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The fate of tighter gun control measures and restrictions on oil fracking could hang on a mad dash of political maneuvering and deal-cutting in the Legislature this week, when lawmakers have just four days left to act on about 400 bills.
Hundreds of congregate living facilities across Florida escape any state scrutiny because no agency regulates them.
Unlike its 49 counterparts, Hawaii has been living with a strict employer mandate for nearly 40 years.
West Virginia was the last state to break off from another. Now, 150 years later, a 49-year-old information technology consultant wants to apply the knife to Maryland’s five western counties.
The Minnesota Legislature will convene in special session today to approve about $4.7 million in disaster relief funds.
By agreement with Gov. Mark Dayton, lawmakers will only be in St. Paul for one-day and will not vote on anything besides state help for communities damaged by recent storms. The House and Senate are expected to begin floor sessions at 10 a.m.
Despite that iron clad agreement that no ancillaries issues will be approved, legislators are expected to use the one-day session in St. Paul to rail against other issues. Chief among them: new business taxes approved this year.
Republican lawmakers, among them Rep. Kurt Zellers and Sen. Dave Thompson who are running for governor, have said that the Legislature should have used the special session to repeal the new taxes. Dayton has said that he approved but does not support the taxes but lawmakers would have to come up with cuts or cash to fill the hole in the budget rescinding the taxes would create.
After several negotiating sessions this summer, Dayton and lawmakers could not agree on repealing any taxes during today's session so those issues are expected to wait until next year.
Gov. Pat Quinn is among several governors taking a taxpayer-funded trip to Japan to participate in a conference aimed at increasing trade between that country and Midwestern states.
Advocates for the disabled and Iowa law enforcement officers disagree over whether it’s a good idea for visually disabled Iowans to have weapons.
The AFL-CIO for the first time on Sunday will open its quadrennial agenda-setting convention to non-labor voices, in a frank acknowledgment by the largest U.S. federation of unions that it needs new partners and new ideas.
The system connects a rural Colorado community to Aspen, 40 miles away.
It's generally true that if things are good in state, than things are good for the governor. There are some exceptions, though.
As the recovery drags on, state and local government payrolls aren't expanding.
Facing an unsustainable rise in retirement fund costs, the Pennsylvania city monetized its water and sewer system, raising millions for pensions and other needs. But the deal has its critics.
The so-called Cadillac tax on expensive health insurance plans, which many state and local governments offer, could spur public employers to cut back their rich benefits.
As Republicans celebrate Charles D. Baker’s decision to run for governor, Attorney General Martha Coakley is edging closer to joining the Democratic gubernatorial race, turning to the state party’s leading political strategist to help assemble a potential campaign team.
In a week that brought Gov. Pat McCrory stinging defeats, with lawmakers from his own party overriding his first two vetoes, the Republican governor Wednesday responded by criticizing legislators and throwing up roadblocks to the new laws that he had opposed.
At least four abortion clinics in rural Texas and possibly three more are preparing to close, hobbled by a state law that requires the clinics to meet tougher medical standards.
San Antonio's leaders on Thursday approved anti-bias protections for gay and transgender residents, over the disapproval of top Texas Republicans and religious conservatives who packed a City Council hearing and occasionally shamed supporters for comparing the issue to the civil rights movement.
The Louisiana National Guard won't process benefits for same-sex couples because the state Constitution does not recognize gay marriage, a spokesman confirmed Wednesday. The directive directly contradicts a Pentagon policy issued Tuesday requiring the military to honor such benefits requests.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has been ordered by a federal arbitration panel to reimburse New Orleans for more than $10 million in wages paid to city emergency personnel after Hurricane Katrina.
Three months after Republican Paul LePage became Maine’s governor in 2011, he signed a law adopting the Common Core standards to better prepare students for college or careers.
Inmates leading California's largest prison protest ended a two-month hunger strike Thursday without winning major concessions on solitary confinement conditions — their main grievance — but with the promise of legislative hearings on the issue.
The state would license 334 pot stores, including at least 21 in Seattle and 61 in King County, under revised state rules for a recreational marijuana system.
Plenty of would-be entrepreneurs are sitting in our K-12 classrooms. They're not getting the help they need to become the innovators who could boost our economies.
The newest round of funding for the popular program includes $474 million for 52 transportation projects, including streetcars, roads, bike trails and "complete street" initiatives.
All the public-sector management news you need to know.
Gov. Rick Snyder has tapped a veteran auto industry executive to become the state’s automotive adviser.
