Five Dubs Podcast
Five Dubs focuses on the who, what, when, where and why of local news media in Maryland, Delaware and D.C. We’ll talk with the journalists about stories behind the news. Five Dubs is a project of the MDDC Press Association and is hosted by Rebecca Snyder and Kevin Berrier.
Five Dubs Podcast
E113: Backroom Deals in our Backyards
Rebecca Snyder sits down with award-winning journalist and author Miranda Spivack to dive into Backroom Deals in Our Backyard, Miranda’s powerful new book exposing the hidden world of local government secrecy and corporate collusion. From dangerous roadways and contaminated water to privatized data systems, Miranda shares the real-life stories of "accidental activists" fighting for transparency. With public records access shrinking and local news under threat, this conversation is a call to action for anyone who believes in open government. Backroom Deals in Our Backyard hits shelves May 6, but you can preorder today!
Welcome to the program. Today we have Miranda Spivak, who is an award-winning author, nationally recognized journalist here on the program to talk about her new book, which is coming out May 6th. So when this airs, it'll be just a few scant days to pre-order. And the book is called Backroom Deals in Our Backyard. So welcome to the program, Miranda. Thanks, Rebecca. Good to see you. It is good to see you. And I know this book has been kind of, well, certainly a labor of love and also it draws on a really strong depth of experience you have in public reporting and accountability reporting that stretches back decades. let's provide our listeners just a little overview of sort of how you came about, like what your credentials are to write a book such as this. Well, I have, as you said, been a reporter and an editor for a long, time. Um, and the, all pretty much in local news. So I started my career in New England. I was a night police reporter in Portland, Maine. I covered a federal court. I had a fellowship at Yale Law School for a year, which was really great and sort of a wonderful skill, I think, for journalists to have, because basically learn a new language that then when people say, lawyers try to intimidate you, you can say, I don't know, I understand. And then, you know, went back to DC where I had grown up and eventually. I was in the Washington Bureau of the Hartford Current, covering the local angle on national news, and then went to a small group of weeklies that were MDDC members, the Gazette newspapers, which were at that point owned by the Washington Post. And again, all on local there was an editor trying to corral local news across really in Maryland, we were in Maryland and the suburbs and, and, you know, I have to say, and I know that I have many former colleagues from the post who are involved with the Maryland DC Delaware Press Association, that at the time we, the post was not paying a lot of attention to local news. And so here we were this once a week publication, basically beating them on a lot of local stories. So they wisely hired me. And I I started in Prince George's County and was the editor of a new weekly there that really was replicated by the post around the Beltway. These were the good old days of local news, I have to say. And the Graham family really paid a lot of attention to beefing up local news. Of course, we know things have changed. the inspiration for the book, which was really, I mean, it was five years in the making, but actually the inspiration for it goes back probably 10 or 12 years when I was both an editor and a reporter for The Post from Prince George's County and encountering a lot of what I would call information blockades where, you know, what I considered very basic information that a local government should give you upon request, or it should even be posted on a website better yet, you know, local contracts, who were the contracts with what. What were they costing? Who were the losing bidders? What were some of the settlements that you have with police, people who have accused the police of wrongdoing? Again, when public money is being spent, my view, and I know at the time my colleagues at the Post view was, this is public information. The taxpayers have paid for this. It should be out there. We shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail to get it, but. yes. the Maryland Public Information Act. And I think you bring up such a, you know, when this book was germinating and, you know, it takes so long to sort of come from conception to actually putting the first tippity taps on the keyboard. But I feel like, and we've worked together on different projects through the years, it's not gotten easier to get information, you know, certainly in Maryland. There's, it's gotten worse and sort of the way the Maryland statute is written, there's sort of this sort of supposition of openness that, you know, the law is written in a very vague manner because there's that spirit of, well, everything should be open. And here's a couple things. Here's exemptions that shield certain types of information. But we're finding, and I think you would agree that, more more custodians who keep the records on behalf of government bodies are shielding it more and more. Yeah, I think it's true. I think it's true around the country in every state. know, Maryland, despite