NYT staffer moving to biz desk

We are expecting that our new David K. will bring the same insight and enterprise to covering the tax system and how it works – as well as how it doesn’t – as did the original David Cay, whose stellar reporting on taxes helped define how this critical beat should be covered.

Covering the nation’s tax system – who pays, who doesn’t, who evades (legally and illegally), how the I.R.S. works – is especially important now, at a time when national, state and municipal government find their expenses rising and their revenue pinched.

David K., who has been a reporter on the Times Metro desk since 1995 and has focused on law enforcement, corruption and its offshoot, the New Jersey government, has shown the ability since he arrived to dig up difficult-to-get stories and tell them in a compelling way.

Most recently, of course, he broke stories about Ways and Means Chairman Charles B.  Rangel accepting four rent-controlled apartments and using his position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to preserve a billion-dollar tax loophole for a company that pledged $1 million to build a college in the Congressman’s honor.

David K. also has written many other notable stories since he began covering New Jersey in 1998, when he transferred to the Trenton bureau and where he worked as a reporter and bureau chief and on special projects. Among them:

— An investigation of Senator Robert Torricelli, and the political favors he did for a donor who showered him with expensive gifts, which resulted in his departure from office.

— The fall of New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, coverage that Metro editor Joe Sexton applauds as a “bravura bit of deadline and exclusive reporting by a statehouse bureau chief.”

— Disclosures of how the New Jersey State Police for years trained officers – and hotel/motel clerks –  to illegally and systemically discriminate against black and Hispanic drivers.

— An examination of how lax security at chemical plants and refineries surrounding New York City – “The Most Dangerous Two Miles in America” – left millions vulnerable to a terror attack.

— His “Scared Silent” series that showed how witness intimidation by street gangs had undermined New Jersey’s criminal justice system.

He also was part of the Metro team awarded the Pulitzer for the prostitution scandal that led to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation.

Sexton says, “I first came to know David K. when he spent a couple of weeks kicking my ass on a police shooting story. Then he joined The Times, and I was free to stop hating him and begin loving him. There was always lots to love — his forensic reporting ability, his team spirit, his impeccable mix of aggressiveness and fairness, his sense of responsibility and his willingness to go anywhere at any hour to chase even just the whiff of something good and important. He has my thanks, admiration and encouragement.”

Before joining The Times, David K. worked for five years as a police reporter for New York Newsday, where he wrote a series about systemic corruption in Internal Affairs unit that led to a Mayoral Commission on Police Misconduct and an overhaul of the unit. He also covered the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and co-authored a book, “Two Seconds Under the World,” about the FBI’s mishandling of the case.

It adds up to an impressive range and body of work.  Now comes taxes, an important and challenging topic, one worthy of a reporter of David K.’s passion end enterprise.

He’ll be joining Bizday as soon as the latest contretemps in Albany permits.