The state’s three problem areas have seen a gradual decrease in severity, one curtailed by an expanded police budget, increasing wages in rural towns, and improved monitoring by federal workers. (A) one curtailed by an expanded police budget, increasing wages in rural towns, and improved monitoring by federal workers. (B) one curtailed by an expanded police budget, wages that have increased in rural towns, and federal workers improving their monitoring. (C) one curtailed by an expanded police budget, rural towns that have increased their wages, and monitoring improvements by federal workers. (D) curtailed by an expanded police budget, wages increasing in rural towns, and federal workers improving their monitoring. (E) curtailed by an expanded police budget, increasing wages in rural towns, and federal workers improving their monitoring. Source: WinningPrep Verbal QuestionBank If this question helps You somehow, You can give me Kudos!

A This is a very good question indeed. Tests the parallelism b/w verb-ed modifiers and verb-ing modifiers.

WE realize that choices b,c,d and e are wrong for parallelism problem. I want to talk about choic A. "one" in choice A must refer to a noun in the main clause. This noun can be far from "one" or can touch "one". we have to find out that logic noun which noun can be the logic noun for "one"? anwering this question is playing the logic game, which gmat wants us to do. doing so is the main focus of sc on gmat. honestly, I can not find the logic noun to which "one" refers if we can not find out that noun, we have to admit that this question is not good.

The state’s three problem areas have seen a gradual decrease in severity, one curtailed by an expanded police budget, increasing wages in rural towns, and improved monitoring by federal workers. I guess here "one" is doing the listing jog. Three problem areas..............One curtailed by X,Y, and Z.......Two....By....S,T and U.........., and Three ...By.....

First of all - to discard D and E - curtailed can't modify severity. Because it is the past participial use of modifier after a comma. Now once D and E are discarded the rest hinges on identifying the parallel structure.

I think "one" refers to one of the three problems. "Curtailed...............federal workers" explains how the severity got reduced.

Out of all of the five options, only A maintains parallelism among the listed factors. So, A is the right answer.

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions. This post was generated automatically.