Archive
We have compiled a list of the ten stories that our readers paid the most attention to this year.
A coalition representing state and local governments is urging the president and the Speaker of the House to keep the federal government income tax exclusion for municipal bond interest as leaders negotiate an alternative to the upcoming fiscal cliff cuts and tax hikes schedule to kick in next month.
Ten states have school finance challenges working their way through the courts, and four other states recently wrapped up legal challenges. But school-funding advocates have found that winning a lawsuit doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of education.
After voters defeated a measure that would have banned same-sex marriage, both sides of the marriage amendment fight are reuniting their troops as they prepare for what is rapidly emerging as the next frontier in the battle -- a push to legalize same-sex marriage in the Legislature.
The former White House chief of staff and U.S. commerce secretary said he was "seriously" looking at a run for the Democratic nomination for governor.
The “fracking” tax boost/income-tax-cut package that Gov. John Kasich couldn’t push through the legislature in 2012 appears primed for passage next year.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he is seeking to change state law so school districts can accelerate efforts to overhaul low-achieving schools with fewer roadblocks from teacher unions.
With Cory Booker out of the picture in next year’s race for governor, Democrats on Thursday said they need to move fast to get behind a candidate to take on Gov. Chris Christie.
The high court told lawmakers they must have something better to report after they finish their work in spring 2013.
House Speaker John Boehner said it was now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama to find a way to avert the tax hikes and spending cuts set to be triggered in January that economist warn could start a recession.
Metro Transit Police Chief Michael A. Taborn, who has been with the agency for 31 years, is expected to stay on to help oversee operations on Inauguration Day next month and then step down in the spring.
As President Barack Obama urges tighter federal gun laws, state legislators around the country have responded to the Connecticut school shooting with a flurry of their own ideas that are likely to produce fights over gun control in their upcoming sessions.
The FAA is working to transform the nation's air transportation system in dramatic ways, deploying new technology collaboratively with an array of stakeholders.
Cities across the country are being forced to deny food and shelter to those in need, according to a new study.
Apocalyptic hysteria has raised some public health concerns and larger questions about science education in America.
POBs have bankrupted cities, including Stockton, yet some are still big players.
Young leaders -- like Holyoke, Mass., Mayor Alex Morse who was 22 years old when he took office -- are injecting cities with a new energy.
Whether anyone is there or not, New York state Assemblyman John J. McEneny calls a session every three days. There’s a reason why.
Education reform ideas that have generally received widespread support are experiencing pushback in the states, including some surprising places.
In the wake of the recession and the long, slow recovery from it, state and local governments have been even more eager to offer incentives to the few projects they have hopes of landing.
For the first time in a long time, one party holds both the legislature and governorship in 37 states.
View maps showing recent population changes for all states.
In an effort to emerge more resilient and prosperous, states and localities are rethinking power grids, roads and sewers in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.
Metropolitan areas in Texas and Oklahoma are leading the nation in their overall recovery from the recession, according to a Brookings report.
Lawmakers considering an emergency package for Superstorm Sandy aid are struggling over whether it’s better to spend money only on immediate disaster relief or to fund investments that are needed for preventing future disasters.
Del. Robert G. Marshall is proposing a bill that would require some teachers or other school staff to carry concealed weapons in schools.
The Food and Drug Administration conferred with public health officials from 50 states for the first time about how best to strengthen rules governing compounding pharmacies in the wake of a national meningitis outbreak caused by a tainted pain medication produced by a Massachusetts pharmacy.
Utah says it doesn’t want to do much to alter its existing exchange, which it started for small businesses before President Barack Obama’s health care law was enacted in 2010. Gov. Gary Herbert’s administration says it’s ready to add individual coverage, but not much else.
President Barack Obama called for quick action on proposals to prevent gun violence, but congressional Democrats have already offered numerous ideas since the Connecticut school shooting last week.
A showdown over the fate of the country's largest medical marijuana dispensary heads to federal court, and the outcome could hint at what lies ahead as a growing number of states opt for legalization.
Many states' mental health funding declined in recent years, but now some lawmakers have focused their attention on the issue after last week's shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn. View charts and spending amounts for each state.
Data gathered in Oregon and elsewhere could help open the door to a new way of paying for roads.
Despite strained finances, there’s been no significant shift toward consolidation in recent years.
Thanks to term limits and anti-incumbent fervor, half the lawmakers across the country have less than two years’ experience.
Investigations uncovered a loophole that some compounding pharmacies exploited for financial gain. Now, regulators and policymakers must decide who’s going to close it -- the feds or the states.
Here are 10 of the biggest topics states will tackle in the year ahead.
Strained by budget cuts, libraries are preparing to handle more questions and more customers after the gift-giving season.
