Archive
Half of states graduate less than 60 percent of their students with limited English proficiency.
The federal gas tax hasn't been increased since 1993 when it was used as a tool to reduce the federal deficit. Now faced with a similar situation, Congress may pay more attention to the idea.
Exit polls suggest states with marijuana ballot measures saw more young voters come out to the polls. But can future campaigns use the issue to their advantage?
Supervisors have asked the county attorney to determine whether they can legally require employees to quit smoking or if they can institute a ban on hiring smokers.
A state judge struck down an attempt by the Florida Legislature to privatize prison health care by using a budgetary process instead of making the change through a full vote of lawmakers.
New York Republicans joined forces with a group of dissident Democrats to form what they called a “bipartisan governing coalition” to run the State Senate, preventing the Democratic Party from taking control even after it appeared to have won a majority of Senate seats in elections last month.
A court ruling that Arizona’s controversial medical-marijuana law does not conflict with federal drug laws cleared the way for dispensaries to open and allows patients to legally obtain marijuana from the facilities.
California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told local law enforcement agencies that they were not obligated to comply with a federal program whose stated goal is to deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes. It was Harris' first public assessment of Secure Communities.
Highway lanes that charge cars rising tolls as traffic increases are becoming the future for the USA's clogged urban expressways. A dozen now operate across the nation and another 18 are under development.
The governors — three Republicans and three Democrats — said they left the White House meeting feeling “encouraged” that Obama would strike a deal with Congressional Republicans before December 31.
The White House clarified its stance on Puerto Rico statehood, saying that the results of a November plebiscite were clear — and that Congress should now move forward on resolving the island's political status.
Democratic governors also elected Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to serve as the DGA's vice chair.
It's happening all over, and there's more to it than saving money. As a new study show, county governments are emerging as the key.
Federally-run health insurance exchanges as well as some some state-run exchanges will be paid for using insurance premium surcharges, not separate taxes.
The fiscal and environmental disasters that we know are going to happen need to be dealt with now.
A Sacramento federal judge barred the state from enforcing its new law prohibiting "gay conversion therapy" against two mental health providers and a student who are suing to derail the measure.
DOT’s Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance, in a one-page notice, said that recreational marijuana use is not exempt from testing rules that govern safety-sensitive positions already subject to strict drug and alcohol screening.
The U.S. Census Bureau has adjusted the city's 2010 population from 2,099,451 to 2,100,263. The difference is only 812 people, but it's enough to push the city over the 2.1 million mark, a threshold for adding City Council members.
Arizona’s system of registering and monitoring sex offenders contributes to homelessness among high-risk offenders. States from California to Massachusetts see similar situations but none have found a comprehensive solution.
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by five states, including Wisconsin, that want barriers placed in Chicago-area waterways to prevent Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes, but said he would consider new arguments if the case were filed again.
Baton Rouge District Judge Timothy Kelley ruled that Louisiana's school voucher program violated the state's Constitution by using education dollars from the state's funding formula.
The Newark mayor plans to live off of the equivalent of food stamps for a week.
Michael Bloomberg’s overture to the former first lady highlights the level of his anxiety about the current crop of candidates, his eagerness to recruit a replacement who can rival his stature and his determination to become a kingmaker in the political arena he will soon exit.
A pilot program in Hennepin County, Minn., is providing better and cheaper care to low-income childless adults.
Four-year state high school graduation rates for all students, low income students and children with disabilities.
See which programs get the biggest cuts, and when they'll really happen.
The clock is ticking for Congress and President Barack Obama to make a deal to avoid the spending cuts and tax increases set to ring in the New Year.
After local leaders and politicians have tried for more than 40 years -- and 23 times in the Legislature -- to get a coordinated mass-transit system, Gov. Rick Snyder may finally be the governor to get it done.
At the end of this year, unemployment benefits that were greatly expanded during the recession are set to expire unless Congress acts to extend them.
A small Webster Parish town remains in limbo as Louisiana State Police have determined it’s six million pounds, rather than the one million as originally thought, of improperly stored explosive powder at Explo Systems Inc., a munitions dismantling facility at Camp Minden.
Documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Georgia governors have been reluctant to exercise their authority to oust sheriffs who run into ethical or legal trouble.
The rules have been held up so long that the states’ insurance commissioners — even the ones that want to implement the law — may have trouble making up for lost time.
Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level.
A new report by the Human Rights Campaign assessing local laws policies for LGBT individuals.
The Human Rights Campaign examined 137 municipalities, grading each area's laws and policies for LGBT individuals.
Advocates are trying to save public health programs from further cuts -- and persuade Congress that they can be their own deficit reduction tool.
New policies and reports buttress economic and social importance of high-density cities.
