Utilization of public records

Examples of how news organizations have used public records to monitor government:

Grades

The Arizona Daily Star obtained grades given to college students, with the names removed. At the University of Arizona, the Star found that about 70 percent of all undergraduate grades over four years were A's and B's. In the College of Education, A's and B's accounted for 90 percent of grades.

Similar distributions were found at other state universities, prompting debate over why so many students earned above-average grades. UA President Peter Likins said the report showed a need to make grade statistics more available to faculty and administrators.

Bids

The Arizona Republic filed a public-records request for copies of the e-mail and phone records of George Leckie, one of then-Gov. Fife Symington's top staffers.

The state withheld the e-mail but released some of the phone records.

The records showed that calls were made between Leckie and a bidder on a pending $1.5 million state contract.

After the Republic ran a story, a federal investigation led to charges of fraud and bid-rigging against Leckie and John Yeoman, a partner in the firm that won the contract.

Leckie was acquitted. Yeoman died in a 1996 traffic accident without going to trial.

City officials

This month, after Apache Junction City Manager Curtis Shook was charged with drunken driving, the East Valley Tribune obtained the written reprimand he received following an earlier similar arrest.

The record revealed that he kept his job in 1997, in part by vowing it would never happen again.

Staff and wire reports