Jonathan Walters

Recent Articles

• Flood-Prone Cities Undertake Disaster Planning on Their Own
• Mar 29, 2013
• Places like Hoboken, N.J., aren’t waiting for another Superstorm Sandy. They're taking matters into their own hands. But what’s best for one city may not be best for the region.

• The Tenn. Dept. of Children's Services vs. the Media
• Mar 12, 2013
• The agency is locked in a high-profile battle with the state's most prominent newspaper, which has questioned its reporting of child fatalities.
• 7 Comments

• Management Fads That Make a Difference
• Feb 28, 2013
• New management tools are a dime a dozen and often just old strategies with fancy new names. But a few do make measurable differences.
• 3 Comments

• How Health Reform Could Improve Outcomes in Child Welfare
• Feb 14, 2013
• If human services officials want to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act, they need to get involved in its implementation now.
• 1 Comments

• New York Gov. Cuomo's Pension Proposal Puzzling
• Jan 29, 2013
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to let municipalities short their pension payments for the next quarter century uses fuzzy math, writes Governing's Jonathan Walters.
• 3 Comments

• Measuring Developmental Disabilities Services' Success
• Jan 15, 2013
• The National Core Indicators project helps states target human services spending to practices that work.

• Poverty Among Seniors Getting Harder to Ignore
• Dec 28, 2012
• The gap between what seniors need to live on versus what they have might land squarely on state and local governments. For more on aging in America, go to governing.com/generations.
• 6 Comments

• Social Services’ Challenge of Sharing Data
• Dec 11, 2012
• It takes leadership to implement the type of IT systems that would make human services more efficient and effective.
• 1 Comments

• Performance-Based Contracting Comes to Human Services
• Nov 13, 2012
• After years of avoiding it, human services professionals are starting to get hard-nosed about where they invest.

• The Politics of Children and Family Services
• Oct 9, 2012
• A toxic election cycle in Indiana has ended in the resignation of the state's director of children services.
• 2 Comments

• Boomers Want Control of Their End-of-Life Care
• Sep 28, 2012
• A state-level movement has evolved to give terminally ill patients more say in what medicine and medical procedures they want during their final days. View our special series on aging in America at governing.com/generations.

• Social Services in an Emergency
• Sep 11, 2012
• Two New York state social services directors found a way to help clients even in the midst of a natural disaster.
• 3 Comments

• Are Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports Useless?
• Aug 31, 2012
• For all their charts and graphs, CAFRs don’t tell public officials -- or the public -- anything about fiscal sustainability or whether a locality’s finances might be trending south.
• 13 Comments

• A Team Approach to Child Services
• Aug 14, 2012
• The decision of where to place a child should be made by everyone in that child's support system.
• 1 Comments

• 4 Health and Human Services Officials Worth Watching
• Jul 31, 2012
• Administering services to vulnerable populations is hard work. But tough public-sector jobs have a way of attracting top talent.