The outcome of some ballot initiatives suggests what makes an issue campaign successful (or unsuccessful) even in the unlikeliest of places.
Pennsylvania is the only state currently meeting or exceeding all federal guidelines for securing child support payments.
Project Sunburst, Gov. Rick Scott’s program to foster email transparency, is not being used by the governor or his top staffers.
The University of Wisconsin System is perhaps the first public university system in the nation to roll out a set of 100 percent competency-based online degree programs for working adults.
A day after lottery officials announced that winners in Arizona and Missouri will share a $580 million Powerball jackpot, California lottery officials decided the state will join the game.
The Oregon Supreme Court established a new procedure for evaluating whether eyewitness identifications can be used as evidence.
Gov. Jay Nixon wants to expand Medicaid eligibility to cover some 220,000 more Missourians, but he faces a large hurdle in that endeavor: the GOP-controlled state Legislature.
Labor battles, gun fights, fracking and education financing will test lawmakers when the state legislature opens Jan. 9, but one issue is not in doubt: Colorado is poised to become the ninth state in the nation to allow same-sex couples to form civil unions.
With only one in four Illinois voters approving his job performance, Gov. Pat Quinn is the least popular in the country and would lose in head-to-head pairings against two of three Republicans eying his job in 2014, a newly commissioned survey found.
Gov. Jan Brewer vowed to defend her executive order denying driver’s licenses to young undocumented immigrants who receive federal work permits through President Barack Obama’s deferred-action program.
A key question now is whether employees being asked to pay more or get less later will have to do so immediately or if the status quo will stay during the appeals process.
Fuse Corps is providing states, localities and community groups with entrepreneurial professionals to help them find the efficiencies that they need now more than ever.
View unfunded obligation ratios and per capita liability totals for state pension systems.
Brand marketing promises new attention -- and money -- to cities.
Faced with the decision to expand Medicaid or not in the wake of the federal health law ruling, states can be divided into three categories.
States and feds have clashed for a decade over who will fight financial fraud. Could new rules force a truce?
Two public buildings competed to see which type of roof would reduce their electric bill the most. The result may surprise you.
Some public employees and residents now get 25 percent off all types of veterinary services.
In 2006, Milwaukee had one of the nation’s highest teen birth rates. With more than two years to go on an ambitious goal to curb teen pregnancies, the city has already cut its rate by more than a third.
The South Korean capital shows what happens when transit is reorganized to serve the people.
With convention attendance down 40 million people from a decade earlier, why are cities pouring money into building and expanding facilities?
Governing interviewed Time correspondent Michael Grunwald, who argues in his new book that the stimulus has had more influence on domestic policy than any other piece of legislation in decades.
The department’s new website has the feeling of a first-person video game and aims to replace the media as the public’s go-to source for crime information.
With fewer state lawmakers representing rural districts, issues important to rural areas may go unheard.
Drones could revolutionize police work. But privacy and security concerns could keep them grounded.
A new report examines the financial health of state pension systems. View maps and data for each state.
Portland's City Council unanimously voted to extend a tax to all land-line phone service providers - an idea that Mayor Sam Adams pushed to raise millions of dollars a year for federally-mandated police reforms.
Gov. Jan Brewer rejected a key pillar of President Barack Obama’s new health-care law
City Councilman James Kenney is to introduce legislation that would give a tax credit to employers who provide health-care benefits to same-sex partners, saying his bill would make Philadelphia, already a popular city for gays and lesbians to live, even more so.
The Christie administration has determined New Jersey’s 7 percent sales tax will apply every time a pre-screened patient buys marijuana from an approved dispensary.
The state’s public defender agency estimates it could need up to $332 million to represent thousands of people who faced criminal penalties or civil sanctions based on evidence potentially tainted at the now-closed state drug laboratory in Jamaica Plain.
There was not a single reported slaying, stabbing, shooting or knifing in any of the five boroughs on Monday, according to the New York Police Department.
What's old, what's new and what's unclear for transportation policy in 2013.
States have siphoned mortgage settlement funds for purposes seemingly outside the realm of housing, raising some red flags.
Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling plans to drop out of the 2013 race for Virginia governor, according to multiple media reports, likely clearing the way for Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II to secure the Republican nomination.
All bomb threats were unfounded. Tennessee and Mississippi follow other states that have recently dealt with similar bomb hoaxes.
In the wake of his response to superstorm Sandy, Governor Christie scored a 72 percent approval rating among New Jersey voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
The Nov. 6 turnout was 3,184,196 people – or 73.3 percent of registered voters.
The Justice Department launched a civil rights probe into whether the police department has shown a pattern of using excessive force on civilians. The investigation is one of 14 active police reform investigations across the country.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a similar challenge in 2011. Since then, 10 Texas universities have announced the launch of such a degree plan, or the intention to launch one in the near future.
