February 27, 2008What our legislators put stock in -- literallyState Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt, is a miserly fellow, he’s never been ashamed to say. The businessman's tight with his money. That's one reason why he's got so much of it. So, it was no big surprise for me to learn that his stock portfolio includes stock in discount shopping mecca WalMart valued between $10,001 and $50,000. We regular citizens get to know this stuff because our elected officials have to disclose it, though not in great detail. From local councils up to the state capitol, our elected leaders must file statements of economic disclosure. And while you could request these records yourself from the government, a dandy organization called the Virginia Public Access Project saves you the work and makes it all readily available on its website. This stuff isn't just for our amusement – though it can be amusing, I’ll confess. The reason is so that we work-a-day folks know where our legislators’ financial interests lie. Then we can tell if their legislating is really in the interest of those who elected them, or in the interest of boosting the value of their own portfolios. Continue reading "What our legislators put stock in -- literally" » February 21, 2008Eighty lunches, $1,797; 39 breakfasts, $664; 26 dinners, $1,169; cost to Roanoke taxpayers...Well, not exactly priceless. As covered in today's Roanoke Times by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke City Council members tallied nearly $35,000 on expenses in 2007 on meals, travel, conferences, gala events and the like. The lead is that Councilman Alfred Dowe racked up nearly half of council's total all by himself. And if you want to see how Dowe, and every other council member, spent that money, you can track every penny in our database of council's individual expenses. That's right, see where they traveled, who they went to lunch with, and how much they -- or rather the taxpayer -- paid. The $35k is not such a huge amount in the context of the $250 million city budget. The spending no doubt brought value to the city. Council members, while they do receive a salary, are called upon to meet with all kinds of people and attend functions on city business. And attending conferences to learn what's going on in other cities that our fair city might be improved, it's hard to argue that's a bad thing. But how much is too much? In all, council members turned in 209 expense items on their city-issued credit cards. (One item might include everything related to an out of town trip.) Dowe accounted for about 90 of those items. Council members turned in conference expenses 34 times (with some conferences attended by up to three council members). Dowe attended 10 conferences on his own, eight of them out of town. Dowe told Hammack the records don't show all the times he's paid his own way on city business. The records do show he used his city credit card for purchases as small as a buck or two. Fellow council members defended Dowe. Still, Mayor Nelson Harris acknowledged telling Dowe recently to curb his spending. No doubt that admonishment will slow down Dowe But what will keep every member of not only Roanoke City Council vigilant with your money -- not to mention every elected or appointed government official with access to taxpayer funded expense account -- is the publication of stories like Hammack's, and open access to information like what you'll find right now in the DataSphere. If you want someone to think twice about ordering the lobster with your money, when they could do just as well with a hoagie, just make sure they know you're watching. Salem crime map there for the clicking
Many thanks to the Salem Police Department who three weeks ago, in response to community and press interest, began releasing a felony crime report with addresses down to the block number, which is good enough to map. So, we now have mapped crime from the entire core of the Roanoke Valley, but, as the consumer, you're not getting a full apples-to-apples to comparison. That's because Salem's report includes all felonies, where the Roanoke and Roanoke County reports cover Part I crimes as defined for FBI uniform crime reporting. That's basically major violent and property crimes. Salem's report includes all that, plus drug offenses and a range of other things like fraud, bad checks, eluding police and on and on. February 19, 2008Homicide victims: A picture's worth a thousand columns and rows
We can't always obtain images of victims, though we always try. Sometimes family members are hard to locate, or just don't care to share. We do our best to avoid reducing victims to names on a list, to remind readers they are human. 
It's in the same spirit that I'm adding these images to the map. Data can seem pretty cold and not very human or personal. I hope these pictures make a difference. Take a look, most especially if you've looked before. When you click on those markers, and what pops up is not only text with dates, but the face of a smiling young mother or proud deputy sheriff, it gets to you in a different way. At least it does me. February 18, 2008Two more slayings in the valley this weekendThe Roanoke Valley saw two homicides this weekend, and both are now documented in an updated version of the Roanoke Valley homicides map in the DataSphere. This somewhat forgotten map -- one of the first I posted in the DataSphere -- gives the name of the victim, the manner of death, the date, time and location of the homicide, and the status of the case. These are the first two additions in 2008, and in fact the first two since November, if I'm not mistaken. (You might wonder about the hit-and-run death of runner Thomas Farrell last month, but police have not officially called that a homicide yet.) Homicides are one of those crimes that just happen, and police will tell you that really they aren't that preventable. The number of murders in Roanoke, where the bulk of them occur, averages around 14 a year, but ranges wildly from year to year. Some years we'll have four or five, while other years we'll hit 20. So check out the map, and as always, tell me what you see. February 13, 2008Tuesday's primary: Who won in your neighborhood?CNN told you who the winners were almost before the polls even closed yesterday. Sure, Obama one big in all three Potomac Primaries, and McCain continued his roll, too. And The Roanoke Times tells you who won in each locality around here. This year, we even offered an analysis blog from my boss, Senior Editor Dwayne Yancey. But if that doesn't satisfy your curiousity, you can drill down even deeper into the still unofficial results on the website of the Virginia State Board of Elections. So, for example, I can go to the precinct level data for Roanoke Democrats and tell that in my Raleigh Court precinct, Hillary Clinton got 133 votes to Barack Obama's 100. (I wonder if Bill Clinton's presence in the neighborhood on Monday had anything to do with it?) On the Republican side, I can tell that Mike Huckabee trounced John McCain, 84-34 in my neck of the woods. It'll take you a few clicks to get to