Arizona, Oklahoma and immigration laws
It’s been more than a month since my coworker Ron Jackson and I returned from an immigration fellowship hosted by the Institute for Justice and Journalism and the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The fellowship, called Immigration in the Heartland, was designed to immerse journalists in the issues, arguments, faces and facts surrounding the immigration debate in the country. We heard from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, lawmakers, community leaders, naturalized citizens and undocumented immigrants. We talked to lawyers, judges and talking heads. Husbands, single mothers and students attending school in south Oklahoma City.
Most of the week-long fellowship took place in Norman and Oklahoma City. But we also spent time at immigration court in Dallas and other federal offices.
One of the requirements of the fellowship is that the journalists produce stories on the issue. This weekend, Ron and I will publish the first group of what we plan to be a series of stories about immigration in Oklahoma.
As Oklahoman and Miss USA first-runner up Morgan Woolard said, “It’s one of the most hot button issues in our country today.”
My hope is these stories will educate and foster informed debate on the issue. Keep an eye out for the stories here on Newsok and in The Oklahoman.
Weekend Rewind: May 24, 2010
Good Monday morning from OPUBCO HQ, where the water cooler talk centers on what the ending of “Lost” meant? In the interest of brevity, here’s some links to stories you might have missed over the weekend:
- Sen. Coburn reports money-losing medical practice; other members of Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation file their financial disclosure forms.
- Oklahoma budget negotiators kept 2012 fiscal year in mind as they crafted FY 2011 budget.
- State still in race for $175 million education stimulus funds from second round of the Race to the Top program.
- Adoption costs can price out middle-class in Oklahoma.
- Budget cuts may close Shawnee juvenile detention center.
- Oklahoma County disposing of environmentally hazardous tornado debris.
- Urban chicken issue divides Oklahoma City residents, neighborhoods council members.
Elsewhere:
- Tulsa World: House Bill 3382 would hide birth dates while others sold.
–Paul
Weekend Rewind: May 17, 2010
It’s a new week, and a new round of cleaning up for those in the Oklahoma City area. This time, hail was the culprit. Check out the amazing pictures of some of the destruction.
Here’s an abbreviated version of what you might have missed over the weekend:
–Land dispute along Red River pits claims from Oklahoma, Texas landowners against each other
–Taxpayer-funded mail gives lawmakers direct line to constituents
–Oklahoma hospital fee proposal draws debate
–Oklahoma City, Tulsa metros at front lines of demographic trends
–Norman coaches to expand sports program to Iraq
–Staged car wreck rings in Oklahoma City draw group’s attention
Elsewhere:
–NYT: The Rise and Fall of the G.D.P.
–60 Minutes: Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster
–Paul
Restricted tornado damage areas in Oklahoma City
As a reporter, whenever a government agency tries to restrict my access to a public place, my first instinct is to want to go there.
After tornadoes damaged several Oklahoma City neighborhoods on Monday, police restricted access to four neighborhoods: Heritage Estates, Deerfield Estates, Deerfield West and Liberty Creek.
As I drove around looking for stories on Tuesday to give to readers, I took a left turn onto a residential street and unbeknown until later to me and the photographer we wound up in Deerfield Estates.
We found tremendous destruction, people picking up the pieces, neighbors helping neighbors, friends lending hands and support. What we also found was several people who wanted and maybe even needed to tell their stories of survival. These were hopeful stories that a community healing from such devastation needs to hear. They are stories that we would not have been able to give readers if we hadn’t accidentally stumbled into the restricted area.
I left the neighborhood wondering why the media’s access was being completely shut out. I can understand the need to have proper controls to make sure clean up efforts are not hindered and streets clogged with television crews.
But I wish law enforcement would work with us and not immediately shut us out of such situations. There must be some middle ground between allowing recovery to occur without hindrance and completely shutting the public out and not allowing those doing to recovery to tell their stories.
-Michael Baker, 475-3384
Weekend Rewind: May 10, 2010
Good Monday morning from OPUBCO HQ, where we’re keeping a close eye on the weather today.
We had some good stories this past weekend. Here’s what you might have missed while you were spending time with the Moms in your family:
–Road decisions are always fused with politics in some way. Watchdog reporter Randy Ellis had an interesting story on Sunday about a new interstate exit planned for the Shawnee area. Apparently, the governor co-owns some land near the planned intersection, but he said it’s in a floodplain and virtually worthless. Other groups in Shawnee are lining up to oppose or support the interchange, including an Indian tribe and the local school district.
–Unfunded pension liabilities are a ticking demographic time bomb that governments everywhere will have to deal with before long. Watchdog reporter John Estus takes a look at the retirement benefit obligations for the police and fire unions in Oklahoma City.