Some officials in Santa Clarita, Burbank, Palmdale, Los Angeles and Los Angeles County have asked the California High-Speed Rail Authority to consider alternative routes, but no city has expressed serious opposition.
New Jersey authorities announced that a temporary ban on so-called synthetic marijuana has been made permanent, placing the designer drug in the same legal category as cocaine and heroin.
The U.S. Department of Education has released a first-ever list detailing state-by-state four-year high school graduation rates.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law — one of the toughest of its kind in the country — violates the First Amendment when used against those who record police officers doing their jobs in public.
Christie's campaign is set to be one of the most-watched of 2013, especially if Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, challenges him.
As her second term winds down, Gov. Chris Gregoire is working to build support for a congressional plan that would allow states to collect sales tax from online retailers based elsewhere.
State regulators increase pressure on advocacy groups active in the election to disclose their donors. There is no such effort on the federal level.
Federal environmental officials said they hoped the suggested guidance would prompt state leaders to toughen their own oversight of recreational waters where people swim, surf and go boating.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that more people had been killed by Hurricane Katrina, but said that Hurricane Sandy had had a greater economic impact because of the dense population in the New York City area.
Pete Snyder, a technology entrepreneur and former Fox News commentator who oversaw Republican campaigns in Virginia this year, announced that he will run for lieutenant governor.
View charts and maps with new personal income data for counties and metro areas.
The federal tax code has, in effect, subsidized the cost of borrowing for state and local governments. Some say that could be poised to change.
Mirroring national usage rates, only one-third of prescribers and one-fifth of the state's pharmacists are registered to use the database that tracks patients' history with addictive drugs.
State Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who has made voter access and open government among his main priorities as a lawmaker, will run for secretary of state when he is termed out of the Legislature in two years.
Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue and Republicans who control the North Carolina legislature agree it would be tragic for about 1,400 people with serious mental illnesses to lose their homes Jan. 1 because of a one-word change to the state budget. But neither side has indicated how they plan to fix the problem.
Fred Durhal Jr., a state representative with decades of government experience, will announce his run for Detroit mayor because he believes he has the financial and political skills to help the troubled city.
Judges and lawmakers across the country are wrangling over whether and when law enforcement authorities can peer into suspects’ cellphones, and the cornucopia of evidence they provide.
In a surprising reversal of his steadfast anti-casino position, Holyoke Mayor Alex B. Morse plans to announce that he is supporting a proposal to develop a gambling resort off Route 91 in his economically struggling city.
Gov. Chris Christie said that Hurricane Sandy caused $29.4 billion in damages to New Jersey but cautioned the estimate would probably rise once next summer’s tourism season, populations shifts and the effect on real estate values were taken into consideration.
Human error was the cause of Friday’s natural gas explosion in downtown Springfield that leveled a strip club, damaged dozens of other buildings, and injured at least 19 people, officials said.
Experts explain how municipalities can create a publicly owned community broadband network.
Have cities reached the limit when it comes to cutting services? That seems to be the case in California where voters passed 71 percent of local tax and bond measures.
A foundation's experiment with providing experts to public agencies is showing promise as a way to make a big difference at a relatively modest cost.
How Washington resolves its looming financial obligations could have major implications for the low-income insurance program.
Public officials at the news conference said there are an estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrants in Illinois and if half of them got drivers' licenses and insurance it would improve public safety and reduce costly uninsured motorist claims.
The Patrick administration is pressing Amazon.com Inc. to begin collecting sales taxes from Massachusetts customers as early as next year, arguing it is no longer exempt under federal law from charging the tax.
The 10 states with the highest rate of traffic fatalities in 2010 were politically red states, while the states with the safest roads were all deep blue, according to a report.
Mayor Cory Booker said he and a Twitter follower will try living on food stamps for at least a week.
We shouldn't have to stand in long lines to vote. If Estonians can cast their ballots over the Internet, why can't Americans?
Jobless rates fell in most states last month. View updated totals for each state.
The state Board of Education repealed the rule requiring every student take at least two online classes after voters rejected the tech-heavy "Students Come First" school reform laws.
Wisconsin is one of nine states that allow voters to register at their polling place on the day of the election, and that's often credited with helping make Wisconsin's voting rate one of the highest in the country.
Gov. Mary Fallin rejected state participation in a health-care exchange and expansion of the state's Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.
There's a new superpower growing in the Great Plains and the South, where bulging Republican majorities in state capitols could dramatically cut taxes and change public education with barely a whimper of resistance from Democrats.
In a decision Utah Supreme Court Justice Jill Parrish said was aimed at "moving us into the next era," the Utah Judicial Council voted to allow audio and video recordings of trial court proceedings.