its liberal reputation, has one of the most dilatory public records laws in the country because it's 30 days for the governments can local and state governments can have up to 30 days to respond. And that does not mean they give you the information they can write back and say, yeah, we got your request. We're working on it. All they have to do is respond in 30 days. The federal government, hardly a paragon of openness. And of course, it's getting way worse now. 20 days to respond. And I mean, there are some states worse than Maryland because Alabama until recently said, you know, in due time or something like that, I mean, there was no deadline and there are states with no deadline. But, Maryland, Maryland should do better. Let's put it that way. Yes, we should all do better. let's actually we could talk for hours about the difficulties getting getting public records out of Maryland and other states. But I was I was intrigued by the premise of your book, which is really and you tell it through case studies, which I think is a really interesting approach. But the idea that there's obfuscation, that all these sort of backroom deals are happening right in our own backyards. And I think oftentimes members of the public and I fall into this too, sometimes feel like, oh, it's the national level. That's where all this conspiracy is happening. That's where the real trouble is. And we sort of think more favorably about our local areas because we know more people there. We feel more connected. That's our community. But really, all that shielding of information, we're really being kept in the dark. about our communities. Can you tell me a little bit more about kind of that juxtaposition? Yeah, I think that's true. You know, and of course, being in the DC area, is, you know, putting aside what's happening now, which probably puts a lot of national eyes on DC more than in the past. But the media is generally very concerned about federal records, federal information, lack thereof. But the reality is, no matter where you live in the country, your interaction with government, unless it's social security, is likely to be at the state and local level more times than not. And that is where your life is really affected. That's where school decisions are made. That's where deals are done with places like Amazon. mean, they went all around the country and got nondisclosure agreements with local governments who were vying to get the second headquarters, and who were giving away big tax breaks. Again, public money, essentially. But Amazon was saying, sign this NDA, or we're not even going to let you compete. The data center issue now, which is very big around the country, but particularly in Virginia and in some parts of Maryland. Again, these data center companies, whether it's Microsoft, Amazon, whomever, and then of course the companies that want to build the data centers are also demanding a lot from local governments, a lot of concessions. They are big water users and big elect power users. want deals on what the rate's going to be. They want basically the ratepayers, that is you living in your own home, to subsidize them. And local governments are agreeing to this. And they're, again, agreeing to this kind of deal behind closed doors. I will say another thing that happens is that as government state and local governments have outsourced functions, whether it's trash pickups, school bus drivers, whatever. Private companies then hold a lot of the information that in the past would have resided with a government agency. But because of outsourcing, which really began in earnest with Ronald Reagan and then was replicated by states everywhere, some of it is supposedly cost saving. I think we can debate that. So a lot of times the governments don't even possess the information. And then the companies will say, it's a trade secret, you can't have it. Right. So you don't know if it's working, if it's working efficiently, if it was a better deal, because all public information acts have an exemption for trade secrets or proprietary business information. And so it really puts and just on a practical level, even if local governments had access to some of those things, they or would be able to do it, they don't have physically. have them to provide. true with police videos too, which are often housed, you know, with the company that sold the cameras to the police department. And then, you know, the other problem with the trade secret exemption, which is widely, widely used around the country is that the local governments and probably the federal government too, they're really not trained or equipped to determine what's a trade secret. Mm. mean, I understand that. But so what happens is they ask the company, they'll give them the documents, say, go through and, you know, knock out whatever you want to knock out. And that's a trade secret. We're not, we're not going to question that because we really don't know. I mean, in one case, that's in my book in West Virginia, there was a private water company that claimed a trade secret was the 800 number for the State Public Utilities Commission. I mean, it's very sloppy and it's very hard to regulate by the government. you know, the governments are, to the extent that I'm sympathetic to them and as you will know in the book, not hugely, they