–Budget negotiations continue at the Capitol for fiscal year 2011. Our political reporters had the latest, including an update by Michael McNutt and a look at some plans for controversial tax credits by Julie Bisbee.
–Carrie Coppernoll had an interesting look at the 50th anniversary of “the pill” and how Oklahomans feel about it.
–If you’re a visitor to either the University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University, you might be able to just ignore any parking ticket you get. That seems to be the logic of university officials, who refused to release parking ticket information. Reporter Bryan Dean has a story where the universities are hiding behind a federal law to protect student privacy.
–In other education news, Norman reporter James Tyree broke down the numbers of alcohol incidents at the University of Oklahoma.
–The author of a law allowing parents to drop off their newborn children at safe places without penalty said the law worked last weekend in Shawnee, when a mother dropped off her twins at a local fire station. Watchdog reporter Randy Ellis explains the history of the law.
Elsewhere:
–Arizona is ground zero in the latest fight over illegal immigration. The Arizona Republic looks at the numbers and finds that not all illegal aliens are sneaking over the border. Many are getting visas and then overstaying their allotted time.
–The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to cause problems for wildlife and energy company BP. The New York Times investigates the company’s safety record and finds it lags other energy companies. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal broke down the relationship between the federal government’s Minerals Management Service and the energy industry.
–Paul
EPA’s secret briefings
On Tuesday, I participated in a news conference held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding new rule proposals for coal ash.
It was for a follow-up to an article on residents in the eastern Oklahoma town of Bokoshe fighting to close down a coal ash disposal site near their town of about 460 people.
The topic and the EPA’s action is somewhat complicated, but what surprised me about the whole Washington news conference — reporters could call in and listen and ask questions at the end — was that although I was hearing EPA experts speak, I was told in a news release issued just shortly before the conference to quote them only as “senior EPA officials” and not by name. Journalists were to quote only EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by name.
This was a first for me. I’m not an environmental reporter by trade and haven’t participated in too many telephone news conferences with federal agencies. But, I was offended and I thought our readers probably would be too.
I was also torn as to if I should participate. As journalists, we’re duty bound to provide information to our readers on topics of interest, but at the same time we shouldn’t encourage government officials to operate behind a veil of secrecy. Plus, I don’t think our readers want a whole bunch of stories quoting nameless bureaucratic sources. It’s hard to trust that information. In the end, I phoned in to listen to the conference but decided not to use information from anybody that I could only say was a “senior EPA official.”
Turns out that this wasn’t the first time the EPA had done something like this. On Wednesday, I read a blog by Robert McClure on InvestigateWest about how the EPA had done this before. McClure makes some excellent points.
I won’t say never again, absolute statements like that can come back to bite you and it could be just a big enough story that it has to happen, but I will discourage my editors and fellow reporters from participating in a news conference under such conditions.
Colleagues John Estus and Bryan Dean wrote an article in March on the dangers of allowing government to hide behind such carefully-controlled and filtered messages. It’s a growing concern how many agencies are trying to control the story.
As journalists we want the information as unfiltered as we can get it, and we believe our readers want and deserve the same.
Michael Baker
(405) 475-3384
It’s all connected! April 2010 edition
Below is a phrase net built from the text of stories published with my byline in April 2010. Phrase nets visually display how words are connected in text.
In simpler terms, this is what swirls through my head when I’m trying to sleep at night. Kind of disturbing, isn’t it?
(Click on the title of the visualization, “Estus April 2010 phrase net,” to view it in a full browser window. My favorite view is the final view, which connects word one with word two using a space.)
John Estus
Watchdog Reporter
(405) 475-3481
Oklahomans behind national average in Census returns
Sixty-six percent of Oklahomans who were sent a U.S. Census form in the mail have returned it. Nationally, the rate is at 72 percent.
So we’re a bit behind. Ten years ago, 69 percent of Oklahomans responded to the census. So there is a big chance for Oklahoma to catch up, especially now that the Census Bureau has started going door to door.
On Saturday, some 635,000 census takers began visiting the first of what is an estimated 48 million addresses they will go to by mid-July. There will be 5,000 to 6,000 of those census takers working in Oklahoma, according to officials.
The Census is constitutionally mandated to occur every 10 years. Census data are used to apportion Congressional seats to states, to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to tribal, state and local governments each year and to make decisions about what community services to provide.
The 2010 Census is only 10 questions long, one of the shortest in history and even if you pondered every question, shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes — I’m assuming most of us won’t have to think long to count the people living in our home with us.
