DMN INVESTIGATES

Texas nursing-home investigators usually miss deadlines for responding to complaints with a "high potential of harm," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

Chris Traylor, the new commissioner of the Department of Aging and Disability Services, vows to improve response times soon.

The agency says it "expects to complete 1,550 nursing home investigations during a two-week, statewide blitz later this month" and will start hiring 35 new investigators next month.

Do you have a tip about a nursing home? Regulators? Send me an e-mail or join the conversation by commenting below.

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Robert McKenzie continues to struggle after being declared dead accidently by a local hospital. Most recently, he had problems trying to get his health care coverage reinstated.

The 72-year-old man was working with the Social Security Administration to get his Medicare card back, but instead got an expired Medicaid card in the mail. I made a call on his behalf and I've been promised he should get the correct card in the next few weeks.

McKenzie may actually qualify for Medicaid though, so his case worker is looking into that for him. He and his wife support their grandchildren on limited funds.

The financial news coming out of Dallas County's public hospital last fall left an impression that money was tight.

Parkland Memorial eliminated 200 jobs and laid off 100 workers. Employees who remained only received modest merit raises, and top officials volunteered not to take any. And the hospital increased residents' taxes to pay for a new $1.2 billion campus.

That impression sure seems wrong today. The News' Sherry Jacobson reports that 27 of Parkland's executives received bonuses over the holidays -- presumably the same ones who'd months earlier declined merit raises. These bonuses ranged between 19 percent and 31 percent per person, and totaled nearly $2 million.

I should warn you against calling these bonuses. Incentive is the preferred noun, Parkland's board chairwoman says. That's because the executives met job-performance goals -- like reducing the hospital's hideously long emergency room waits, blamed in the death of one man in 2008.

To those improvements, I'm sure everyone will say, "Job well done." But will everyone agree with bonuses incentives that are worth -- as the chart I posted on the jump shows -- more than some people make in a year?

Do you have thoughts on the executive pay? Leave a comment or e-mail me.

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Tad A. Camp is a former sheriff's deputy, private investigator, non-profit official and entrepreneur. He'll tell you about that in his online biography.

What Camp fails to mention in his biography is that he left law enforcement after being accused of beating his wife. Luckily The News' Steve Thompson filled in information gaps for us.

The omissions matter because Camp is seeking publicity for his newest business. He wants to speed missing-child cases by letting parents proactively store and share information about their little ones that could be used in the event of something terrible.

Donna Norris -- the mother of Amber Hagerman (right), the Arlington girl whose abduction and slaying inspired the Amber Alert system -- is one of his business partners. She said Camp disclosed his past to her, "and I'm OK with that ... It's just a shame that someone has to bring it up, because all we're about is saving children's lives."

Remember the little boy pictured at right?

His name was Darrell "Tre" Singleton III. On a hot day in September, his mom left him in a vehicle while she worked. She apparently did this deliberately. He was a little over a year old, and he roasted to death.

Child Protective Services had known for a long time about problems with the mom, Keashia Matthews (below). She lost custody in the 1990s of her first two kids because of abuse and neglect. And a few months before Darrell died, CPS determined that she had been leaving him and two young sisters home alone.

Matthews promised to get day care. The case was closed. Didn't work out too well, did it?

So CPS set out to review its handling of the matter. I've been asking about results since October. "Nothing yet" has been the standard reply.

Today spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales acknowledged that the review was done but refused to discuss the findings.

"Any issues identified in reviews are handled internally," she told me in an e-mail. "If there are any policy changes as a result of the review of the case, I'll certainly let you now."

I asked Marissa to explain what right she had under state law to withhold this information. That was a couple of hours ago. I'm still waiting for an answer.

Matthews remains free on bond. The initial injury-to-a-child charge against her has been changed to murder.

She has told Channel 8 that a person who was supposed to pick up her son never showed up. "I never expected him to be there all day," she said.