are caught. They are not trained. They are underfunded. You know, being the public records officer is not a high status job. Your career is when you have to go bug your colleagues for information that they don't want to give up, it does not help your career. So there are a lot of challenges. Yeah. So you you lay out the book in sort of a in a series of case studies or personal stories. What was behind that choice to present the information in that way? Yeah, that's a very good question. So I think part of the whole issue that journalists confront and others, when it comes to our complaining about lack of access to information, which is a constant with journalists, you know, a lot of people don't care. They don't care that I've had trouble getting a contract from the Prince George's County government. And, you know, that's sort of an abstract idea. I'm a journalist, I'm whining, whatever. It's not a good life. Yeah, too bad if you're struggling. And as I was in Prince George's, which I noted at the time was particularly onerous as far as transmitting information, it dawned on me that I'm not the only one having this problem. And there are people in the community who were either wanted information for their homeowners association, or they wanted to get some kind of information about how the police were deploying officers, why was their neighborhood being ignored, whatever, they were having problems too. it it occurred to me pretty early on that telling the story of government obstruction and corporate collusion, which is what the book in many ways is about, really needed to be told. through the eyes and experiences of non-journalists, of people who are just living their lives. I call them accidental activists. They don't sign up for this. They want something from the school system. want something, And they foolishly, as it turns out, assume that their local government would be open and would be here to help them. And guess what? It often, not always, but in the book for sure. is not the case. And I just think people can understand the issues much better and the challenges about information and the obstruction of information if it's told by somebody who could be their neighbor, who might have the same needs that they do. And it's just, I think it's a more effective way to tell a story. Sure, well, it does make it really brings it home. It kind of makes it even more local in that way when you're thinking, oh, this could have been my fire department or my school system. So tell us a little bit about maybe one or two of your case studies. And I'm also interested out of the breadth of information that you provide, did you choose those case studies because they were especially fiery or were you trying to show more of a breadth of of the problem, why those five? Yeah, well, you know, when I began to realize I wanted to write a book about this issue, and this was actually after I had done a five part series for reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, which touched on different examples of state and local lack of transparency. You know, I just started hunting around for more examples and people who would be. willing to let me sort of go along for the ride. mean, most of these people I followed for four or five years. And during the pandemic, was, and you know, some of it was who was willing, who was really willing to let me into their lives. I mean, that's part of it. You you really have to build trust with people. And here I am knocking on their door and okay, I have, you know, decent credentials that they might've heard of the Washington Post, but you know, they don't know me. And I'm saying, hey, you know, I'm writing a book. I don't have a book contract yet, but I'm writing a book and it's about this issue. And, you know, I want to find out about what's going on with you. And, you know, they put a lot of trust in me, which I mean, this book would not exist without these people and their stories and their candor and their willingness to let me see the good, bad and the ugly of their experiences. So. I was looking for geographic diversity. I was looking for gender diversity. I know DEI is a bad word these days. And I was looking for racial diversity and economic diversity. And I think I found that pretty much. you know, so we're sort of looking for different ways to tell stories that people would relate to. Yeah. Well, and want to do a rundown of what each of those case studies is about. But before we get there, I was curious, you you've been a reporter for a long time. You just came off of of your your work with reveal and so forth. When you're reaching out to sources like that, you know, how is it different from reporting on an article? Because in some ways, you're still building trust. You're still sort of jetting in like, you know, with only the acquired credentials that you have. But you're really kind of a force of personality and building trust with people. So how is it different working with sources in the two mediums? You know, that's also a very good question. I think in this case, I knew I had the luxury of time, which as a daily reporter, I did not always have. So I could be way more patient than I am when I have to turn something around in six hours or two days or whatever. So there was that, you you've got to do a lot of listening. And