Archive
Fewer state-level Democrats are becoming Republicans than in 1994, new Speakers of the House are elected in Montana and Tennessee, and other news of the historic shift in power in the states.
Schools and municipalities across the country are implementing wireless devices that keep students and participants engaged and facilitate feedback.
Diane Rowland, chair of a commission to look at Medicaid and CHIP, explains how the group will study the federal-state programs' ability to provide affordable, quality care.
What changes do we have to make to our food regulation methods to prevent future large-scale food contamination outbreaks?
If you look behind the headlines, the presidential campaign is very
much a clash of domestic ideology.
For years, Philadelphia Councilman Brian O'Neill sat quietly and
minded his own business. Then he was handed some power.
How nutty is the housing market today? In Los Angeles, people with no background in real estate are buying empty lots, plunking down a house real quick and selling for big profits.
It didn't seem to make much sense that within a two-mile stretch of his commute south into Boston, Daniel Grabauskas, Massachusetts' secretary of transportation, drove on a road maintained by the highway department, a bridge run by the port authority and a parkway run by the conservation and recreation department.
In New Hampshire, a state system will track the progress of each
student--as well as each school.
The federal government hasn't attached a lot of strings to federal aid so far, but that's about to change.
What do Botox injections and a box of crayons have in common? Answer: They're both taxable in New Jersey.
It is not a question of whether the federal government will become more demanding and less generous, but when and how.
Unlike cats, deer are not generally known for having nine lives. But that notion may need to be reconsidered in light of several recent incidents.
A white picket fence around a house is an American icon, as heavy in symbolism as its weight in wood. But is a white picket fence still a "white picket fence" if it is made from vinyl instead of real wood?
The Democratic convention wasn't the only thing that caused a stir in Boston this summer. After declaring bankruptcy, the FAO Schwarz toy company abandoned its Back Bay store along with its 12-foot, 3-ton bear outside on the corner.
New Jersey legislators hope that a new law providing public financing for their own campaigns will help clean up the corruption that is rife in their state.
A ruling in August may signal an end to a long-standing San Bernardino County corruption scandal ["Addicted to Corruption," November 2002].
Some say the federal government should send another round of aid to states.
Tech-savvy governments are adopting new transparency policies for “Open Data." These declarations can be great, but they can also face severe limitations.
Florida conservatives are eager to revisit merit pay, Arizona's Republican Senate President breaks with business groups on tax incentives and other news of the historic shift in power in the states.
Significantly reducing transit prices can have dramatic effects on
getting people to give up driving their cars to work.
When work is reduced to a routine, innovative breakthroughs that lead to better, faster, cheaper government become rare.
Plus: measuring student achievement, balancing state budgets, and more management news.
Confronting privacy and "nexus" issues, courts in several states have handed down new rulings in an escalating battle with online retailers to tax Internet transactions.
On a wall at my neighborhood community house, in Arlington County, Virginia, there are two gold plaques with 43 names on them. They are the names of all the people who have served as president of the Lyon Village Citizens Association since 1926, the year the neighborhood was created.
Officials in Orange County, California, are hoping that they've finally found a cure for the decade-long hangover stemming from the county's 1994 bankruptcy.
While competition and turnover have just about disappeared at the state legislative level, they remain a fact of life for governors.
Nearly 6,000 state legislators will be elected next month. Most of
them face little or no opposition.
A fresh idea about how to stimulate local economies is fueling a
debate about whether it can solve all problems.
Popular with his state's voters and fascinating to the national media,
Jesse Ventura girds for battle with his only real enemy: Jesse
Ventura.
Last month's `summit' meeting started on the subject of taxes. But it
ended with a much broader challenge.
A community wellness grant is helping Erie County, N.Y., launch a program that will help locally owned restaurants research and post detailed nutrition information.
Hopefully, the current crisis will encourage thoughtful reexamination of even the most politically difficult policy reforms.
El Paso has always been a little bit eccentric. When the state university campus was built there, in the 1920s, the local leaders chose Bhutanese architecture, based on an obscure style used in the Himalayas in medieval times.
It's pretty straightforward. Those charged with investing public money have only four things to worry about: their fund's financial condition and cash flow; the state of the economy; what monetary and other regulators are up to; and how the markets are behaving, which is to say what other investors collectively are thinking about these same things and what they think will happen.