Channel 4 has a truly sad story up about a North Texas boy who killed himself recently after classmates teased him about facial scars and a hearing problem.

Hunter Layland (right) was 15 and a freshman at Cleburne High School, where he played on the football team. The scars were the result of a car accident when he was a toddler.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people. And bullying significantly increases the likelihood that a child will think about committing suicide, federal researchers say.

Are schools doing enough to deal with bullies? Are parents? Send me an e-mail if you have a tip. Or join the conversation by commenting below.

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There were no clear procedures for monitoring a North Texas soldier who was known to be unraveling mentally before he allegedly killed five colleagues at a counseling center in Iraq, according to a new military report.

Sgt. John Russell is accused of the deadliest soldier-vs.-soldier attack in the six-year war.

His father, Wilburn Russell of Sherman (right), told The Dallas Morning News back in May that macho military culture inhibits men from seeking help: "If a guy actually goes to the clinic and asks for help, they think of him as a wimp, and he's got something wrong with him and try to get rid of him."

But the military report also notes: "There is no clear procedure ... for managing soldiers identified as 'at risk' for suicide or the proper way to conduct suicide watch."

Do you have a tip about mental health and the military? Send me an e-mail and let me know. Or join the conversation by commenting below.

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I received a call from a reader that an elderly woman's caregiver was not taking care of her. The reader said the caregiver wasn't showing up daily, but she was frightened of the worker and was afraid of a confrontation, so didn't want to say anything.

So, she asked me to look into the situation. I reported the problem to both the caregiver's employer and to Adult Protective Services. The state investigated the situation and said that the elderly woman is getting adequate care. The reader agrees that the situation is better for the elderly woman and that the caregiver is now coming to work.

If you see an abusive situation of the elderly, children or the disabled, you can call APS to investigate. Their toll-free number, 1-800-252-5400, is answered round-the-clock. You might experience a wait though. It took about an hour for me to get through.

The liberal Center for American Progress is calling out Texas lawmakers who voted against the $819 billion stimulus in January - and are now asking the Obama administration for $3 billion in stimulus funds to bolster the budget of NASA, a major Texas employer.

This comes on the heels of a September audit that questioned the use of federal tax dollars by another Texan who scorned the stimulus: Gov. Rick Perry. The federal audit found that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission under Perry had billed the Medicaid program for nearly $300,000 in care and prescription drugs it shouldn't have given legal and illegal immigrants.

In fact, as today's stories remind us, we've got a ways to go until these big news events conclude.

1. As a now-convicted Don Hill wonders why jurors and God did not "give us this one," I wondered when the other public official enmeshed in the FBI's bribery investigation will go on trial. The News' Gromer Jeffers Jr. happened to report today that the judge is asking about possible courts dates for State Rep. Terri Hodge (shown at right). Meanwhile, it appears some are already trying to undercut her 2010 re-election opponent. Their argument: He's too educated.

2. On the list of people who can consistently strike fear into Child Protective Services, state Sen. Jane Nelson has got to be near the very top. She has long led reform efforts targeting the agency. Now she is questioning whether four recent deaths of children while under CPS' watch, including that of an Arlington toddler, is a broader pattern, report The News' Brooks Egerton and Scott Goldstein.

Do you have tips to share? Leave a comment or e-mail me.

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I asked. They answered. And I still don't get it.

Yesterday my question was whether CPS alerted Arlington police in May that Keashia Matthews (right) was leaving her three little children -- ages 1, 5 and 6 -- home alone all day while she worked.

And as you can see in today's follow-up story, the answer is yes. But CPS didn't ask for police help, because it didn't think Matthews was putting the kids at risk of serious, immediate harm.

And so this woman, who had a history of neglecting other children and losing custody of them, never got charged with endangerment. That could have sent her to jail and given the three little kids some chance of finding a safer home.

Instead, CPS closed the books on the matter after she arranged for day care.