you've got to collect a lot of material and you need to collect way more than you're going to use. And you don't know that still what's going to be usable. mean, when I'm doing interviews for a daily story or a pretty timely story, I'm listening to the person I'm interviewing and I know I can tell you what quotes I'm going to use. mean, it's I, but in this case, it's a whole, it's just, it's the luxury of time. that makes a huge difference. And of course, that's not something people have, reporters, journalists have often. And so, you you got to kind of balance that with whatever other work you're doing. I mean, I didn't do this full time. So and then the other thing that was probably helpful to me and to getting the book off the ground, but you know, was very sad was A lot of this, I really started on this in late 2019 and so in March of 2020 we had the lockdown and the pandemic. So people were at home, which meant I could get them on the phone or by FaceTime or whatever more easily than trying to track them, track their schedules. And they wanted to talk. mean, people, you know. So the first year or so of figuring out who I wanted and who was going to be willing to talk to me. And so it's happened in that timeframe, which I think was helpful. And then, and then as soon as I could, which was probably not till 2022, I went to all these places and met these people in person and spent time with them and saw them in their environment. Well, and that's a great lead in. let's hear about the areas that you covered and the people that you met. So one of the people early on I connected with was a guy named Michael Hickey, lives in Housick Falls, New York. And I found him through Facebook, interestingly enough. And we started talking. And his issue was that he was discovering forever chemicals in the drinking, public drinking water in his town. And he is not a trained. investigator. is, he does work in the insurance industry. You know, he's well educated, he knew how to use the internet, etc. And, you know, he also learned how to enlist his neighbors who were very reluctant and worried for a long time. And this does happen to people who discover problems in their communities, because, you know, Does this mean we're gonna lose jobs? Does this mean the local company, the polluter is gonna leave town? You're just an alarmist. And then there were other people who said, why didn't you tell us sooner? So you're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't as he's trying to investigate this. Right? interesting part. You you're trying to hold it all together and he's getting heat from both sides about that is the difficulty of being that accidental activist. yes. And again, people aren't really trained for this, so they don't know what to expect. And they do get a lot of hostility. And then they get corporate people pushing back on them. The state government, which was very slow to recognize and acknowledge the problem and then do something about it, that took a long time. So that's one issue. Another issue is in Maryland and this one was one of the five articles I did for reveal, although obviously I've updated it, amplified it, whatever. And this is a crazy issue that every time I tell people about this, they're like, no, that cannot be true. So this man in Bethesda, Maryland wanted to get a left turning light. to the back end on a major road, River Road, to the back entrance of a high school where he had had a daughter who'd gone there and he would see these young drivers trying to make this left turn against oncoming traffic. Very dangerous, very dangerous situation. there were a lot of accidents there. And it turns out, so he got touch with the state transportation authority and and asked for wanted to get this light and they turned him down. So he said, can you give me the documents and studies that you're using to make this decision? And they said, no. And this is public information. It's publicly funded information, let's put it that way. Your tax money paid for those documents. So this went on for years. And then in 2016, there was a horrible, horrible accident at that intersection in which family trying to make that left turn to go to a play at the high school on a Saturday night. I mean, it's just heartbreaking. Somebody came barreling over the hill, know, hit them broadside. Mother, father and son died. Daughter survived, you know, with a lot of injury. And then the publicity was frankly so bad that the Maryland transit people sort of started to negotiate with the community. The upshot is that there is now a whole improved intersection there that's much safer. But it took this fellow, Baltuck, I think 10 years at least to do this. who could do that? And, and, know, he kept hitting. mean, he went to, he, he appealed some of the rulings to the state, you know, and an administrative law judge ruled against him. And he did a lot of stuff without a lawyer. And he's not a lawyer. He's an economist, but now it just, it was like at every turn, he couldn't get this information. Now, you think Maryland has changed its, its policy? No. And almost every state in the union has this same policy, which is. that we're not going to give you, I mean, I'm giving you the shorthand, but you know, the most dangerous roads, most dangerous bridges. No, we're not going to give