Over the past 12 months, American-Statesman investigations have sparked proposed legislation related to how Texas oversees child care, congressional hearings into Department of Veterans Affairs contracts and better protections for survivors of Hurricane Harvey.

At Austin's City Hall, Statesman reporting has resulted in a slew of new policies, including those affecting water bills, police academy training and short-term rental units.

What follows are examples of the accountability journalism that Statesman reporters practice every day, from the newspaper's four-person investigative team to those covering Central Texas cities, counties, schools, law enforcement agencies and the environment.

Day care dangers

A yearlong Statesman investigation into the state's child care system revealed the dangerous conditions that exist inside many Texas day care sites, leaving hundreds of children with serious injuries and nearly 90 dead as a result of abuse or neglect since 2007. Lax oversight by the state has allowed hundreds of day care facilities with scores of violations to continue operating without serious consequences, and Texas’ enforcement strategy in some cases failed to correct caregiver behavior before a child's death or serious injury.

The investigation also pointed out that even though nearly half of the abuse or neglect deaths happened in so-called illegal child care facilities — day cares that operate without the state's knowledge or oversight — the state last year did away with a unit tasked specifically with finding them. After the newspaper inquired about the move, the Health and Human Services Commission asked state legislators to provide money in the upcoming session to restore the unit.

After the series was published, two dozen advocacy groups called on lawmakers and state officials to address the problems exposed by the investigation. Some legislators have already taken steps to improve childcare safety: Rep. Ana Hernandez, D-Houston, has filed a bill requiring all day care centers to have cameras. Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, has said he wants to ensure the illegal day care unit is reinstated and see more child care enforcement.

Water bills

In October 2017, the Statesman first reported on an unusual spike in water bills in the Circle C neighborhood. After scores of residents sent similar bills to Statesman reporter Elizabeth Findell and thousands more complained to Austin Energy, which handles billing for city water customers, city representatives acknowledged that something odd had happened in August or September. But they said they had no explanation for the spike and therefore wouldn’t assume responsibility for the high bills.

Only after continued reporting from the Statesman and complaints from residents did Austin Energy in January finally agree to provide refunds to 7,000 residents with abnormally high bills. The utility's analysis of water bills ultimately mirrored the newspaper's findings from months earlier.

“We should have found this faster, and we should have found it ourselves,” Austin Energy General Manager Jackie Sargent said. “We should have had better safeguards against unreasonable water meter reads.”

A city investigation later found that two meter readers had obtained supervisor passwords, allowing them to fake meter readings on 135 routes around the city, affecting more than 17,800 people.

Additional reporting on a man who received a $12,000 water bill showed numerous flaws in customer service at the utility and helped prompt empathy and common sense training for employees.

Short-term rentals

In November, Austin city officials called for a new look at what it costs to enforce the city’s short-term rental restrictions, a move prompted in part by a Statesman series on the scope of such illegal rentals in the city.

The Statesman investigation showed 8,000 to 11,000 Austin listings for short-term rentals. The city was aware of only a fraction of those and has issued permits for just about 2,000 short-term units.

The City Council adopted a resolution asking city staffers to determine the amount of time and resources used to address short-term rentals — especially properties that are recurring code offenders. Knowing how much the city spends on enforcement will allow it to adjust its licensing fees and, potentially, fines for code violations.

Explosive growth of short-term rentals has become a divisive issue in Austin, sparking hundreds of complaints from neighbors and pitting property owners against neighborhood groups.

Police training academy

In April, the Statesman reported about the culture of the Austin Police Department training academy, including allegations by a group of former cadets that the nine-month program is too aggressive. The group claimed that the curriculum emphasized a "warrior" approach, in which officers are taught to be constantly prepared for battle, instead of to be public servants. The former cadets said they thought the culture was out of step with Austin's values.

Police Chief Brian Manley originally backed the old approach but six weeks later called for a cultural shift in the training program. For instance, Manley called for cadets to stop wearing camouflage uniforms, which are similar to those of military personnel, and the ending of a tradition that they salute instructors or other commanders they encounter in hallways.

VA corruption

A year after the Statesman revealed a network of corruption and intimidation at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Temple campus, federal prosecutors in September charged a VA supervisor, his wife and a Killeen business owner in a scheme to defraud the government.

Investigators allege that for five years Christopher Sebek, operations supervisor at the Temple VA engineering department, and Jeff Pearson, owner of Whitetail Industrial, submitted fraudulent invoices to the VA for goods and services supposedly for VA use. Instead, the money they received was used to pay for Sebek’s personal purchases and to cover Pearson’s 30 percent commission on each invoice, prosecutors allege.

In 2017, a Statesman investigation showed that veterans undergoing drug and alcohol treatment claimed they were being used to perform personal work for VA officials in the engineering department, in addition to claims of theft and abuse of power. An internal investigative board also uncovered the invoice scheme, which officials said had been ongoing since 2012.

VA contract

In 2017, a Statesman investigation exposed far-reaching problems with a half-billion dollar technology contract to help the Department of Veterans Affairs wirelessly track hospital equipment. VA officials said the real-time locating system project would save money from lost or misplaced equipment and prevent death and disease from the use of nonsterilized equipment. But internal documents showed the project had gone off the rails, to the point where contracting officials warned it was in danger of "catastrophic failure."

Six months later, a VA inspector general report confirmed the newspaper's findings, and in May the U.S. House Committee on Veterans Affairs held a hearing in which lawmakers demanded answers and called for discipline for employees involved with the troubled contract.

“This is unbelievable. Anybody embarrassed here?” Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, said during the hearing.

Student suspensions

A year after Texas lawmakers prohibited schools from suspending most young students, a Statesman investigation found that some Central Texas districts were still using the practice, including the Killeen district, which reported 571 suspensions in the 2017-18 school year.

Advocates had warned that suspensions of young students caused them to fall behind in their classwork, to be disciplined more in the long run and to be ostracized by their peers. After the rule change, school officials could no longer suspend students in prekindergarten through second grade except in a few types of cases — if a student brings a gun to school, commits a violent offense, or is involved with drugs or alcohol.

State Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, who wrote the anti-suspension legislation, called the numbers cited in the Statesman story "staggering." Johnson has filed additional legislation to address loopholes in his law and require districts to report suspensions that were inconsistent with the original law.

Windstorm insurance for Harvey survivor

When Mary Ann Heiman's bait shop on Redfish Bay was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, she believed the policy she had purchased the previous summer from the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association would cover $60,000 in wind damage. But after the adjuster for the insurer went to the site and agreed the record winds had destroyed her bait shop, it was discovered that Heiman’s insurance agent had accidentally transposed two of the numbers in her business’ street address. In letters and phone calls, he asked the windstorm association to correct the typo so Heiman could collect her due and rebuild the business.

The association refused.

But two days after the American-Statesman published a story about Heiman’s battle with the windstorm association, an administrator called her to apologize and she received what she described as “a fair and equitable” check.