A trash deal for Chester, Pa., that smells

Assigned to cover the Delaware County suburbs, I immediately was intrigued by the poorest town in the area, Chester - and the incongruous news that this impoverished had somehow issued $335 million in municipal bonds. I understood nothing about finance. But even given the usual incomprehensibility of these things, this marriage of a poor, majority-black city and Wall Street just made no sense to me.

I soon learned that a city attorney had received a $335,000 commission for doing, he admitted, very little work. That was a Page 1 story.

My editors kept encouraging me to keep digging. I soon came up with this Page 1'er.

And then much more.