The gap between what seniors need to live on versus what they have might land squarely on state and local governments.
Moodys has downgraded the credit rating of one New Jersey town as a result of damages caused by Hurricane Sandy and made negative revisions to nine other public finance debt issuers, primarily along the New Jersey Shore and the South Shore of Long Island.
State government finances, by revenue and spending type, for fiscal years 2009-2011.
Closing underused school buildings is the right thing to do, but it's never going to be easy.
The Seattle Police Department said that it will relax its hiring standards for officers in light of Washington's new marijuana-legalization law -- applicants will now be disqualified for past pot use within one year instead of three years.
As gun makers took a financial drubbing in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, Massachusetts Treasurer Steve Grossman directed the state pension fund to review its investments in any companies in the firearms industry.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is proposing an $18.5 million plan to strengthen the state’s mental health system. The proposal is the result of work by a group of advisors convened by Hickenlooper in the wake of a mass shooting at a movie theater that left 12 dead.
labama's total general-fund mental health budget got cut 36 percent from fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2012, the second-largest reduction by any state, according to a 2011 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Gov. John Kitzhaber signed House Bill 4200 to provide tax certainty for Nike ahead of a $150 million expansion in Oregon by the global sportswear company.
Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party's path to the Oval Office.
In his veto letter, Gov. Rick Snyder said the bill had a fatal loophole that didn't allow for those public institutions to opt out of the new legislation and prohibit weapons from their buildings.
Cory Booker likely won’t challenge New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2013 but instead launch a bid for a U.S. Senate seat a year later.
In the years during and after the Great Recession, governments have been turning more toward raising fees, according to a recent report.
Insurers holding $161 million of Stockton, Calif.’s debt and who want for the city’s case thrown out of court said this week the city didn’t pursue cost-cutting measures before filing for bankruptcy protection, according to a report by the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review.
While the number of people killed in traffic accidents last year dropped to its lowest point in more than six decades, deaths of cyclists and pedestrians surged in 2011.
Created last year by the Legislature, the specialized court is intended to resolve tax disputes in a more efficient and predictable manner.
As public colleges spend more and get less from the states, tuition costs are shifting to parents and students -- often putting higher education out of reach.
Just four states carried out more than three-fourths of the executions in the United States this year, while another 23 states have not put an inmate to death in 10 years, an anti-capital punishment group reports.
Rep. Tim Scott, a Tea Party favorite, will be appointed the first African-American senator from South Carolina next year.
President Barack Obama laid out a counteroffer that included significant concessions on taxes, reducing the amount of new revenue he is seeking to $1.2 trillion over the next decade and limiting the hike in tax rates to households earning more than $400,000 a year.
Gov. Bill Haslam said he will run for re-election in 2014 and already has planned a pair of fundraisers, his first steps toward a second term.
The mayor-elect discusses the city's $5 billion elevated rail line.
Several states are signaling their willingness to pursue higher fees and taxes to fund roads, rails and bridges.
Overcoming it is not a hopeless challenge. The trick is to look for the issues that lie beneath the surface.
Washington state trains prisoners to do scientific research.
States are looking at how they can revise licensing policies and preparation programs to strengthen the teaching workforce.
To Mayor Sly James, the first-in-the-nation Google Fiber project is about a lot more than blazing-fast broadband.
California and New York are considering heavier oversight of their financially troubled cities, according to a Stateline report.
Bill Lockyer, California’s state treasurer, wants to create a system that would monitor local finances and issue a warning to flag cities and counties when their fiscal situation becomes troubled. New York’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, wants to score cities based on their financial strain, according to Stateline.
Top finance officials in California and New York are proposing closer state-level scrutiny of local government budgets to help prevent the distress that has plagued many cities, towns and counties over the last few years.
The Tea Party want to replace some current lawmakers with fresh ones, preferably from their own flock.
House Speaker John A. Boehner has offered to push any fight over the federal debt limit off for a year, a concession that would deprive Republicans of leverage in the budget battle but is breathing new life into stalled talks over the year-end “fiscal cliff.”
Groups that spent millions on the national election have little to show for it, but state efforts were successful.
In Newtown, an anguished debate has broken out: how to protect the rights of responsible gun owners, including hunters, while working to prevent another massacre.
Not many DHHS secretaries started their journey to state government in Warsaw – that’s Poland, not the town in Duplin County.
The next big issue in the national debate over guns -- whether people have a right to be armed in public -- is moving closer to Supreme Court review.
At least 27 people, including 14 children, were shot and killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., according to multiple reports coming out of the city.
While states as a whole are seeing their financial position slowly improve, the results have been uneven.
After a final-day session that lasted more than 18 hours, the Michigan Legislature hastily passed laws related to taxes, abortion, elections, Detroit lighting, a regional transportation authority for southeast Michigan, and emergency managers for distressed cities and school districts, among other measures.