Last year, states lowered taxes for a record fifth consecutive year, approving a net tax reduction of $5.5 billion for FY 2000. State fiscal conditions remain just as favorable this year.
Last year was not the hottest for the muni bond market. With interest rates higher than they were in 1998, refundings were lower--and that took some of the sizzle out of 1999's volume.
There's more of almost everything in state politics this year: more
power, more attention, more money.
The Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community in Pittsfield, Mass., is giving homeless veterans something that, to many, seemed almost impossible: owning a home.
A lesson on how to appeal to both the political leadership and the bureaucracy when implementing change.
It involves resolving the political leadership's and the bureaucracy's different appetites for change.
The federal government regulates meat and poultry traded across state lines. But what about intrastate-traded products?
The state of the union, and four positive steps states can take to improve their fiscal outlook.
Three meaningful reform ideas worth sending to the lame ducks in Congress.
The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowed this election to be the costliest and least transparent midterm in recent history.
If a presidential election results in a tie in the electoral college, the election is then thrown into a GOP-controlled House.
The high cost of incarceration is spurring new thinking around every aspect of prison policy.
Once a system starts getting to know more about its homeless population, it's much easier to develop targeted, strategic interventions.
Which city of 100,000 or more population has the greatest concentration of million-dollar homes? Star-studded Los Angeles? Nope. Chicago and its famous Gold Coast? Nah. Swanky New York? Not even close.
The transit agency in King County, Washington, is putting a fresh spin
on the ancient art of matchmaking. A new Web site,
RideshareOnline.com, pairs up isolated Seattle-area commuters with
carpooling partners.
When people think of old-time bordello dancers, or "sisters of riotous sensuality," as they were sometimes called, what generally come to mind are young dancers in black stockings, high heels and frilly dresses.
For centuries, artists have painted life-like scenes that look so real that the French name for them, "trompe l'oeil," literally means "trick the eye." Now, Phoenix is applying these age-old deceptions to pavement, creating road markings that appear three-dimensional and are intended to fool drivers into laying off the gas pedal.
Cheeseheads rule! Despite the fact that Wisconsin's Commemorative Quarter Council chose a theme of "early exploration" for the state's new quarter design, that turned out to be a no go.
You never know what you're going to find when you clean out your closet. Robert Carney, the district attorney of Schenectady County, New York, found lots of interesting items in his evidence safe during a recent inventory--including an early 1970s print of the legendary porn film "Deep Throat."
Localities are learning to capitalize on nature's own plumbing system.
Fluid, TV-like images from traffic cameras are now streaming into the police and fire dispatch center in Fairfax County. The images, courtesy of the Virginia Department of Transportation, are in right- now time--not the slight delay and static form available to the public over the Internet.
It's tough being on the cutting edge of alternative-fuel technology: Drivers may be motivated to buy low-emission vehicles but they can get side-tracked trying to find a place to fill up on biodiesel or charge an electric car.
The new generation of state IT leaders who came from the private
sector are struggling with the culture of government.
Localities need to stabilize their key source of revenue--and educate
their taxpayers about the joys of paying the property tax.
To make a business case for IT projects, state and local agencies have
to factor in hard costs and soft benefits.
Once political outcasts, Native Americans are now big players in state
campaigns.
The November elections were very good to New York City's Gifford
Miller, who has come a long way in a short time.
Fortuitous Land Windfalls Have Given Some Cities The Opportunity To Create Huge Urban Parks--And Debate Their Design.
If you don't live in a city where they have duck tours, this may be a little hard to grasp, but duck tours are a big hit with tourists.
When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spots a pothole from the window of his limousine, he does the same thing he would tell any citizen to do: He calls the city's 311 hotline.
California is taking its approach to marijuana-as-medicine one step further: Patients will be able to whip out a piece of plastic proving that they're entitled to inhale for medicinal purposes.
Oregon's former governor is pushing a rational way to control drug
costs.
Bill Bratton is going after crime in L.A. the way he did in New York.
But it's a different place. Gangs are huge and the police force is
very small.
Credit downgrades happen all the time: The economy turns sour, budgets are stressed, the powers that be don't want to raise taxes or slash spending.
A new study finds that state enterprise zones don't do much good,
partly because they suffer from fuzzy policy goals.
State and local eyes are on canada, which has come to look like a giant discount drugstore to more and more American governments.
