“It’s just been a thrilling three weeks and humbling at the same time.” Pulitzer Prize-winning Journal Sentinel reporter David Umhoefer

Pulitzer Prize-winner David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel related the challenging road that led to his award-winning pension investigation story Wednesday afternoon in Merrill Hall.

Umhoefer received this year’s Pulitzer for local reporting, which was the first time a Journal Sentinel staff member has won the award. This honor was something Umhoefer has still been taking in since the announcement on April 7.

“It’s just been a thrilling three weeks, and humbling at the same time,” he said.

The process leading up to this moment was nothing short of hard investigative work according to Umhoefer, who spent 6 months digging for and uncovering public records.

Umhoefer started out as a beat reporter, where this story had been bouncing around in his head for four years. The buyback program is what really sparked his interest. “It gave people a second chance to join the pension system,” Umhoefer said.

The buyback system allowed county employees to boost their pension by hundreds to thousands of dollars, according to Umhoefer.

Umhoefer decided to take a deeper look into the buyback benefit program to see who was involved with it. He then obtained a hard drive of people who have retired.

“I looked at the list and it was a shocker,” Umhoefer said. “They were a lot of big names, county supervisors on the pension system who signed up for the buyback benefit, and I realized this was a big story waiting to happen.”

It wasn’t until he got the opportunity to join the 10-person Watchdog Team that he was able to dig into the pension investigation.

“I got the green light and spent time in courthouses and libraries locked away with pension files which detailed 30 or 40 years of someone’s career,” Umhoefer said.

What he thought would take three weeks turned into a six-month investigation uncovering how Milwaukee county workers boosted their pensions while violating county ordinances and IRS rules.

“Once we read the town ordinances, IRS rules and the pension board rules, I realized there were some major problems here,” he said.

Umhoefer ended up taking the investigation to county lawyers where the IRS admitted to mistakes.

“They admitted they had done things improperly,” he said.

The award ceremony will be held on May 29 in New York.

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