Now, of course, the youngest child, Darrell Singleton III (right), is dead, and mom has been charged with contributing to his demise by deliberately leaving him in a hot car.

Arlington police say they're now reviewing their actions to see whether they could have done more to prevent the death.

Do you have a tip about child welfare? CPS? Send me an e-mail and let me know. Or join the conversation by commenting below.

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President Obama has vowed to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud as part of a proposed overhaul of the nation's health care system. A federal report released on Wednesday identified yet another area where investigators should start digging.

The report from the federal Government Accountability Office identified possibly widespread fraud in Texas and other states involving purchases of controlled substances under Medicaid, the federal-state medical program for the poor. Among the interesting Texas tidbits was a case of "doctor shopping" by a Medicaid beneficiary who used prescriptions from more than 70 doctors to obtain 4,700 pills of Vicodin from 40 pharmacies.

In our recent "Cost of Care" series on why health care is so expensive in North Texas, I touched on fraud in the home health industry. Medicare and Medicaid are lucrative targets for fraudsters. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recently reported that state Medicaid fraud control units across the country recovered $1.3 billion in fiscal 2008.

Difficult questions about pregnancy linger in my mind from the weekend papers, even though the newsprint's already on the recycling pile:

1. Why does Texas lead the nation in repeat teen pregnancy? Bob Garrett of The Dallas Morning News' Austin bureau looked at several factors in Monday's paper. Among them: Only Utah and the Lone Star State require state-funded clinics to get parents' consent before giving their teens birth control. And Utah at least tells young people on a state Web site to go to Planned Parenthood if they don't want to involve their parents.

2. Have you ever thought about what you'd do if you were pregnant and knew the baby was doomed? Over the past two Sundays, my colleagues Lee Hancock and Sonya Hebert traced one family's journey in words, photos and video. If thus stuff doesn't haunt you, have someone check your pulse.

Do you have a tip about matters of life and death? Send me an e-mail and let me know. Or join the conversation by commenting below.

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Ronnie Dawson of Greenville couldn't pay his electric bill and was worried about how he'd survive. It wasn't the heat so much as the lack of refrigeration for the insulin that he takes daily for his diabetes.

Dawson just bought and moved into his mobile home in May. He was floored by his first electricity bill when it arrived. "I got this high-dollar light bill, and it killed me," Dawson said. "I've gotten in over my head."

The bill from city-owned Greenville Electric Utility System was initially a little more than $365. But Dawson, 56, asked for another read of his meter. That did knock $89 off the total, but the clock was ticking. He now had fewer than 48 hours to come up with $276.

"It might not be much to you, but it is to me when I don't have [the money] and they won't work with me," said Dawson.

Several items in the news today reminded me of the State of Neglect series that my colleagues on the investigations team produced earlier this year. That explored how Texas government, through its mangled bureaucracy or deference to big business, leaves the little guy lacking.

1. Oncor customers will pay a total of $115 million more statewide after the Public Utility Commission agreed to the company's request for higher rates, The News' Elizabeth Souder reports. That move ignored a previous ruling by a panel of administrative law judges that found Oncor should get only $30 million to subsidize an "imprudent" purchase of high-tech meters that didn't meet PUC requirements.

2. Star-Telegram watchdog columnist, Dave Lieber, has a nice piece on a 78-year-old military veteran who can't get his food stamps allotment renewed because of confusion within the Health and Human Services Commission. Some residents have sued to try and get results.

3. An employee who helped stage those infamous fights among the mentally disabled residents at a state-run Corpus Christi school was convicted Thursday. Those were not the only problems at the facility, which operates under the oversight of the Department of Aging and Disability Services.

Do you have thoughts or tips to share? Leave a comment or e-mail me.

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Flan Monk has burn scars on more than half of his body. He also lives in a sweltering pay-by-the-week apartment house in East Dallas. His mother bought him a window air-conditioning unit, but his landlord won't allow him to use it.

"I need air, it is 107 degrees in my room," Monk said. "I need help. I can't live in hell all my life."

