Using public information requests to discover a candidate’s lies

In 2010, Ohlsen Research was hired to conduct research on a primary candidate for Attorney General who claimed to have cracked down on corruption in city government as City Solicitor. The target had claimed that he revoked the pensions of corrupt city employees and police officers who had resigned in disgrace but were never convicted of a crime. Using the state’s public records law, Ohlsen Research discovered that the pensions had never been revoked, contradicting the targets claims and costing the City over $1 million.

Retrieving records thought to have been destroyed

In 2008, Ohlsen researched a U.S. Senator who ran a large frozen foods corporation. When Ohlsen visited the state Department of Environmental Quality, he was told that all records older than five years were destroyed and that there were few records regarding this company. Ohlsen then traveled across the state to visit the regional DEQ office in a small town to verify that all copies of the records had been destroyed. In fact, the regional office, in a town of 17,000, had maintained all of its records, dating back 35 years. Further, the last person to view the records, based on the sign-in sheet, was a campaign aide to the Senator in 1995. Ohlsen used the documents to create a narrative detailing 35 years of pollution and waste being dumped into area rivers.  

Public Information Laws Used to Uncover Malfeasance At City Fire Department

In 2007, while researching a former fire chief running for mayor of a major southern city (pop. 600,000) for another research firm, Ohlsen used state public information laws to determine the reasons behind the chief’s abrupt resignation. The fire department only provided fire death statistics for the time period, which showed that fire deaths decreased by over 50 percent in the six years after the chief resigned. The city auditor’s office, however, had kept one copy of the fire department audit that was finalized just three weeks before the chief’s resignation. While the local newspaper had briefly covered the audit and subsequent resignation, Ohlsen analyzed the full audit, which was damning: fire engines were understaffed, leading to a 33 percent increase in work-related injuries to first responders. Citing the 62 first responder vacancies at the department, the audit called the chief’s administration structure of 30 deputy and assistantchiefs “excessive.” Ohlsen paired this information with fire department budgets, which showed response times had increased by 44 percent and several ambulance stations were temporarily closed because the fire department was out of money, despite being over $1 million over-budget. Using the information Ohlsen uncovered, the client easily defeated the former fire chief.