California education officials presented a proposal Wednesday that would immediately do away with the standardized reading, math and social science tests used to measure student learning and school performance since the late 1990s.
The state’s highest court heard an atheist couple’s argument that the words “under God” should be struck from “the Pledge of Allegiance” in Massachusetts public schools because, they contend, the two words exclude their three children from declaring their patriotism.
Albuquerque has become the latest flash point in the abortion wars, with Operation Rescue, the militant group based in Kansas, calling it the “late-term abortion capital of the country.”
The California Supreme Court indicated Wednesday that federal law appeared to prevent immigrants without green cards from obtaining licenses to practice law.
The North Las Vegas City Council has rejected a controversial proposal to use eminent domain to help refinance underwater mortgages and instead will wait for the state to weigh in on the legality of the plan.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s political blessing, once coveted, is now seen as a detriment to most mayoral candidates.
Former President Bill Clinton Wednesday championed the new Affordable Care Act, but urged Congress and the states to fix its worst problems.
In a move that surprised many but shocked almost no one, first-term Governor Chafee announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection next year.
A comprehensive approach to financial counseling that originated in New York City is spreading across the country. It holds the promise of saving cities money over the long term.
U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, will take a spin in self-driving vehicles Wednesday morning.
For the second time in two months, a Cincinnati federal judge granted an order allowing the out-of-state marriage of a gay couple to be recognized in Ohio even though the state bans same-sex marriages.
Inmates will not, however, be permitted "at this time" to marry another inmate, in part due to "safety concerns," according to the memo.
Lights are timed so that successive traffic lights remain green, allowing for rush-hour traffic to get in and out of the city more efficiently, said Steve Kotke, director of the Minneapolis Public Works Department.
The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 this afternoon to pursue seceding from California.
President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul envisioned that about half of Indiana’s uninsured residents would get coverage through an expansion of Medicaid, the jointly run federal and state health program for the poor.
Three potential candidates for San Diego mayor said thanks but no thanks Tuesday, announcing that they will not run to succeed Bob Filner.
More than half of the states and the District of Columbia do not require schools or day care centers to meet minimum standards to protect children during major emergencies, according to a new report.
Tuesday was the first working day that gays in the military could apply for benefits after the Pentagon announced it would recognize same-sex marriages.
New data indicates colleges recorded a record drop in enrollment last year. We take a look at factors driving the decline.
More stringent accounting practices show state employee pensions combine for an underfunded ratio of 39 percent, according to a new report.
The rapid proliferation of smartphones and tablets has led an increasing number of schools to allow students to bring their own devices into the classroom, leaving administrators with the big job of re-evaluating security and privacy policies and updating networks.
A cyberattack on the Kentucky Department of Education's Infinite Campus information network has kept thousands of parents from accessing data online about their schoolchildren.
An effort to ease a shortage of primary-care doctors in some California communities by letting nurse practitioners operate more independently has flat-lined in the Legislature after a fierce lobbying battle.
A bill by Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) would have allowed nurse practitioners, who have more training than registered nurses, to practice without the direct supervision of a physician.
The proposal failed in a committee Friday, under fire from the California Medical Assn., the powerful lobbying arm for the state's physicians. The organization teamed with some specialists and labor unions to mobilize lobbyists, engage doctors across the state and even dedicate Twitter accounts as it waged its campaign against the bill.
The group supported a separate measure to permit nurse practitioners and some other non-physicians to perform first-trimester abortions, which lawmakers passed and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown last week.
Jockeying over the scope of medical professionals' practice has intensified this year as California prepares for full implementation of the new national healthcare law, which will bring an influx of newly insured patients.
Two Lexington County women who were legally married in Washington, D.C., have filed a federal lawsuit in Columbia challenging South Carolina’s Defense of Marriage Law and a 2006 amendment to the state Constitution that expressly banned same-sex marriages.
Efforts to identify and prevent Oklahomans high on illegal drugs from receiving certain taxpayer-financed welfare benefits cost the state more than $82,700 in the first seven months after a new law took effect.
The Bay Bridge - now with a soaring, signature tower anchoring the new east span - is finally open.
Gov. Steve Beshear’s all-out support for President Barack Obama’s health care reform law puts him starkly at odds with Kentucky’s senators — McConnell and Rand Paul — who argue that neither the country nor the state can afford a new entitlement program that they say has already raised premiums and kicked people off their existing plans.
As the recall elections — the first of their kind in Colorado’s history — draw closer, the race has swelled from a local scuffle into a proxy battle in the nation’s wrenching fight over gun control.