Two stories from The Dallas Morning News are shining a light in corners I didn't even know existed. And a third nearly made me lose my breakfast.

1. Dallas County's tax office holds secret hearings at which you can gain title to a vehicle with no evidence of ownership, Kevin Krause reports today. A big beneficiary of the process is County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a car collector.

2. Children as young as 10 are on Texas' public sex-offender registry, Diane Jennings reported in Sunday's paper. Other states will put kids as young as 7 on the lists. Diane did a great job of showing the lifelong consequences to everyone in a family in which two boys molested their sister.

3. Can someone tell me how children could be locked up and starving in a Dallas motel bathroom without someone in the outside world noticing? Scott Goldstein reports on a horror story that unraveled only when one of the parents sought police aid.

Do you have a tip about the tax assessor? Child abuse? Another subject? Send me an e-mail and let me know. Or join the conversation by commenting below.

If you're on Twitter, follow our blog at DMNInvestigates. You can also check us out on Facebook.

If your apartment is roasting and the A/C is on the fritz, there are several steps you should take. Don't delay in doing something either. Texas heat can be deadly.
Of course, the law doesn't really mean landlords have to provide a cool apartment -- just one where the heat won't make you sick.

Today's Hot Links are about two things you cannot escape in life: death and databases.

1. Here's the most interesting proposal I've heard in a while: a a national database of undiagnosed diseases. The idea was inspired by the mysterious death of a suburban Austin boy named Charles August "Cal" Long, the Austin American-Statesman reports. It summarizes the goal this way: "doctors and scientists could describe symptoms, exchange information and compile data that could be used to solve medical mysteries." Two Texas legislators recently introduced a bill in Congress -- Rep. Michael Burgess, who is a physician from North Texas, and Rep. John Carter of Central Texas, who long ago lost one of his own children to an unknown disease.

2. The Social Security Administration is not only paying benefits to the dead, it's also denying aid to living folks who are misclassified as deceased. Here's the inspector general's report on which McClatchy Newspapers based its story.

Do you have a tip about death, or databases, or another subject? Send me an e-mail and let me know.

If you're on Twitter, follow our blog at "DMNInvestigates."

Michael is dead. Farrah is dead. And I don't feel so good myself. But it's not the passing of two wacky celebrities that has me down in the dumps. It's today's Hottest Link:

1. Arlington police suspected Jason Farrington of fracturing his baby's skull in March. But they didn't think they had enough evidence to arrest him. Child Protective Services let Mom take baby home from the hospital after she promised Dad wouldn't live with them. Now 4-month-old Jayden Farrington is dead, Dallas Morning News ace crime reporter Steve Thompson reports. And Dad is finally in jail.

2. Also lost in the celebrity shuffle: There's growing evidence that a technology failure contributed to the commuter-train crash that killed nine people Monday in the nation's capital, The Washington Post reports. How safe are similar systems here?

Do you have a tip about CPS? Commuter trains? Another subject? Send me an e-mail and let me know.

If you're on Twitter, follow our blog at "DMNInvestigates."

Let's catch up on a few public-interest stories in The Dallas Morning News and around the Web-o-sphere:

1. Information = immunity for airline workers who report safety violations. But government regulators have tolerated "inconsistent use" and "potential abuse" of the reporting program, The Dallas Morning News' Dave Michaels writes. His story is based on a federal safety audit that began after a Texas mechanic checking on an oil leak was sucked into a jet engine.

2. Abuse of mentally disabled people at the Corpus Christi State School was far worse than state officials claimed, records obtained by Dallas Morning News investigative reporter Emily Ramshaw show.

3. I see Dallas smokers toss their butts on the ground every day, and it drives me nuts. But is San Francisco's new plan -- a 33 cents-per-pack trash tax -- the way to go?

Did I miss a good story? Or do you have a tip? Send me an e-mail and let me know.

