Government reporting: follow the money

Everything you need or want to know about a candidate or government official and sites that will help you hold government accountable.

LABOR RELATED SEARCHES
● U.S. Department of Labor: Find annual labor reports.
● Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act notices: Filed with the state
● Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Find out about accidents, incidents or health/ safety investigations at an organization on their Website or by request.
● Resource: For people who used to work at a company, organization, municipality, etc., call the union chief.
● Resource: Call the Comptroller's office for state employee information

FINANCIAL INFORMATION
● Google.com/finance and finance.yahoo.com

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
● UsaSpending.gov: Find out how much government contracts to the state have gone up over time.
● Securities and Exchange Commission: Search for company filings by company, name, date, key words, exact phrase. Use * for a wildcard search and use NEAR2 to find close words
● J3 Information Services Group: Get an inside look at insider trading.
● Fedstats: Government statistics, simply put.
● FirstGov: A portal to federal and local governments'
● USAspending: Search and download federal contracts, grants, etc.
● Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse - also known as TRAC: Find out more about federal enforcement, staffing and spending. Useful for: Immigration information and Federal justice issues
● Federal Audit Clearinghouse: Audits government organizations. Useful for: Finding bad reviews of an organization or agency
● Government Accountability Office: See use directly above.
● Inspectors General reports: Find critical reports or agencies.In their words, they detect and prevent fraud, waste, abuse, and violations of law and to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of the Federal Government.

INVESTIGATING POLITICIANS
● Legistorm.com: Find salaries, travel, if a family member works for same company. Useful for: Seeing if someone is supporting odd legislation and also getting wined and dined by the same organization.
● Opensecrets.org: Keep track of federal candidates
● Followthemoney.com: Keep track of state candidates
● Maplight.org: Learn more about cash, votes and campaign contributions
● Federal Elections Commission: Get campaign finance reports, daily FEC action, etc.