How Newsday reported the story

Newsday obtained a list of the vendors affiliated with the jail project from the Suffolk County Comptroller's Office and obtained additional information through county records, invoices and other documents. Reporters examined contribution records from the Suffolk County Board of Elections and the New York State Board of Elections to determine which jail vendors contributed to the Friends of Steve Levy campaign between 2004 and the present day.

Newsday ran these vendors through the campaign finance databases, looking at corporate or partnership donations, along with contributions from individual executives and employees of the firms. Newsday also ran vendors' addresses through the databases, discovering additional contributions.

In addition, Newsday examined campaign contributions from construction-related unions and union PACs from 2004 to the present day that the reporting showed are involved with the jail project.

Newsday requested hundreds of pages of documents through the Freedom of Information Law, but county officials denied a number of those requests. Newsday is suing for the release of those documents.