Transportation told ProPublica that a pedestrian-only project would be eligible for the department’s new $3 billion grant program aimed at alleviating blocked crossings. The office said Hammond may also be eligible for the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant.
“What’s especially great about [that grant] is that it’s not just funding projects that are ready to go, but also helps communities put pen to paper on planning,” a department spokesperson said in an email. “So even if they don’t have a solution in mind, they can get funding to help them figure out what the solution could be to an existing safety issue.”
McDermott said his administration will look into the grants. He said he once considered a pedestrian overpass a “pipe dream” because of the city’s limited budget, but he said he feels more hopeful than ever.
“I think at the end of all this,” he said, “all these factors working together are going to result in a safer passage for kids to get to school.”
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Ruth Baron contributed research.
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