The Pulitzer Prize, The Detroit News and Us.

• Author: Hansen, Karen

State Legislatures doesn't publish the kind of articles that are likely to win a Pulitzer Prize. But we recognize an important story when we see it.

So we were understandably pleased (and somewhat proud) when on April 12, Detroit News reporters Jim Mitzelfeld and Eric Freedman received a Pulitzer Prize for a 1993 series of articles exposing spending abuses by the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. The federal and state investigations that followed resulted in the felony convictions of a state representative and three other people.

Once we read the first of those articles we knew it was a story we had to run. So we published an article about how Michigan's two new co-speakers, Republican Paul Hillegonds and Democrat Curtis Hertel, handled the scandal in the July 1993 issue of State Legislatures. It wasn't until after the Pulitzer was awarded that we learned our article, ably written by Detroit News columnist George Weeks, was included in the packet sent to the Pulitzer Prize Committee because it provided a concise overview of the long and serious investigation.

The State Legislatures article examined how the two leaders quickly responded to the worst scandal in 50 years in Michigan. At least $1.8 million allegedly went to the House Fiscal Agency director, his staff and his friends. Some of the money was reported to have bought arms for Croatia. Hillegonds and Hertel didn't waste a minute taking corrective action once they learned of the scandal. Hertel promptly removed Representative Dominic Jacobetti, the longest serving lawmaker in Michigan, from his chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, which oversaw the agency. The two leaders relieved the agency director of his duties, hired a new director from out of state, called for an audit of the agency (which had not been done since since 1978), and changed the way the agency keeps its books. Governor John Engler wrote a letter to the four legislative leaders following the first stories in January, stating in part, "The failure to provide proper management and oversight to the House Fiscal Agency has allowed the questionable conversion of public funds for private purposes and...