out that information. Well, and it just, we're only two stories in and I'm just kind of stunned by what appears to be kind of the arrogance of local government. Like absolutely not. cannot, know, Monday quarterback our, our decisions, you know, like you can't, we can't show you the reasoning or why we chose to do this. And it is shocking that nearly an entire family died going to a school play. because the state of Maryland and Bethesda couldn't figure out like, gosh, let's really look at this. Let's have an honest conversation about how we're interacting and living in our communities together. So like, are you seeing it more as governmental arrogance or just a lot of like befuddling, you know, missed connections or like true collusion when you have, you know, companies maybe like in New York, I don't know if it's privatized or not, their market forces for ever chemicals just don't magically appear in water. On the spectrum of innocent incompetence to corporate malfeasance, where do these things kind of lay? Yeah, that's good analysis. I mean, I think it's a whole combination. Yes, I do think there's government arrogance. I think there's also huge defensiveness. They're terrified of lawsuits. In the case of the dangerous roads, Congress gave states an exemption to do exactly what they're doing. And it really has to do with self-protection. If they got sued and they were negligent because they knew the problem existed and they hadn't fixed it. And they can be sued for that. a lot of, I mean, the distinction there was that the information couldn't be used in discovery in a lawsuit. But the way Maryland interpreted it and many states interpreted it is, we're just not going to give it to you. There might be a lawsuit somewhere down. And so we're not going to put it out in the public. Just not what the law says. But that's the way they do it. You know, I listen, there are a lot of good people in government, and I do not want to trash them. But I think there is is a defensive culture. And, you know, some of it comes about because members of the public can be kind of jerky in their interactions with government. And so people kind of, you know, just pull in the door, you know, close the doors, they don't want to They don't want to be attacked. They don't want to have these conversations. So it's sort of a balancing act when you're an activist or you become an activist, which is what happens to these folks in my book and also happens to many people, which is they don't seek this out, but something happens to them or in their community and they feel they have to go forward. They have to really learn to be diplomatic. and to cultivate the people in government who can actually help you if they choose to and give you the information you want. But if you're hammering on them, which some of the people in my book do, it doesn't always work. I think as a journalist, you know that too, which is honey works better than vinegar. Always, always, but I also, you know, I'm just struck by these accidental activists have like a true calling. You know, if I'm going to stick with something for 10 years, I have to be so fired up to do it. And then I think it's sort of a push-pull towards, I have to be diplomatic and I have to be always thinking about how I'm presenting and making someone else feel good. And the other side of you is like, I have a right to this information. I feel a moral obligation in many respects to see this through. Like it's not, it's more than a hobby. And these people have other things going. And I feel like that must be really hard for activists to kind of balance those two things. Meanwhile, they get all these inputs from the public about you should be doing this, you shouldn't be doing that. And really maybe not even understanding the law and what they are entitled to and what they're not. Cause it, it's a crazy dance with public records sometimes. Yep, absolutely right. I, you know, I think, I mean, there are definitely times when I think people should push very, very hard. Don't get me wrong, but I think, I think it's, it is balancing act and, know, you have to have incredible patients. Now, who's it falls? New York now has, a cleaner water system. Although somebody's up there, uh, is actually very concerned that it's not going to work. so. and they may be right, I don't know. So, you know, it's the story is still unfolding there. There is a traffic light now. So that's good. But Maryland still doesn't give out that information, whereas they said to me, we do it on a, you know, case by case basis. And I'm like, you know, what are your criteria? Right. Water. Right. did you look at? There's a sewer issue that is still ongoing in Alabama. And this is in a poor African-American community where a lot of people don't have sewer hookups and where they have these open lagoons, which I would call cesspools, actually. They call them lagoons where they're treating sewage, but they overflow often, including into people's yards. There's been a lot of money put into trying to fix this, federal money, state money, mostly federal money, actually. But there's been a lot of secrecy surrounding the decision making, and the problem is not resolved yet. And I think they've run out of their USDA money. now in today's world going to be a huge problem. And there's just been a lot of