To check how many people in a specific county in Oklahoma have returned forms the U.S. Census Bureau has a pretty cool map that allows you to drill down to your community.
On the page you can find this little widget to track the census on your webpage.
Now that the door-to-door phase has begun, that number should keep going up. Government officials have vowed to continue counting until everybody is counted.
According to the Census Bureau, workers are hired from the community they serve and all have undergone an FBI background check. They are also trained to leave a residence at any sign of hostility.
Census takers will make up to six attempts to count residents at each address and, if still unsuccessful, may ask a neighbor, building manager or some other person familiar with the residence to obtain basic information about the people living there.
–Michael Baker
Weekend Rewind: May 3, 2010
Happy Monday from OPUBCO HQ, where we take a moment to remember those affected by the deadly May 3, 1999, tornado that tore through central Oklahoma 11 years ago today.
Here’s what you might have missed over the weekend:
–Reporters Ron Jackson and Johnny Johnson had a fascinating look at the mystery surrounding the disappearance of a family of three last year near Wilburton:
The Sans Bois Mountain range holds many secrets, from Prohibition-era stills to Indian Territory legends of cave-dwelling outlaws. A recent mystery centers on the dark and bewildering disappearance of a Eufaula couple, who told their minister they were being haunted by demons and spirits.
Nearly seven months have passed since Bobby and Sherilyn Jamison and their 6-year-old daughter, Madyson, vanished from those mountains. Investigators have encountered a maze of possibilities when studying the family’s history, leaving open every scenario from murder to the staging of their own deaths.
–A mountain of fly ash from coal-fired power plants has been building up near the town of Bokoshe, and the residents aren’t happy about it. Watchdog reporter Michael Baker has more here.
–There’s been a lot of talk about militias in the last month or so, so reporter Bryan Dean took a look at the short history of the Oklahoma State Guard.
–House Republicans from Oklahoma have sworn off federal earmark requests this year, but Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, is picking up the slack in the other chamber. He’s requested more than $600 million in earmarks for the state, reports Chris Casteel from our Washington bureau.
–Eastern Oklahoma is pockmarked with old mines, and it’s a problem for some residents and drivers. Watchdog reporter Ann Kelley has more on the efforts to stabilize the ground near abandoned mines, and the human toll caused by sink holes.
Elsewhere:
–Reporters at the Arizona Republic looked at property-tax exemptions in the previously fast-growing city of Phoenix. Their analysis showed hundreds of landlords claiming the tax credits meant for homeowners.
–The Chicago Tribune writes about the range of punishments for drivers who excessively speed. The paper found punishment for those speeders varies widely, depending on which judge the drivers appear before.
Stefan Entchev needn’t have worried.
The Arlington Heights man had been clocked blasting down Interstate Highway 90 at 100 mph. He feared hundreds or thousands of dollars in fines and community service. A conviction also could have jacked up his insurance rates.
But Entchev had the good fortune to admit his guilt to Cook County Circuit Judge Daniel Jordan, who gave him a special probation in 2008 that allowed Entchev to keep the ticket off his record. No conviction. No community service. A $55 fine.
–Thousands of barrels of oil continue to leak out into the Gulf of Mexico from the deadly fire and sinking of a drilling rig almost two weeks ago. The oil and gas blog Drilling Ahead has a lengthy look at the technical side of what happened:
It’s a good thing that the Deepwater Horizon didn’t settle right on top of the well. At least there’s room for the remotely operated vehicles to maneuver. Also, there’s still a lot of riser still floating in the water column. So there’s some element of integrity going down to the blowout preventer.
It’s absolutely imperative to shut off that oil flow. We just have to hope and pray that the BP and Transocean people can get the blowout preventer shut off. Or that there’s enough integrity to the risers somehow to get in there and control the leaks, perhaps with some sort of plug. One other idea is to lower a large “hood” over the leak and capture the oil so it can be pumped up to a storage tanker ship.
Meanwhile, the relief well has to go down — carefully and safely. This Macondo well is history. Seal it. Mark it. Give it back to the sea. Move on. Don’t tempt fate on this one. And wow… for a relatively modest-sized deep-water discovery, this thing sure has turned into the well from hell.
–The New York Times examines the status of the charter school movement, and finds that some of the latest research on their effectiveness has caused some rifts among education reformers:
What most experts can agree on is that charter school quality varies widely, and that it is often associated with the rigor of authorities that grant charters. New York, where oversight is strong, is known for higher performing schools. Ohio, Arizona and Texas, where accountability is minimal, showed up in Ms. Raymond’s study with many poorly performing schools.
The founder of the one of the charter schools mentioned in the story, the Harlem Children’s Zone, was in Oklahoma last week.
–Paul