When the Justice Department announced Thursday that it would not interfere with the enforcement of voter-approved laws that allow recreational pot use in Washington state and Colorado, leaders on both sides of the issue had the same thought: The policy will probably encourage other states to consider similar laws.
By cutting back on a hodgepodge of topics and delving deeper into central concepts, the hope is that the children will understand it better.
Nurturing the next generation of leaders is one of the best things you can do for your organization.
Detroit's bankruptcy rattled the muni bond market when El Paso needed it most.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Billings, Mont., to protest a local judge's light sentence for a rapist whose teenage victim killed herself. The judge sentenced the rapist, a former high school teacher to a month in prison for raping a 14-year-old student. The crowd gathered to call for the judge's resignation as well as a review of the sentencing.
Frustration with New York City’s unaffordability and its aggressive police tactics is elevating Bill de Blasio, once dismissed as a left-leaning long shot, into the lead of the Democratic mayoral primary field, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
Unless a naturally occurring fire threatens lives or structures, Yosemite and other national parks are likely to let nature run its course.
Can you be held responsible for an accident that happens miles away because you texted the driver? A New Jersey appeals court panel says yes -- and its recent ruling is notable not just for trying to crack down on texting and driving, but for interpreting the way that technology has reshaped life.
Alexandria Superintendent Morton Sherman is leaving the city’s top schools job immediately. His departure came suddenly, as the school system is preparing to open its doors to 13,500 students. The move comes after months of increased tension and personality conflicts between the superintendent and a new, more hands-on school board.
The embattled mayor of San Diego officially steps down today. Allegations of sexual harassment against Bob Filner have rocked the eighth-largest American city, which now has to pick up the pieces and elect a new mayor.
In what all sides hailed as a landmark agreement, the state of Washington has agreed to fundamentally change the way it provides mental-health care to the most troubled children and youth who qualify for Medicaid.
All same-sex couples who are legally married will be recognized as such for federal tax purposes, even if the state where they live does not recognize their union.
The Obama administration said that it would not challenge laws legalizing marijuana in Colorado and Washington state as long as those states maintain strict rules involving the sale and distribution of the drug.
Merit-based hiring systems in government are more than a century old, and some of them make managing the public workforce absurdly difficult and complicated. They need to be updated for the modern era.
Long-time executive director Gary Thomas reflects on the milestone and the future of mass transit in North Texas.
Most segments of the workforce haven't seen wage growth in more than a decade. View maps and wage data to see how your state compares.
What does the GOP need to do to win elections in the coming era of the white minority? Active members of California's Republican Party share their view.
Since 1895, the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York has operated a home and nursing facility for retired volunteer firefighters.
The Nutter administration on Wednesday announced a detailed, multifaceted plan to sell or find new uses for 31 of the School District of Philadelphia's closed school buildings.
Twenty years ago, the notion of a Republican-controlled Arkansas was unthinkable. But as the state readies for 2014’s hotly contested governor’s race, Republicans have a shot at cementing their newfound dominance in the longtime southern Democratic stronghold.
Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here.
The United States wastes billions of dollars "warehousing" low-level offenders, Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful Cory Booker said today, calling for a major overhaul of America's prison system.
The federal government will deduct more than $860,000 from its timber payment to Arizona this year, some of the more than $15 million the U.S. Forest Service said it will withhold from 22 states.
The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Firefighters battling the giant wildfire burning in the Sierra Nevada added a California National Guard Predator drone to their arsenal Wednesday to give them almost immediate views of any portion of the flames chewing through rugged forests in and around Yosemite National Park.
In a brief Wednesday, state attorneys said those marriage licenses were never valid, and compared gay and lesbian couples to "12-year-olds" who are also barred from marrying under state law.
In the pre-Labor Day walkout, workers in at least 58 cities will picket restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King and KFC during peak lunch hours, calling for $15-an hour-pay and the right to form a union without fear of retaliation. The event is also intended to roughly coincide with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, a protest as much about economic justice as civil rights.
The ruling, which makes San Bernardino the third California city to get bankruptcy protection, could serve as a guide for other cities like Detroit that are in financial distress. Observers also say it's an important test for Chapter 9.
A veteran issuer gives his perspective on the mounting woes over muni bonds.
As states set ambitious goals to increase their use of renewable energies, hydropower could help them meet their goals. But environmental concerns have kept investment in hydropower to a trickle.
Facing smaller staffs and budgets, nearly every state or local agency serving the poor has struggled to do so in a timely manner. A new approach in Connecticut is getting social services to people cheaper and faster.
