Legal and Regulatory Materials
EPA’s Envirofacts Warehouse — Home Page
EPA Civil Enforcement — Consent Decrees
EPA Integrated Data for Enforcement Analysis (IDEA)
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Envirofacts Warehouse allows the user to search either particular databases (e.g., Superfund Data, Hazardous Waste Data, Toxic Release Inventory, Water Discharge Permits, and AIRS Facility Subsystem) or all simultaneously through the general query screen. Users can search by facility name, geographical location or industry SIC code. EPA criminal docket information is available through IDEA or may be requested through the Freedom of Information Act.
Environmental Protection Agency: Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO)
Search by numerous criteria, including geographic location, facility name, and SIC code. Records include EPA permits, facility characteristics, inspection history, compliance status, enforcement history, environmental conditions, and demographic characteristics of the location of the facility.
RTK Net (The Right-to-Know Network)
Co-sponsored by OMB Watch and The Unison Institute, RTK Net provides free online access to many EPA databases. Not updated as frequently as EPA but the search engine is faster and more user-friendly. Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) database is searchable by parent company as well as facility name. The EPA civil enforcement docket is available here and easily searchable. Finally, it is easy to retrieve the EPA-mandated risk management plan (RMP Search) for a company or facility from RTK Net. This is not currently available from the EPA Web site.
Environmental Defense Scorecard
Environmental Defense provides a more user-friendly search engine for EPA data, allowing a streamlined facility search in its Pollution Locator. The resulting report gives detailed information on the nature of the toxic emissions as well as contact information and SIC code/industry for the facility.
Incorporation
LLRX.com: Business Filings Databases
Business Filings, Inc.: Corporation Filing Requirements for 50 States and District of Columbia
For many private companies, the only way to get information about officers and directors is through the annual report. Most states require companies incorporated in those states to file annual reports and these are public records. These Web sites provide links to the state agencies responsible for business filings.
Court Decisions (FindLaw.com)
FindLaw.com is a very comprehensive index source for legal information on the Internet. This sub-page provides links to all the federal and state court decision Web pages. These vary greatly in currency and quality of the on-site search mechanisms. Each court system must be searched separately and some, such as the PACER system for lower U.S. court decisions, are fee-based.
SEC Enforcement Division Actions
This site includes administrative proceedings, commission opinions, investor alerts, and releases describing civil and selected criminal proceedings filed in federal court by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is fully searchable.
Securities Class Action Clearinghouse
Produced by the Stanford University School of Law, this database contains information on federal securities fraud complaints filed, summaries, briefs and settlements organized in alphabetical order by company name. It also contains limited information on state securities fraud complaints.
U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Home Page
If you are searching for information on a bank that is a member of the FDIC, the FDIC has just made available online summary financial reports on its members. The site includes detailed balance sheet information and loan portfolio/asset quality data.
National Information Center/Federal Reserve System
This site contains extensive information about banks and other financial institutions regulated by the Federal Reserve. It includes balance sheets, income statements and details on types of loans for the most recent five quarters. The site also maps the corporate structure and branch locations of the institutions.
National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Board makes its rulings available online from bound volume no. 272 (1984) to date. Historical rulings and the NLRB union representation elections database are available from the agency and information on how to obtain these is available on the NLRB Home Page.
OSHA Statistics and Data
This page on the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration Web site allows searching of OSHA inspection data and citations by establishment. The database goes back to 1972 and allows sorting by date of inspection, firm name, or state. As an added bonus, the citation records reveal whether or not the establishment is unionized.
Federal Election Commission
Political Money Line
Opensecrets.org
At these sites you can find both detailed and summary information, and you can download databases on corporate PAC contributions to candidates for national office. Political Money Line and Opensecrets.org are better organized and easier to use. They offer more varieties of information retrieval, including the ability to search for donations by business/employer as well as individual name, and the ability to search just for soft money contributions.
State Campaign Finance Records
For each state, this database provides links to sources of campaign financial filings if these are available online, or contact information for obtaining print copies of financial filings.
Mother Jones 400
Top political campaign contributors by industry from Mother Jones magazine.
Center for Immigration Studies’ Employer Sanctions Database
This conservative organization provides a fully searchable database of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service employer sanctions. Find out if the company you are researching has violated immigration law.
Additional information can be found about hospitals, nursing homes and other entities that are subject to government regulations from the following sources:
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Formerly the Health Care Financing Administration, this Web site provides a considerable amount of raw data on the programs it administers but no search engine that would enable the average user to do a facility search, for example.
American Hospital Directory
The American Hospital Association also makes CMS (HCFA) data available on this public Web site. AHA data includes hospital contact information and a link to the hospital’s Web site. CMS data includes inpatient and outpatient utilization statistics, and basic income and revenue figures. Paid subscribers can get additional data such as detailed financial statements and facility characteristics reports.
Directory of America's Hospitals
Published jointly by the American Hospital Association and U.S. News and World Report, this directory offers advanced search capabilities by cross-linking the database with census information for regional lookups and it is also searchable by medical specialty. Records show contact information, Web site if available, parent company if applicable, number of staff, services provided, and number of patients served.
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations Quality Check
Look up the JCAHO accreditation reports for a hospital, nursing facility or other health care organization to see how well it’s meeting JCAHO standards.
Nursing Home Compare
Produced by CMS (HCFA), this site gives contact information, number of beds, occupancy rate, type of ownership, resident characteristics, results of most recent inspection and staffing levels for skilled nursing facilities.
