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$96,000
Annual pension that Matt Schenk, a 41-year-old former chief of staff to Wayne County, Mich., Executive Robert Ficano who now makes $194,000 a year as chief operating officer of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, will collect under a controversial early-retirement plan that waived age requirements for a handful of Ficano's top aides
>> Detroit News | Posted June 13, 2013

13%
Increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of undocumented immigrants entering the United States from Mexico in the first six months of this fiscal year compared with a year earlier, likely signalling an increase in atempted crossings, although the number of apprehensions, 189,172, was still near historical lows
>> Arizona Republic | Posted June 12, 2013

About 17,000
Number of public libraries, including branch libraries and a few bookmobiles, in the United States, serving 96.4 percent of the nation's population, according to a map built by a statistician with the Institute of Museum and Library Services during the recent National Day of Civic Hacking showing the number of libraries outpacing the number of McDonald's outlets (about 14,000) and the number of Starbucks coffee shops (about 11,000)
>> Nextgov | Posted June 11, 2013

$332 million
Amount in bonuses paid to federal employees in 2012, down $106 million from the amount paid in fiscal 2011 and $149 million from fiscal 2010, reflecting Obama administration directives for agencies to scale back on bonuses and freeze those for political appointees
>> Government Executive | Posted June 10, 2013

About $1.6 million
Cost per person, including the expense of building new command-and-control hubs and living quarters, for the first of 350 additional Marine security guards who will be deployed by the State Department at high-risk embassies and consulates later this year
>> New York Times | Posted June 7, 2013

146
Number of electric vehicles that used four chargers installed at North Carolina interstate-highway rest stops by the state transportation department in January 2012, consuming a total of $44.69 worth of electricity, before the chargers, which were funded through a federal grant, were removed Feb. 28 and replaced by signs marking the end of an "EV charging station pilot project"
>> Raleigh News & Observer | Posted June 6, 2013

54%
Increase in the number of major crimes on American Indian reservations for which federal charges were brought between fiscal years 2009 and 2012, from 1,091 in 2009 to 1,677 in 2012, according to a Justice Department report mandated by the 2010 Tribal Law and Order Act and marking the first look at government investigations and prosecutions on tribal lands
>> Washington Post | Posted June 5, 2013

About $5 billion
Amount that states with high tobacco taxes lost in revenue in 2010 due to cigarette smuggling, mostly from states with low taxes, according to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, with taxes on tobacco ranging from a low of 17 cents for a pack of cigarettes in Missouri to a high of $4.35 a pack in New York State
>> Stateline.org | Posted June 4, 2013

44%
Percentage of the 200 largest U.S. cities that cut emergency medical services last year, according to the Journal of Emergency Services, which found that 28 percent of big-city EMS agencies had a hiring freeze in place or were not filling vacancies, while 15 percent reported layoffs and 21 percent had no cost-of-living or pay-for-performance increases, some for the fourth year
>> Stateline.org | Posted June 3, 2013

108,000
Number of defense-contractor personnel on the ground in supporting roles in Afghanistan, making up 62 percent of the force that includes 65,700 troops, according to a Congressional Research Service report, while a Government Accountability report said contract-service spending in Iraq and Afghanistan has declined to $174 billion in 2012 from a total of $195 billion two years earlier
>> Nextgov | Posted May 31, 2013

90%
Percentage of respondents to a Detroit Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll who rated Detroit's basic public services--police and fire, transportation, trash pickup and the like--as fair or poor, while 80 percent gave negative assessments to Mayor Dave Bing and Gov. Rick Snyder and 89 percent gave poor grades to the city council
>> Detroit Free Press | Posted May 30, 2013

$18 million
Amount that a state audit says Massachusetts handed out in "questionable public assistance benefits" between July 2010 and April 2012, including welfare payments to more than 1,160 people who either were dead or were using a deceased person's Social Security number, while state Auditor Suzanne Bump said she thought the bulk of the $1.7 billion a year in welfare programs the state provides each year was likely spent appropriately
>> Boston Globe | Posted May 29, 2013

About 258,600
Number of military veterans who do not have health insurance, out of about 1.3 million uninsured veterans nationwide, who will miss out on Medicaid coverage because they live in the 23 states that have declined to expand the program under the federal health-care overhaul, according to a report by the Urban Institute
>> Stateline.org | Posted May 28, 2013

37.5% and 22.9%
Percentage of people hired by the General Services Administration during the first two quarters of this fiscal year who were veterans or specifically service-disabled veterans, respectively, exceeding the agency's goals of 27.9 percent and 13 percent for the two categories, with a GSA official saying the agency boosted veterans' hiring with steps that included participating in veterans' recruitment career fairs, collaborating with other federal, state and local veterans' programs, and establishing relationships with military transition assistance offices
>> FederalDaily | Posted May 24, 2013