1It's a cliche that there are no great Washington novels. I don't know if it's true or not. It may be. The book most often cited as a candidate, "Democracy," by Henry Adams, was written 120 years ago; in recent times, more critics probably have praised it than have read it.
It's an American tradition to walk into your child's classroom and find the walls plastered with reams of paper--self-portraits, trees and cows, and fingerpainted masterpieces of all kinds. It's a tradition--but is it also a fire hazard?
A brochure with a manure-odor scratch 'n' sniff might not sound like a very good civic advertisement. But it's what Ottawa County, Michigan, is using to provide a reality check to city folk who hope to move out to the country for the fresh air, quietude and sweet smell of hay.
The feds are asking cities and counties to change their .gov ways, but
its new rule is getting some kickback.
Surveillance cameras at traffic lights are saving lives, but opponents
are finding new issues to raise against them.
In hard times, good sense should prevail. But that's not what's
happening with the re-crafting of transportation policy.
Indiana Governor Joseph Kernan still insists he's going home at the
end of next year. Democrats wish he wouldn't.
Investment markets can falter. When they do, pension bonds can become
a very risky business.
Some homeowners in Miami are getting the shocks of their lives: toilets that erupt with sewage shooting two feet in the air--with all the unpleasantness you might imagine.
Overselling a project can have unfortunate consequences, among them
earning the distrust of legislators.
When it comes to reducing medical errors, assessing blame is less
effective than identifying patterns and steps to correct problems.
Using the initiative process, Californians have fiscally handcuffed
their governor, legislature and local governments.
There was a small news item in last month's issue of this magazine. The Business of Government section reported on a new online program in Missouri that gathers disease data from 50 labs and hospitals and tells the Health Department almost instantly if something resembling an epidemic is loose in the state.
Hub-and-spoke transit systems reflect old commuting patterns. A few
metro areas are planning suburb-to-suburb rail lines.
What would happen if you built a light-rail line and hardly any passengers showed up?
Over the past 40 years, the IT industry has done more to shape state
and local governments than the other way around.
It's not easy to reform the sales tax by bringing services into its
fold. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
We've come to depend on states as the source of new policy ideas. They
aren't producing many right now.
Fellow Republicans in Texas don't think Carole Keeton Strayhorn is
much of a team player. That doesn't bother her a lot.
Can you turn around a place whose name is synonymous with urban blight? Surprisingly, yes. Example: Camden, New Jersey, the played-out factory town across the river from Philadelphia.
Many public management audits don't amount to much, but when they do find evidence of malfeasance or questionable practices, they can lead to some severe consequences and major management decisions.
No more of this milk-and-cookies stuff. Detroit wants hard numbers on what kids are doing after school and how that affects their grades, their likelihood to use drugs or engage in sexual activity and other outcomes.
The rise of specialty hospitals threatens the well-being of the all-
purpose community facility.
While compiling Medicaid managed care data can be daunting, it's an even greater challenge to present the numbers in a way that's accessible and useful. Virginia seems to have found success with a new, simplified reporting system.
When Kentuckians are asked about their new license plate--which says of the Bluegrass State: "It's that friendly"--they get downright grouchy.
Walking tours are an increasingly popular tourist draw in New Orleans' French Quarter, but they're also creating tension between sightseers and residents, who find the sidewalk-choking crowds annoying.
The Des Moines city council recently addressed a growing danger: the repeated incidence of vehicles running into heavy, and often elaborate, curbside mailboxes along city rights-of-way.
Twice this year, Democrats in the Texas Legislature have scooted across state lines to block passage of a Republican redistricting plan. Although exerting such effort to prevent a quorum is unusual, it is not entirely without precedent.
A Nevada ruling may open a way for other states to challenge their
tax-vote restrictions.
Knowing how startups are born is vital to economic development:
Entrepreneurs drive a lot of opportunities.
There's something about the subject of public housing that saps the enthusiasm of even the most dutiful students of government. Self- described policy wonks who have little trouble discoursing on the Medicaid dual-eligible problem or the mass transit mode split start to fidget when anybody brings up Section 8 or Hope VI.
You don't hear too much about this right-leaning state pressure group.
Maybe that's why it wins so often.
We can learn a lot about process improvement from poker. Well, from a poker movie, anyway.