Since 1895, the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York has operated a home for volunteer firefighters. It’s the only home of its kind in the country.
From Georgia to Texas, teacher evaluation systems always seem to lead to dishonest behavior. States hope the new Common Core standards will be different.
The California Republican Party’s willingness to embrace unconventional leadership may provide insights into what the GOP will need to do to win elections nationally in the coming era of the white minority.
Even though Walmart threatened to pull the plug on plans for D.C. stores if the City Council passed a bill to force it to pay more than the minimum wage, they passed it anyway. Labor advocates are hoping more cities will follow.
Delaware lost revenue when its neighboring states opened their own casinos -- something that’s happening around the nation. But some argue that even with more competition and less profit, states are still winning.
A Governing survey shows strong support for government-run fiber networks, but it’s less clear how they will get built.
It's expensive, time-consuming and seldom produces the hoped-for results. Municipalities instead should heed the lessons of those that have dealt with tough fiscal times effectively.
The governor's portrait from his first two terms was so unpopular it was banished to a third-floor stairwell.
The state’s competitive experiment, being watched by both the public and private sectors, has dropped the cost of health care without sacrificing quality.
When residents in places that aren’t expanding Medicaid or setting up their own health exchanges are denied insurance, the feds will tell them who to blame: their state.
New York City is trying a new technology-driven teaching approach to improve and personalize math instruction. So far, the results are encouraging.
Until now, the Tollway had been reluctant to publicize the names. But Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday signed legislation allowing the Tollway to do so, along with the amount of fines and unpaid tolls owed by each violator.
The recall elections for two Democratic lawmakers has become a political soap opera — with subplots, new characters and daily developments — that Tuesday included a $350,000 donation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court.
Manipulation of costs and other data by oil companies is keeping billions of dollars in royalties out of the hands of private and government landholders, an investigation by ProPublica has found.
A surprising thing has happened since a controversial video-conferencing system tripled the number of Iowa towns where women could obtain abortions: The annual number of abortions has dropped 30 percent in the state.
Department of Interior officials said Tuesday they won't withhold oil and gas royalty payments next year from 34 states, including Colorado, as part of the federal budget sequestration and will pay back funds captured in 2013.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed nearly 30 measures into law Tuesday, including one allowing noncitizens who are permanent legal residents to serve as poll workers in California elections.
Gov. Jerry Brown, laboring under a federal court order to reduce California's prison population by nearly 8,000 inmates, proposed Tuesday to spend hundreds of millions of dollars housing those inmates in local lockups and out of state.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder met with a group of 18 mayors on Tuesday to discuss strategies to cut down on youth violence, the White House said.
It took two votes and eight hours of mostly closed-door politicking and vote wrangling, but the state Senate approved a plan late Tuesday to expand Medicaid health care coverage to 470,000 low-income Michiganders.
CIOs won’t get anywhere without close cooperation with political leaders and agency managers.
Beyond fear of disclosure, there are a number of reasons states and localities may not want to engage in benchmarking.
Special districts are growing like weeds—and raising tax burdens as they proliferate.
Congress is back, but don’t expect the players in this sad comedy to know or care much about how any pieces of legislation they pass will affect our states, regions or metros.
After 26 years, this journalist will stop writing and start doing in San Diego as the city’s newest urban planner.
Indiana’s governor and D.C.’s transit agency got caught up in controversies after removing comments off their social media accounts. The takeaway? Public officials need to learn to keep their fingers off the delete button.
States have been forced to gear up for a potential second round of across-the-board federal spending cuts after Congress left for its summer recess without a budget deal.
Illinois police will have to record interrogations of people suspected in any of eight violent felonies under legislation Gov. Pat Quinn signed Monday that aims to prevent false confessions and wrongful convictions.
Nikki Haley, the nation’s youngest governor, is expected to face Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen of Camden in a repeat of their 2010 race, which Haley won by 4.5 percentage points.
The governor left one measure unsigned: a bill to prevent North Carolina courts from recognizing Islamic Sharia law in family cases. He called House Bill 522 “unnecessary.” The bill will become law without his signature after Sunday night.
The state took over the job of verifying the Detroit primary results after the Wayne County Board of Canvassers last week refused to certify results prepared by the county clerk’s staff that differed greatly from unofficial results the city’s elections department compiled on election night.
The issue has been bubbling in the Legislature since the spring when Gov. Rick Snyder backed the expansion. The House approved the plan in June, but the Senate decided to take up the matter when lawmakers return from their two-month summer break this week.