The population on Texas' death row is at its lowest in more than 20 years, and the state has seen a 75 percent drop in death sentences since 2002.
The position of state Democratic Party chair is expected to take on added importance now that the Republicans control all three branches of state government in Raleigh.
A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students — has left colleges and universities saddled with large amounts of debt. Oftentimes, students are stuck picking up the bill.
The state’s highest court awarded enhanced pension benefits to two retired New York City police officers who said they were sickened by their work at the World Trade Center site, overturning a pension board’s ruling that their cancers were not related to ground zero.
Gov. Jan Brewer continues to indicate she may challenge the state’s Constitution to run for a third term, riling some Republicans who say she should clear the field for GOP candidates.
Proposing the largest contraction in the history of the Philadelphia School District, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said that come June, he wants to shut 37 schools and relocate, close programs, or reshuffle grades at many more.
Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said 2013 will be “the year of the teacher” in Virginia as he outlined proposals that would give teachers their first state-funded pay raise since 2007 — and make it easier to fire them.
The Florida Supreme Court has struck down a law that made it illegal for music coming from a car to be “plainly audible” from 25 feet or more.
Gov. John Hickenlooper's comments stunned Republicans and Democrats alike, coming a few months after the Aurora movie-theater shooting, when he told a national audience he doubted tougher gun laws would have stopped the shooter.
Offering financial incentives to boost services in select areas is common for economic development -- but rarely, if ever, used to reduce health disparities.
While introducing his new transportation commissioner who supports the gas tax hike, Gov. Mark Dayton rejected a proposal to raise gasoline taxes any time soon to fund highway improvements.
Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday that he would not sign a bill to end same-day voter registration because of its cost and reiterated that a right-to-work law was not on his agenda.
As a result of years of escalating wages and overtime costs, California state employees enjoy the highest average pay out of the nation's most populous states.
New studies afford a state-by-state or city-by-city analysis of fiscal well being.
Gov. Corbett joins 19 other Republican governors who chose to leave the responsibility of running new online insurance marketplaces to the federal government.
While President Obama’s proposal calls for $60.4 billion, the Congressional Budget Office estimates only about $9 billion would be spent over the next nine months.
A commission appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal approved a new formula that links the state funding colleges receive to their improving student success and the number of degrees or certificates awarded rather than enrollment numbers.
The governor's administration says the bill is designed to address shortcomings in the much-maligned Public Act 4, which voters repealed last month, by giving local officials in financially troubled cities and school district more input in decisions.
Our map shows up-to-date migration trends for each state.
These 22 governors appear to be in good shape to be reelected in 2014. How did they manage it?
In this installment, Louis Jacobson looks at the 10 governors on the hot seat. Plus, why the GOP has the early edge in the balance of power.
Despite his overall opposition to the Affordable Care Act, Gov. Brian Sandoval will expand Medicaid to provide health insurance for more low-income people.
Opponents say such legislation erodes women's legal access to abortion, and that a similar fetal pain law in Arizona is currently being reviewed by a federal appeals court.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees had sued to prevent the closures, arguing they would worsen prison overcrowding and put employee's lives in danger.
Eliminating at least some tax breaks on municipal bond is receiving bipartisan support in the fiscal cliff talks.
State Sen. Barbara Buono announced she’s running for governor, becoming the first high-profile Democrat to launch a campaign aimed at toppling popular Republican incumbent Chris Christie next year.
Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot told supporters that he will seek re-election in 2014 rather than run for governor, leaving what is already a highly competitive Democratic field to succeed Gov. Martin O’Malley.
There is a nationwide trend to replace contaminated tracts in distressed neighborhoods with health centers.
The program, instituted in 1981, was designed to give tax credits, sales/use tax rebates and investment tax credits to businesses which created jobs in designated disadvantaged areas, called enterprise zones.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has officially evolved with the announcement that he now supports gay marriage.
Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a critic of President Barack Obama's health care law, said a state-built health insurance exchange is the best option for Idaho.
Gov. John Kitzhaber told Oregon legislators he was calling them in for a special session for a bill that would allow the state to lock in the way corporate taxes are calculated for Nike and other big businesses reset the agenda.
Amazon, the world’s largest online merchant, said that it has agreed to start collecting the state’s 6.25 percent sales tax in Massachusetts next November -- a move that will cost consumers but generate tens of millions of dollars for the state.
With a couple of changes, a teachers' union's proposal for rigorous testing for prospective teachers could have a big impact on public education.
Despite privacy concerns, a growing number of public transit agencies are adding audio surveillance to buses.
The 2012 election may have just ended, but the contests for governorships are heating up. At least five governors have reason to worry.
