A note from Gordon Russell, Managing Editor of Investigations

Hello again!

First, I want to personally thank everyone who has contributed to the Louisiana Investigative Journalism Fund. Your donations underscore that this type of work matters to people in this community, and the breadth of our local support has helped us (and will continue to help us) secure larger grants from foundations and philanthropies.

So far, that support has allowed us to double the size of our dedicated investigative team, from four members to eight. Here’s a link to a page where you can meet the team, see some of our work and send us tips or ideas – securely, if necessary. (Or donate, of course!) 

If you’re able to contribute again, there’s some swag in it for you! Today is Giving Tuesday, so there’s no better time than the present.

Now to the interesting stuff: For most of this year, our reporter Andrea Gallo has been shining a spotlight on the troubled Department of Children and Family Services – the state agency charged with protecting vulnerable kids from abuse. The portrait that has emerged has been devastating: Toddlers have died after clear warning signs were missed. Jobs are going unfilled even though the state is flush with cash.The director of the DCFS has resigned amid all of these revelations, but the problems at the agency – from staffing to leadership – still need to be addressed.

There’s arguably no bigger story in south Louisiana right now than the precarious state of our homeowners insurance marketplace. Nearly a dozen insurers have gone belly-up in the last two years, and the state’s insurer of last resort, Louisiana Citizens, has been forced to expand its rolls dramatically – at high cost to homeowners. State regulators are eager to shed them. Mike Finch has taken a couple of unflinching looks at what happened last time the state did this: The results were not encouraging. 

Amid a spike in murders and carjackings, the New Orleans Police Department has fewer officers than it has had in decades. With our partners at WWL-TV, we took a hard look at what that means for response times, and why officers are leaving.More troublingly, we showed how the manpower crisis is causing many rapes to go uninvestigated..

With our partners at ProPublica and WWL-TV, we’ve spent months this year investigating how federal and state disaster-aid programs tend to fail the people who depend on them most. Stories so far have examined Louisiana’s efforts to sue people who failed to elevate their homes with grant money, and how the city of Lake Charles – battered by 2020’s Hurricane Laura – had to wait nearly two years for long-term aid to roll in. Keep an eye out for several more pieces in our “Disaster After Disaster” series.

 Isle de Jean Charles, south of Houma, is the focus of one of the first mass relocations of a community necessitated by climate change and aided by the government. We took a deep dive examining how that has played out. 

OK, that’s it for now. Stay tuned for next month’s installment - I promise it will be a good one. We’re very excited about some of the work we plant to publish in December. 

Until then!

Gordon

You can support our investigative journalism efforts through the Louisiana Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Your tax-deductible donation will go directly to support our news gathering efforts.