This year churned out lots of Milwaukee news, from big local stories like the Milwaukee Public Schools referendum and reckless driving to national spotlights like the Republican National Convention.
But for me, the unraveling and reopening of the Social Development Commission is the year’s biggest ongoing story.
This spring, NNS started reporting as a staff on the Social Development Commission after the agency suddenly laid off its staff and closed its doors, stopping its many social service programs that helped Milwaukee residents in poverty.
As I began to regularly cover SDC’s board and our reporters looked into issues relating to its services and employee pay, my colleague Addie Costello, a reporter with Wisconsin Watch and WPR, launched an investigation into why SDC got into this position.
She found that SDC eliminated its internal auditing department and board auditing committee years ago, failed to update financial procedures or internal controls for more than 15 years and was reeling from the fallout of major budget changes from pandemic aid.
The investigation, “How the Social Development Commission failed its Milwaukee residents,” is my favorite story this year because it painted a vivid picture of the Social Development Commission’s fraught history without major structural oversight from the government.
Addie did a tremendous amount of research for this story by combing through archival records from the library, analyzing audits and requesting public records on grant funding from a bunch of state and federal agencies.
She interviewed sources, framed her findings as clearly as possible and meticulously checked facts.
The final product reveals a solid base to understand SDC’s past, which helped me to raise questions about its present and future.
Addie also produced this story into a shorter piece with the main takeaways and as a four-minute audio piece for WPR. All versions are informative and help make the information more accessible and digestible to different audiences.
Addie and I have collaborated on a few SDC stories now, which has been a joy. I’m grateful to be able to learn from her perspective, investigative knowledge and attention to detail.
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
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