secrecy surrounding contracting, decision making, know, are they made the people who the contractors make the right decisions, the it's hard to know. And they have done a very, I would say, poor job of communicating their goals to the public. And so People are concerned they still don't have a working sewer system. Why not? What are you doing? What are the plans? mean, very fundamental stuff not being conveyed to the public. right now there's a big catfish plant in town that state data show contributes to some of the issues. And there is a fear there that they will close up and leave town and this is not a wealthy community. They need the jobs. So there are some, a lot of ongoing issues there. So that's another issue. As far as firefighters go, the issue is that a woman in New England whose husband had cancer and there is, as you may know, a higher rate of cancer in the fire service than in the country as a whole. But there are lot of reasons for that. you know, firefighters go into burning buildings where furniture has all the, know, furniture has all this junk and toxins and chemicals. And, you know, we have a lot of chemicals and a lot of stuff. so, then wild land firefighters are also exposed to a lot of danger. But what this person who was not a high school graduate, hairdresser, discovered that there were forever chemicals in firefighter turnout gear. which is, you know, the protective gear and, know, it sort of functions like Teflon. And there's a reason for it, you know, which is that you're a firefighter, you go into a burning building, you need to be able to slough off the water and, you know, you don't want to get soaked to death or burned to death or whatever. And so, you know, there's sort of a rationale for this, but it appears now that that that may be related to the high cause of cancer. Okay. I mean, it hasn't been proven yet. I want to caution that. But, you know, in the course of that, I discovered that there was a sort of an industry driven group that helps the government set all the regulations for this. And of course, it's not everybody. There are firefighters and there are government people on these panels, but there are also industry people on the panels and they sell the gear. Right. And in some ways, you you want all those knowledge bases in like the people who sell the gear, they have a really deep understanding of what's going on. But no one really has an unbiased view of the world. And so that's where transparency becomes especially important. Like everyone's bringing their own perspective. Everyone has their bias. But you hopefully are transparent enough that we can see the path and see like, this is where it went astray. Yeah, you know, and the interesting thing about that organization, which does function essentially as a de facto standard setter for the government. mean, that is pretty much it. So and I was looking at all these panels and there's industry, there's people from the firefighters union, there's, you know, scientists, whatever. So I asked them, said, to a conflict of interest policy. No. Oh, which would make a lot of sense, yeah. You know, maybe there's some things people shouldn't vote on because, know, anyway, yeah. So, and you know, that's sort of, again, the outsourcing of expertise, which is sort of, again, understandable, although not maybe exactly the way we want it to operate. But, you know, the concept of it isn't inherently bad. It's just how it functions and how it is overseen is not Great. Yeah. So then what was that fifth case study? And then I want to ask you a little bit more about public. the fifth study is about proprietary algorithms used in the criminal justice system that are used by courts and prosecutors and others to set bail. Obviously, the prosecutors don't set bail, the judges do, but to let people out on parole if they've been in prison for a while. It's why these algorithms, these systems, software systems are widely used now in the criminal justice system. And this is a case where if you want to challenge it, if you're a defense lawyer, for instance, and you say that what it says about my client is not correct, very hard to challenge it because they claim trade secrets. And again, these are private companies purchased by government to do these functions. And it's, you know, this particular case was a man in prison in New York who was supposed to get out early, six months early of a multi-year sentence. had, a teenager had been an accessory in a murder, unfortunately. He served a lot of time. He had a perfect record in prison for 10 years leading up to the time of his proposed early release. And as he said to me, having a perfect record in prison is really, really hard. Most people don't have that. They get into a fight, somebody challenges, something goes wrong. But he had a perfect record and was considered just a model prisoner. And so he goes up before the parole board and the software tells them to turn him down and they do. And even the pro board doesn't really know how these things work. And so he, he's of course very disturbed. mean, somebody put him up for early release, you know, based on good behavior. So he goes back to prison and starts doing something that technically he wasn't allowed to do. He starts asking people what their scores were in this system and, um, finds out