Here are a few public-interest stories catching our eye in The Dallas Morning News and around the Web-o-sphere:

1. Do you let your child sleep in bed with you? The state recommends you stop. More than 80 kids died between November and March -- by suffocating under bedding or clothes, by an adult rolling on top of them, or by falling between the bed and a wall, the Houston Chronicle reports.

2. Taxpayers shouldn't fund state employees' personal use of government vehicles, state Rep. Terri Hodge of Dallas says. She estimates such usage at four state agencies cost a combined $3.8 million in one year, the Austin American-Statesman reports.

3. We've been blogging steadily about legislative efforts that would curtail government accountability by making private state workers' date-of-birth information. Supporters say they're trying to prevent ID theft. But the legislation does nothing to prevent cases like this one reported by The News' Katherine Leal Unmuth.

Did I miss a good story? Or do you have a tip? Send me an e-mail and let me know.

More tears for TIERS, the state's billion-dollar software system for handling public assistance requests.

As Robert Garrett of The News' Austin bureau is reporting, Texas social services chief Albert Hawkins has postponed further expansion of the troubled system because of "some challenges in achieving the timeliness benchmarks" for processing food stamp applications.

Our State of Neglect series in January examined Austin's social services outsourcing sweepstakes. When it comes to tax dollars, the TIERS software project is the big kahuna.

State watchdogs previously have criticized various problems in rolling out the TIERS system.

Your take on the debate? Any personal experiences with TIERS?

The 13 state schools for the profoundly disabled have been in the news a lot lately. Just today, as Emily Ramshaw in our Austin bureau reports, a bill aimed at protecting residents from abuse was approved by a House committee.

"Rep. Patrick Rose's bill, which was voted out of the House Human Services Committee unanimously on Tuesday, will establish a state school ombudsman, a toll-free abuse hotline, and set up video surveillance cameras at Texas' 13 institutions for people with disabilities. It will also require all criminal abuse allegations to be handed by an Office of the Inspector General."

So we want to ask the question: What about the working conditions in the state schools? We'd love to hear from any current or former state schools employees who'd like to tell their side of the story. You can comment here or send an e-mail. We'd love to hear from you.

Death by colonoscopy? That's what some veterans have to fear now.

VA hospitals in Florida (Miami, at right), Tennessee (Murfreesboro, near Nashville), and Georgia (Augusta) -- and maybe all over the country -- apparently weren't sterilizing a tube between procedures. They were waiting till the end of the day.

One colonoscopy patient now has tested positive for HIV, the Associated Press reports. AP has been covering this story for months and previously reported that more than a dozen patients had tested positive for hepatitis.

The Veterans Affairs Department says it's investigating whether there's a link between the sterilization failures and the infections. It says the problem was corrected by mid-March.

Readers, can you shed light on Texas VA hospitals' sterilization procedures?

Emily Ramshaw, an investigative reporter in The News' Austin bureau, has a scary update today on the background of state-school employees accused of forcing mentally disabled people into a "fight club."

Among Emily's findings: Only four of the 11 accused Corpus Christi State School employees had direct-care experience. Of those four, two had previously been in trouble over mistreatment allegations.

Some of today's interesting stories in The Dallas Morning News to help your water cooler conversation:

1. Dallas ISD is mum on why its police force dropped an investigation in the severe paddling of a Lincoln High student. The DA's office, though, is talking. "We never heard back from them," said Terri Moore, Craig Watkins' second-in-command. Decide for yourself whether DISD made the right call.

2. One public servant is in legal trouble. A state judge in El Paso allegedly bartered with defendants: His help for their money or sex. The feds arrested him at his home Thursday.

3. Our Austin bureau has a full report on an item we blogged yesterday: The Texas Senate's approval of a bill to use to $12 million to beef up the foster care system. Dallas Sen. John Carona recently adopted two foster kids and backed the plan, "I've seen what these children are put through."

Did we miss a good story? Or do you have a tip? Send me an e-mail and let me know.