More than 40%
Growth in the assets of the nation's public-pension funds since their low point in 2009, primarily due to stock performance, with the pensions distributing more than $200 billion each year in monthly benefits
>> Detroit Free Press | Posted May 23, 2013

47%
Percentage of 233 senior-level state- and local-government officials surveyed by Governing magazine who say they have a positive view of President Obama, down from an approval rating of 54 percent last summer, while 62 percent of the surveyed officials say the country is on the wrong track, up from 39 percent last year
>> Governing | Posted May 22, 2013

100,000
Tons of plastic shopping bags from New York City that end up in landfills in Pennsylvania, Ohio and South Carolina annually, sent there at a cost of $10 million, while the bags are the bane of recycling programs because they can jam and damage sorting machines
>> New York Times | Posted May 21, 2013

More than $33 million
Spending in Los Angeles' mayoral campaign as of Saturday, breaking records as unlimited outside money continued to play a dominant role in the contest that culminates in Tuesday's runoff between city council member Eric Garcetti and city Controller Wendy Greuel
>> Los Angeles Times | Posted May 20, 2013

$100,000
Amount country-music star Randy Travis is seeking in a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Public Safety and the state attorney general's office after some of the evidence from his drunken-driving arrest last summer was ordered released to the public despite a ruling by the judge who sentenced Travis that an arrest video and transcript not be released and that the video be destroyed
>> Austin American-Statesman | Posted May 17, 2013

5,879
Number of postal employees who were attacked by dogs in fiscal 2012, according to the U.S. Postal Service, which is promoting the impending National Dog Bite Prevention Week by asking homeowners to help protect postal workers from their animals and posting a list of cities with the most attacks on postal employees, which places Los Angeles at the top with 69
>> FederalDaily | Posted May 16, 2013

$50,000
Minimum opening bid for a DC-9 jet that served from 1975 to 2005 as a smaller version of Air Force One, which the General Services Administration is putting up for auction today after donating an identical DC-9 that also sometimes carried presidents and their staffs to an aviation and space museum in Oregon
>> Arizona Republic | Posted May 15, 2013

As much as $475,000
Amount the Washington State transportation department is prepared to pay for consulting work on three major projects to a former executive director of the department and an expert who used to head two of the projects
>> Seattle Times | Posted May 14, 2013

24,481
Number of children, most of them teenagers, attempting to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico who were apprehended by the Border Patrol in 2012, more than three times the number who were caught in 2008
>> Stateline.org | Posted May 13, 2013

About $103,000
Median annual base salary of city managers, county administrators and other chief appointed officials in nearly 3,000 local governments across the country, with the officials' pay ranging from $25,264 up to $368,282, according to a survey conducted last year by the International City/County Management Association and published in ICMA's 2103 Municipal Year Book
>> Governing | Posted May 9, 2013

875,000
Number of records--including the names of young children of suspected terrorists and of people who have been cleared of suspected links to terrorism--on the federal government's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, a database that consolidates a hodgepodge of watch lists and which critics say is so all-encompassing that its value has been diminished
>> Los Angeles Times | Posted May 8, 2013

68%
Percentage of 1,000 respondents to a new Rasmussen Reports poll who believe that federal employees don't work as hard as workers in the private sector, while 9 percent said they thought federal employees work harder
>> Washington Post | Posted May 7, 2013

About 11,000
Number of jobs shed by local, state and federal governments, including the U.S. Postal Service, between March and April, while total nonfarm employment grew by about 165,000 jobs, according to seasonally adjusted data reported by the federal Bureau of of Labor Statistics
>> U.S. Department of Labor | Posted May 6, 2013

6,180
Number by which the federal workforce would grow under President Obama's proposed fiscal 2014 budget, with the Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs departments accounting for the estimated 0.3 percent increase in agencies' full-time civilian employees
>> Government Executive | Posted May 3, 2013

$5.1 billion
Total state funding for pre-kindergarten programs last year, a decrease of $550 million from 2011 and the largest collective funding cut for state pre-K programs in their history, according to an annual analysis by the National Institute for Early Education Research
>> Governing | Posted May 2, 2013

$49.4 million
Amount in overtime paid to Wisconsin state workers in 2012, a decrease of 22 percent from the amount paid in 2011 that Gov. Scott Walker called a triumph for his approach, which included a decrease in overtime for which workers are paid time and a half and more reliance on overtime paid at workers' straight hourly rate
>> Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Posted May 1, 2013