that in his case, the counselor who had helped fill out form had answered the question of, were there any flaws in this guy's record? I'm paraphrasing here. And had said yes, because, you know, early on in his more than 20 year time in prison, yes, he had done some bad things or screwed up or gotten written up for something. But other people, the counselors had said what happened in the last 24 months. So and so they were the you know, they were in turn they were filling out the form differently. And in fact, his fellow prisoners who knew him said, if this guy can't get out early, none of us can. And so he figured out what the problem was, it was a problem with one of I don't know, more than 20 questions on this forum that was fed into a computer and then spits out the recommendation. But Um, you know, he tried to get the information from the private company that sells us software. I could not get it. It's trade secret. he goes up again in six months after spending an extra six months in prison and he still has the bad score. Cause I couldn't fix it, but they let him go. I mean, it was his time anyway, but you know, it's just like, this is like bad. actually just, it's all about asking the right question. I specificity in a question, know, aside from he should have been able to get that, that information. And even as a person in interest, I'm kind of surprised that, you know, they weren't able to provide that. was his record, it wasn't like somebody else. Defense lawyers have a terrible time with this as they're trying to get bond lowered or whatever. There are things that are fed into these algorithms like, well, if you let this guy out and he goes back to his neighborhood, what's the crime rate in his neighborhood? Well, it's high. That assumes that. there is a likelihood that he will re-offend even though that may not be the case at all. But how these decisions, these decisions, I mean, they're not made by human beings. they're just information's fed in and spat back out. So, I mean, the case studies that you're talking about are really around infrastructure and sort of the systems of how we live together in a society. so I'm interested, you know, as public records kind of flows through this, it strikes me that like public records in some way, how we treat public records kind of feed into how we think society should work. you know, should it be open? Should it be transparent? Should, you know, companies be able to call the shots just because they're holding the money or the contract and things like that. And so I'm interested in sort of when you're writing a book versus an article, you can show a through line and say, this is what I think should happen. what, what do you think? What do you want people to take away from the book and do you want them to act in a certain way? Well, I think a couple of things. One is that there is a final chapter in the book that is basically a how-to chapter. It's very fundamental explanations, how to file public records requests. If you need a lawyer, which unfortunately you might, here's how you might be able to get free legal assistance. Anyway, there's a bunch of very fundamental advice, which I think is useful to people. no matter what. And then I think, you know, that as the people read the book and you can sort of read it, it's not a long book, but you could read each chapter and say, and put it down and say, oh, you know, that what that guy did might be something I could do, which for example, one agency won't give you the information, figure out who else has it, especially if it's like federal state local. So in this case, in the Alabama sewer case, somebody couldn't get information from the federal government. mean, there was a whole issue with the Department of Agriculture and their complete, I would say failure to provide information until there was a lawsuit. so, okay, they wouldn't give it to me, but the state... may have supplied that information to the feds or received information from the feds. So let me ask the state and in this case, the state actually did cough up some of the information. So the sort of triangulation idea, you know, I just, I just really want people to know that they have the right to a lot of this information that they've paid for it already. It's theirs and that they should do everything they can to exercise those rights and you know, put pressure on the governments, which then need to put pressure on some of the private enterprises that are causing not all, but some of the information blockades. Now are you seeing some of those, are you seeing the names of certain companies come up kind of over and over that they're sort of national companies or is everyone just protecting their own interests at the local level? I think more the latter. I mean, yes, the Amazon case where they hunted around the country for the Y2K or the second headquarters, you could see a pattern there where they went across the country and demanded nondisclosure agreements. And everybody said, yes, where do I sign? So there is that. Certainly, in the case of data center issues, those are are generally a group of companies that, whether it's Amazon, Microsoft, whatever, but then there's also the companies that build these things. And I think you can see patterns there where they're not being forthcoming and the governments