Go to Honolulu's Web site for information on the city council or local elections, and you will encounter something you might not expect to see on a government Web page: an advertisement from Prudential Locations.
States--and even some localities--are trying to outmaneuver one
another on sales-tax breaks. Where will it all end?
Fast-growing school districts need to do a better job of planning for
the future. But that's easier said than done.
In 1994, Harold Levy went back to school. In the 25 years since he'd stepped inside a New York City school building, he had risen from a star pupil at the Bronx High School of Science to a corporate lawyer chairing a high-profile commission examining the infrastructure of the city's public education system. In those years, his old elementary school had not fared as well.
The idea of crafting a budget based on performance measures is
catching on--slowly.
Credentials may be important, but the skills, abilities, knowledge and
behavior of applicants are at least equally so.
Old-fashioned, free-spending lobbyists are an endangered species in
many places. But those who can adapt to the new rules have more clout
than ever.
The new rules on safe drinking water are both better and worse for
states and localities.
Let's remember that the regulatory systems we scrapped in the past two
decades were riddled with flaws and problems.
Like every sport, baseball is replete with stories of hopes fulfilled and laments about what might have been. The West Virginia Treasurer's Office understands this dynamic.
An emerging technology can give one set of employees access to data
about what's been done by others in related jobs.
Many cities are stepping up their rodent-control efforts--and touting
prevention rather than extermination.
Millions of Americans are convinced that government is careless with
their personal secrets. Government isn't doing much to reassure them.
To solve one of the longest-running controversies at the statehouse, Vermont senators finally took the tried-and-true approach: They appointed a committee.
This year's election could have the same profound impact on American
politics as the 1896 presidential contest.
Although it won $475.5 million in its case against American Management Systems this August, Mississippi is settling for less.
One TV ad points out the potential dangers and difficulties of shopping on the Internet: theft of credit card numbers, loss of privacy, the hassle of returning purchases. Another depicts two women having fun shopping at the local mall and fingering the merchandise
With the passage of an overtime law this summer, Maine has become the
first state to cap the number of hours employers can demand of their
employees.
Whether they're ready for it or not, San Diego County's 18
municipalities and 135 separate jurisdictions are heading toward
greater regional cooperation.
Short-term lending is a growth industry in states all over the
country. In many places, lenders can charge the customer whatever they
want.
Last year, Hurricane Floyd caused massive destruction and more than 50
deaths in Eastern North Carolina. Sections of highways and bridges
were washed away. Homes were destroyed.
When the New Jersey Turnpike flipped on the switch for E-ZPass this
fall, it made cashless travel possible on toll roads from Boston to
Philadelphia. It also ushered in the largest experiment yet with tolls
that vary by time of day.
One afternoon in the fall of 1995, John McDonough tells us in his new book, "Experiencing Politics," he was sitting in his seat on the floor of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as the chamber prepared to vote on a huge tax break for Raytheon, the locally based defense contractor.
Last spring's passage of a civil-unions law in Vermont, which grants
homosexual couples the same rights as married heterosexuals, has
pitted neighbor against neighbor in a bitter and widely publicized
battle. But from an economic perspective, the political struggle may
have its positive side.
Communities like the sound of the words `international airport.' And
they don't mind stretching the truth to use them.
One of the taxpayer-financed services that the city of Boston provides
for its residents is trash pickup. Many neighboring town governments
are not so beneficent, however.
The duck carcasses that hang in many a Chinese restaurant window may
not be an appetizing sight for all diners. But unlike most meat,
Peking duck has been deemed safe to serve at room temperature.
States are finding that a few billion dollars in tobacco money can go
a long way toward smoothing out differences.
You can lead Dallas city employees to water, but you can't make them
drink. Not if it's from the tap, anyway. A recent audit revealed that
the city spent $18,000 this year to support its employees' bottled-
water habit, a figure that some say is excessive. "Dallas prides
itself on providing the highest-quality drinking water possible," says
Mary Poss, chairwoman of the city council's finance and audit
committee.
What she lacks in youthful upside potential, she makes up for in
mature dependability: The muni bond's heyday is coming.
One step away from resorting to a divining rod, Wichita officials have
turned 10 years of mulling into a plan to secure enough water for the
city's future.
School systems have a lot to learn about managing and stretching their
limited and increasingly essential technology resources.