In a 2-1 decision that is a major victory for the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said the state's ban on carrying a weapon in public is unconstitutional.
Democratic State Sens. Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon announced they would create a majority power-sharing coalition with Senate Republicans, throwing control of the chamber into question.
Gov. Bill Haslam blamed a lack of specifics from the federal government about how a state exchange would have to be structured.
After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.
A federal judge has ruled that North Carolina cannot issue “Choose Life” license plates without offering a choice of plates with alternate viewpoints.
"Green schools" promise huge energy savings and rising student performance, but do not always deliver, despite their extra cost.
The 2012 America's Health Rankings highlight troubling levels of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and sedentary behavior. Medical advances are allowing more people to live with those conditions.
Mayor Dave Bing said in a statement he and Obama talked "about the potential of getting personnel to help us with the execution of our restructuring plan."
State Rep. Christine Watkins is leaving the Democratic Party and joining the Republicans in hopes she could return to the Legislature in 2014.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who opposed the measure, signed the proclamation that places Amendment 64 into the constitution.
Even though the homeless rate stayed virtually the same over the last year, the number of homeless veterans declined, according to federal estimates.
It takes leadership to implement the type of IT systems that would make human services more efficient and effective.
San Jose has had its share of political troubles, from bribery to corruption, but nothing compared to the ticking pension time bomb.
One financial firm’s bet on California bonds in 2009 is now paying off, according to a report from Bloomberg.
This program is part of the FCC’s Next Generation 911 services, which attempts to upgrade the rules and regulations of the landline era to the current mobile and IP world.
Businesses in Washington state, where the drug is legal, and Colorado, where it will be by January, are trying to figure out how to deal with employees who use it on their own time and then fail a drug test.
As STEM has become an education buzzword in recent years, a steady stream of research has emerged that challenges the notion of STEM as an economic elixir. In some STEM careers, the employment picture is downright lousy.
A new report found that "far too many" of the board members are from organizations that stand to benefit from the $3 billion the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is supposed to dole out to researchers over 10 years.
A federal grand jury is investigating the awarding of the $38 million contract to run the District of Columbia lottery, a process that raises further questions about corruption in a city government already beleaguered by criminal prosecutions.
The people staffing five cities' Innovation Delivery Teams aren't necessarily experts in the subjects the cities are working on. They are focused more on the "how" than on the "what."
A Nebraska legislator says he can get enough votes to overturn a veto by Gov. Dave Heineman, who opposes the expansion.
Localities have slashed an estimated 47,000 jobs, mostly teaching positions, since August.
The move comes in the wake of accusations that the trustees failed to catch a scheme tied to former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia that either removed or advanced students who were not passing.
An appeals court struck down a ruling that could have opened up vast numbers of classrooms for charters, while also creating potential hardships for traditional neighborhood schools.
By day’s end, 20 registered patients had slipped inside under tight security to discuss their chronic illnesses and make the first-ever legal pot purchases in the state.
The meningitis scandal has highlighted regulatory weaknesses that states, including Utah, are moving to fortify.
Colorado will use the money to develop a statewide quality-rating system for licensed early-learning facilities; provide professional development to create a highly qualified pool of teachers; institute a statewide kindergarten entry assessment; and create a new Office of Early Childhood in the state Department of Human Services.
The state began unannounced inspections after contaminated steroids produced by New England Compounding Center of Framingham were blamed for the national meningitis outbreak, which has resulted in at least 36 deaths.
Gov. Chris Christie, a critic of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has yet to answer dozens of questions on how much the new online insurance marketplace would cost New Jersey residents, among other concerns.
Gov. Bill Haslam said at a meeting of more than 400 public safety officials that domestic violence accounts for about half of all crimes committed in the state each year.
View detailed financial figures for each state.
Lawmakers stressed the importance of avoiding the so-called "fiscal cliff" and made their case for programs they want to protect.
Two government watchdog groups say Florida could save millions of dollars if a budget transparency website, which taxpayers have already spent $4.5 million on, were allowed to go live.
Across the nation, Occupy protests have prompted cities to tighten restrictions on protesters and behavior in public space in ways that opponents say threaten free speech and worsen conditions for homeless people.
A day after California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris made compliance with the program optional, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced that he will not comply with federal requests to detain suspected illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes.
Washington's new marijuana law takes effect today, amid a muted reaction from the state's congressional delegation and questions about whether the federal government will seek to block it.
Terry McAuliffe appears to be the only Democrat who wants to run for governor of Virginia.
In about a month, a measure legalizing marijuana use and possession for adults will go into effect, but one place it won't have much grip on is college campuses.
The freeze, though, is contingent on the Legislature awarding the state’s public universities a funding increase of about 2.6 percent.