The group of lawmakers working on pension reform is focused on a new outline of ideas aimed at bringing the state's $100 billion pension monster to heel, but what's not in the plan may prove as interesting as what is in it.
But several states have started to question whether these organizations should qualify for such benefits, since they are private entities in most respects.
A New Mexico judge on Monday declared same-sex marriage legal, ordering the clerk of the state’s most populous county to join two other counties in issuing licenses for gay and lesbian couples.
Just last week, Idaho was ordered to cover the $376,000 in legal fees a woman there spent on suing the state after she was charged for an illegal abortion, according to the Associated Press. Combined with its past defense of abortion limits, the state has shelled out more than $1 million since 2000. And it’s far from alone.
Ushering in Ohio’s income tax cost John J. Gilligan the governor’s office after just one term, but the political fallout didn’t stop him from fighting for the poor.
View age demographics for governments and other industries.
Local housing authorities are in dire straits. Without funds, some may have to eliminate rental assistance.
Many speculate it's because of the sagging economy, higher rates of telecommuting or more people living in cities. But a new study refutes all those claims.
Called Integrated Corridor Management, the program emphasizes coordination across all transportation agencies.
Technology can solve problems and contribute to solutions. The key is getting IT people into the process at the start.
Helmet dispensing machines will debut in Boston over the next few weeks. Plus, more news you should know about transportation and infrastructure.
The blaze, now 134,000 acres, pushes into Yosemite National Park. Each day, what it does depends on the wind.
Disappointed governors may see politics at work when their requests fall flat, but the numbers tell a different story.
The Treasury Department will let Ohio divert up to $60 million from a fund created to help homeowners stave off foreclosure, allowing the money to be used to demolish nearly 5,000 vacant homes instead.
Los Angeles County's shortage of foster care beds has reached a crisis point, with state officials threatening to impose fines because too many children are languishing in sometimes chaotic holding rooms during traumatic separations from their families.
The law (A3371) , signed by Gov. Chris Christie on Monday, prevents any licensed therapist, psychologist, social worker or counselor from using sexual orientation change efforts with a children under age 18.
The measure joins a proposal already on the governor's desk that would also allow legal permanent residents to serve as poll workers in California elections.
There's been a recent rush by many colleges to keep closer tabs on borrowers, even if the colleges' default rates are not at crisis levels.
Planning has already begun for a special election to find a successor to fill the unexpired three years of his term. Would-be candidates are assessing their chances at becoming the city's 36th mayor.
The U.S. Justice Department is suing Louisiana in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems that are under federal desegregation orders. The first year of private school vouchers "impeded the desegregation process," the federal government says.
Industry observers warn that the public sector is ill-prepared for the departure of this large segment of the workforce.
An unprecedented set of recent Education Department decisions about No Child Left Behind waivers is at the least an overreach and at the very worst illegal, a chorus of critics say.
Florida is one of 21 states across the USA where community colleges are expanding into the baccalaureate world, according to the Community College Baccalaureate Association.
President Barack Obama’s call on Thursday for states to follow Tennessee’s lead and award greater funding to colleges that show results with students pushed the state’s evolving education policies into the national spotlight once again.
Sometime next summer or fall, Philadelphia expects to join New York, Boston, Chicago, and other major cities with a bike-sharing program that will enable registered users to pick up a bicycle at a station in one part of town, ride around, and drop off the bike at another station as easily as they would make the trip in a taxi - apart from the exercise.
New York’s City Council created an inspector general to review police practices, overriding Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto and putting another check on the stop-and-frisk policy he championed as a crime-fighting tool.
Many cash-strapped cities and counties facing the prospect of shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in new health-care costs under the Affordable Care Act are opting instead to reduce the number of hours their part-time employees work.
For the second straight year, the federal government has run through its budget for fighting wildfires amid a grueling, deadly season and will be forced to move $600 million from other funds, some of which help prevent fires.
The Justice Department ramped up efforts Thursday to reimpose oversight of Texas elections, suing to block a stringent voter ID law and weighing in on a fight over redrawn political maps.
By reusing, recycling or composting everything possible, the Canadian city of Edmonton is on its way to reaching the seemingly impossible goal of diverting 90 percent of trash from landfills.
So far, just three states have officially said they’ll link the health exchanges and voter registration. But whether the rest will – or will be required to under federal law – is an open question that will likely lead to court battles and at least a temporary patchwork approach nationwide.
Mayor Bob Filner will resign from office as part of a mediation deal reached in his sexual harassment lawsuit, sources familiar with the negotiations said Thursday.