this level on your own. You can start with the state-wide numbers, go to the locality, and then, in the column off to the left, click for precincts to get as local as you can get. Be nosy about your neighbors, or scan every precinct to see who ran well where. So go forth, my friends, and drill down into the depths of the sausage-making operation we call democracy. February 12, 2008City and county crime maps updatedJust finished the weekly update of the Roanoke and Roanoke County crime maps, and this is actually a small milestone. For the first time, the two maps have offenses from exactly the same time period. So, for the first time you can eyeball the maps and see what the differences are crime-wise between one locality and the other. The maps can give you a quick idea of where the most crime is, and the colors give you an idea of the quality of it, but the maps won't count for you, so I will. Roanoke County had a total of 83 offenses in the period, including six aggravated assaults, one forcible rape, 15 burglaries, 56 larcenies, three motor vehicle thefts and two robberies. Roanoke had a total of 155 offenses in the period, including 15 aggravated assaults, two arsons, 84 burglaries, 25 motor vehicle thefts and 29 robberies. As you look at these maps, what do you see beyond the obvious? What observations do you make, beyond whether you live in a rough or safe neighborhood? Is there a story we're missing here at the paper? Pop me a line and let me know, either with a comment here or an email. February 8, 2008Bartender (hic) I'd like another...Another view of that liquor sales data. Alert reader Jay wondered what this liquor sales for Virginia look like when you rank our favorite distilled spirits by gallons sold, rather than dollars spent. Unfortunately, I haven't found the 2007 data by gallons yet, but I do have 2006. What you'll quickly see is that the picture's different when you look at it by volume. We might spend more on good whiskey, but what we drink the most of is good ol' knock you on yer butt and wake you up with cotton mouth cheap-o vodka. See for yourself. The numbers represent thousands of gallons sold. Yep, that's 450,000 gallons of Aristocrat vodka, comrades. So, if you were an enterprising feature writer for a big city rag like The Roanoke Times, what's the "Hey, Martha!" tidbit you'd pull out of this data? February 7, 2008What's yer poison, Virginia?The answer to that one is Jack Daniels. As in Old No. 7. As in Tennessee whiskey. Virginians spent over $21 million on Jack Black last year, making it the favorite distilled spirit in the Commonwealth in terms of dollars in sales. You can see the top 50 for 2007 in a new bubble graph I just posted. (I know this is only two, but I'm already in danger of becoming obsessed with these bubble graphs.) Turns out we have some pretty refined taste in spirits. Grey Goose vodka. Crown Royal. Jim Beam. But not everything we bought in quantity goes down as smooth. Well up on the list is Aristocrat brand vodka, which, well, doesn't exactly live up to the image suggested by its name. We bought more bottles of Aristocrat than any other liquor. As a former bartender, my guess is that's because it's the house vodka in all manner of bars from Richlands to Reston. The one that surprised me is Jagermeister at number 6 on the list. This is a dirty-motor-oil dark liqueur that tastes like black licorice soup and brings on a kind of intoxication that feels more like a narcotic than a drink. (Or so I've been told.) Popular with the regular bar set, which is to say younger folks. Generally swilled as a shooter, and lately mixed with Red Bull energy drink. The kind of thing everybody buys you on your 21st birthday, as if you weren't already on your way to embarrassing behavior without the help. Most of these top shelf liquors, you buy because they are smoother and more drinkable. Jagermeister, that stuff ain't about the taste. It's about the punch. February 6, 2008Another view of legislative gifts: a bubble graphI hope you're finding the database of gifts to Virginia lawmakers informative, or at least fun. One problem, though, is it doesn't do the math for you. You can't instantly see, for example, who received the most in gifts, or the least. So I've added a summary graphic to the site called a bubble graph. The graph is a collection of circles of varying sizes, each representing a lawmaker. The bigger the circle, the higher the total value of gifts the lawmaker received. Click on a circle to get the full name and amount for that lawmaker. Now, hold down the control key and click on several bubbles. In the lower right corner, you'll see it add the totals together for you and give you a percentage of the whole. So, for example, you can quickly determine that the top seven of 117 lawmakers who accepted gifts account for nearly 25 percent of the value of all the gifts received by everyone combined. Look for me to begin offering more of these kinds of graphs to compliment the databases we put up. They give you a different way to interact with the data, get it to speak to you in a different way, and also allow me a way to mine the data and show you the results in a friendly format. You can also generate these kinds of things yourself with your own data using the same web-based utilities I use, like Swivel and Many Eyes. These are free, though you have to register. They were a curious discovery to me. They give you tools, but they are essentially social networking sites (not too different from facebook or myspace). What you network over is the data you share. You know, I've always denied being a geek, but the longer I do this job, the less plausible my deniability seems to be. Maybe I should graph that. February 5, 2008Did your delegate get NASCAR tickets, or just lunch?Last year 117 members of the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate accepted $263,227.10 in gifts from 195 different givers, from ExxonMobil and the Virginia state AFl-CIO to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and a host of so-called "payday lenders." See the gifts your legislator accepted now in the DataSphere. Everyone has their opinion, but from a news reporter like me, there's not a lot here that's really gross, but there's stuff that'll raise your eyebrows. And if nothing else, this list of 725 gifts provides an intriguing look into part of the way government works. Continue reading "Did your delegate get NASCAR tickets, or just lunch?" » February 4, 2008What student loans default rates say, and don't sayFrom an Indiana University study of student loan default rates: Measures of academic momentum and degree completion and the Thanks for that to alert reader Jeff Arthur, who also happens to be vice-president of information systems and financial aid at ECPI College of Technology. Jeff referenced the study in a comment last week, and kindly passed on that and a bunch of other info to inform the discussion of the federal student loan default rates now viewable in the DataSphere. Continue reading "What student loans default rates say, and don't say" » |
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