are going along with that. But a lot of this is local. It's local employers. and local governments that may not even know that they can press harder than they do, or they don't want to because you don't want to alienate the big local employer. Not only do they provide jobs, but they also are corporate good citizens. They fund the little league team and they give money to the library and whatever. So it's a tricky thing. I think the Pew Research Center did a study a while back about how incidents of corruption and financial mismanagement just skyrocket when local news dwindles or goes away. And I wonder if there's a connection as local newsrooms have shrunk. I mean, the Gazette case in point, there's not, you know, once the Gazettes closed in what, 2014, 2015, that left two of Maryland's most populous counties. without. there's news organizations operating in those counties, but certainly not to the level that the gazettes were. So how much does sort of the shrinkage of local news play into this phenomenon? Yeah, I think it plays into it quite a bit. Pretty much every community that I looked at, there was a diminishment of local news. In Alabama, there really is not a local paper or radio in the particular community. looked at there's something nearby. It's not great. You know, and when you don't have reporters at the city council meeting at midnight, which is when they're really doing the damage, you know, they they just go on. You know, you don't have people at the water board meetings. You don't have, you know, just and the people who do show up are citizens usually with a specific problem. And, you know, school boards. mean, school systems are big, big. spenders. Often in Montgomery County, Maryland, it's at least half of the county budget, if not more, and billions of dollars. Same with Prince George's and other places. mean, these are big money and that. I'm not saying that's inherently bad, but we ought to have a better understanding of how decisions are made and who gets the contracts and why we're doing this and not doing this. No, those are thorny issues and they're big issues. mean, and certainly local news as a stand in for the public has traditionally been that watchdog and been at those meetings and working towards it. So I wanted also to kind of end with what happens now. I mean, you are an accomplished reporter. You've done so many amazing things. Are you thinking about another book? What's next for you? You know, I think the short answer is I don't know. It's kind of funny when I did finally get a book contract with the New Press, which is a great publisher, nonprofit publisher, the book people probably mostly have heard of that they did was the new Jim Crow, but they have a very good roster of very important policy books. So I signed a contract with them and they asked, this is probably standard, asked for, you know, the right of first refusal on my next book. And I said to my husband, what next book? I mean, it's very hard work. I mean, I'm really thrilled about this one. And I think this message will resonate for a while, I hope, that this is really important stuff. And because of what's happening in the federal government now, I did actually a piece that appeared in The Contrarian recently about how, okay, a lot of federal information is disappearing. Agencies are being shut down, FOIA officers are being fired, subject matter. weren't really talking about where that information is going. Like when an agency is raptured away, where does their data go? there is an effort at Harvard and in a couple other places to try to salvage this stuff. But my theory was that people should go to their state governments and ask for the information that they have sent to the federal government because there's a lot of it is two way. And that's another way to preserve some of this information, know, education, healthcare. All of those issues, there's a lot of back and forth, both they send information to the federal government and the federal government sends information to them. And so the states actually have a lot of this information. It's going to be very onerous to try to corral it, but that is one place where we can try to hang on to this. But this is devastating what's happening to public information. And again, that we have already paid for, this is ours. It's not theirs to eviscerate. And everyone needs to have a voice in government and in how we choose to live. So thank you so much, Miranda, for coming to talk to me. It's always great to spend a little time together. And good luck on the book. I can't wait to see the everyone take it up as their new standard. Yes. So Backroom Deals in Our Backyards, it'll publish from New Press on May 6th. You can get it. And where can you get the book, Miranda? get it, you can preorder it anywhere. Of course, I would say go to either bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores. But, you know, if you got to go to Amazon, you got to go to Amazon, I just want you to buy the book. So you know, wherever you but you can preorder it now from really anywhere Barnes and Noble, whatever. And you know that do please do because it really helps sort of get the word out about what I think is really an important issue. It is. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you spending time with me. you.