Instead of bringing Utah’s exchange, Avenue H, up to new federal standards, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert announced that he wants to keep it as is.
A lack of information from the White House is delaying a decision about whether the state should run its own health insurance exchange under the new federal health care law, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said.
The postelection legal battle between Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and a legislative critic resolved little, but it provided another example of how disputes involving Kobach often can pivot to questions about his motives.
The three-minute procedure was the latest test of a device that may someday help guard real tunnels during disasters like Hurricane Sandy, whose wind-driven surge of water overwhelmed New York City’s subway system, shutting it down for days.
The institute’s first study drew sharp criticism for being biased in favor of the oil and gas industry.
Numerous U.S. municipalities and states are looking to make small steps to fend off the higher seas and more frequent storms forecast to accompany climate change. Sandy's destructiveness is only likely to increase those efforts.
Former FHWA official gets top slot at state DOT association.
Louisville, Ky., is pushing the limits of how government can use data to create a healthier living environment.
Plus: 4 questions to ask before sharing services and more management news
Will Weatherford, the youngest speaker in recent Florida history, will lead a chamber that still has a large GOP majority, though the party lost seats in the election.
If the state doesn't enroll enough people in the exchange, it could lose billions in federal dollars and insurance premiums could soar.
Utah’s immigration court has been stretched so thin since Judge Dustin Pead left in August to become a federal magistrate, several local attorneys say their pending cases have been pushed back well into 2014.
As the nation watched voters in Colorado and Washington state approve ballot initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana use, some legislators and activists have been working to change Iowa’s law, among the strictest pot possession laws in the country.
The ACLU claims the government unnecessarily incarcerates deportation candidates even if they are documented citizens and pose no flight risk or threat.
Governor Deval Patrick will direct state colleges and universities Monday to allow young illegal immigrants to pay the lower resident rate for tuition and fees as soon as they obtain work permits through a new federal program.
Top Democratic and Republican leaders left an hour long meeting with President Barack Obama expressing confidence that they can reach a deal and work toward a compromise marrying new revenue with spending cuts in the coming weeks.
Ohio, Wisconsin and Maine are the latest to say they won't implement that part of President Obama's healthcare law, instead leaving the job to the federal government.
Since its inception in 2009, the CyberPatriot competition has grown in popularity among teenagers who see computer security as a promising future career.
The Scott administration is sending almost 2,000 state workers notices that their jobs are ending, part of the state’s outsourcing of prison health care.
Smart meters are playing a crucial role in speeding the recovery from Hurricane Sandy. They have the potential to do much more.
State officials warned that Illinois stands to lose more than $1 billion if Congress and President Barack Obama cannot reach an agreement to prevent the "fiscal cliff" brought on by preset tax increases and budget cuts.
The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council made recommendations that could help not only the federal government but state and local governments, too.
Ten top universities in the U.S. will offer small undergraduate classes that provide the same quality as their on-campus classes.
Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz attributed the drop to the city's Clean Indoor Air Law, a federal hike in the cigarette tax, and the "Get Healthy Philly" initiative.
Some Republican governors are softening on the party’s hard-line toward tax increases for the wealthy, suggesting that GOP congressmen at least be open to rate hikes in exchange for a comprehensive fiscal agreement on taxes and entitlements.
Rep. Steve Handy asked for the analysis, the first study to examine what the capital punishment option costs the state and local governments.
Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner believes a too-closed and tightly centralized power center at Penn State University contributed to the severity of the Jerry Sandusky child sex scandal.
The federal government gave states another month to decide if they will operate insurance exchanges under the new U.S. healthcare law, after some Republican governors stalled in the hope President Barack Obama would lose last week's election.
A federal appeals court has thrown out Michigan's voter-approved ban on affirmative action in college admissions and public hiring, ruling that it presents an extraordinary burden to opponents, who would have to mount their own long, expensive campaign to protect affirmative action.
Most U.S. House members easily won re-election last week. View partisan composition for each state.
Local leaders say sequestration could be devastating to cities, but they also worry about the alternatives.
As cities face extreme fiscal pressure, can Chapter 9 ease their pension obligations?
State judiciaries see technology as a means of becoming more efficient and saving money.
If Ray LaHood moves on, a new secretary would take office at a time when transportation faces big challenges.
The measure was pitched as a remedy to last year’s massive health data breach when hackers broke into a Utah Medicaid server and stole the personal information of about 780,000 Utahns.
In a landmark vote, the Newark Teachers Union ratified the state’s first teacher contract to provide bonus pay based on classroom performance.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, one of the most vocal critics of the federal healthcare overhaul, said that he now wants to negotiate with the federal government.
