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A man was struck and killed while using an Atlanta crosswalk that the city decided to let fade rather than remove it, Michael Scaturro reported. Just days earlier, a resident had emailed with concerns that the crosswalk was unsafe. ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
In Baltimore, where public schools don’t offer bus rides to kids past the fifth grade, as many as 25,000 students use public transportation so unreliable that it makes it nearly impossible for them to get to school on time, reporters Liz Bowie and Greg Morton found after tracking the location of every city bus over a three-month period. THE BALTIMORE BANNER
Leaders of an elite Catholic high school outside Chicago — which is accused in lawsuits of covering up allegations that a teacher sexually abused female students in the 1990s — recently settled the litigation in secret and won’t discuss the terms, Robert Herguth reported. CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
As the measles outbreak in Texas raged, with one child who died of the disease this past week, reporters Matt Zdun and Evan MacDonald created a tool to track the crisis. HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Texas officials amended the death certificate of a girl who died of strangulation in 1965 after reporter Josh Hinkle revealed that an elected official at the time, who wasn’t a doctor, ruled it an accident without ordering an autopsy, among other discrepancies. KXAN
An insurance company in Nevada has been denying or reducing addiction services to a dangerous degree, putting patients at risk of harming themselves or others through their continued substance abuse, treatment centers told reporter Mary Hynes. LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Real estate losses from the Los Angeles wildfires could top $30 billion, reporters Doug Smith and Sandhya Kambhampati found after compiling property assessment records. Local governments that rely on property taxes to fund services stand to lose more than $60 million while homes are rebuilt. LOS ANGELES TIMES
Oregon has spent $15 million on a program to provide free legal representation to immigrants facing deportation, but keeps the results of the program hidden and appears to have fallen short of its promise to help thousands, Yesenia Amaro reported. THE OREGONIAN
More than half of Oregon's prison doctors have been placed on leave, been fired or resigned in the past year — some after questioning substandard care — signaling turmoil in the state's prison health care system, Ted Sickinger and Noelle Crombie reported. THE OREGONIAN
Youth in Philadelphia's child welfare system are disproportionately likely to end up in juvenile detention, creating what advocates call a "womb-to-prison pipeline,” reporter Samantha Melamed found after a data analysis revealed that children who have been in the welfare system accounted at least one-quarter of kids in the city’s juvenile justice system. THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
A California teen died after she was repeatedly failed by the for-profit psychiatric hospitals that have become the backbone to the state’s emergency mental health care system, Joaquin Palomino and Cynthia Dizikes reported, finding that hundreds of other patients have alleged abuse inside the very facilities that were supposed to keep them safe. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
San Francisco pressured homeowners who unknowingly had improper work done on their properties by a rogue city inspector who went to prison for taking bribes to bring their houses up to code, St. John Barned-Smith reported. Reporter questions prompted the city to offer some relief on fees for those affected. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
A Florida “rent-a-cow” loophole is costing two counties millions in lost revenue by allowing developers to tap a decades-old law meant to preserve agriculture and shrink the taxes on pastures they intend to pave over, Josh Salman and Kara Newhouse reported. SUNCOAST SEARCHLIGHT
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers shot at vehicles with innocent bystanders nearby or in the line of fire at least five times since 2019, but rarely disciplined the troopers, reporter Corey Jones found after reviewing dash-cam footage, disciplinary records and other agency documents. TULSA WORLD
Correction: In the previous edition of the newsletter, we misidentified the location of a luxury dome development. It’s outside North Cascades National Park, not Glacier National Park.
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