Archive
When the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike opened in 1794, it was the first major toll road in the United States. It also was the first thoroughfare...
Gregg Flecha earned pretty good money last year, for a 9-year-old. As a fourth-grader at P.S. 64 in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, Gregg...
As some schools experiment with cash incentives for students, others are resurrecting the idea of paying teachers bonuses for good performance. Traditionally, teachers have been...
When she took over as Los Angeles controller in 2001, the most trenchant piece of counsel that Laura Chick received from her predecessor, Rick Tuttle, was...
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a city of just over 150,000 people, almost half of the annual public transit budget doesn't go for buses, or trolleys,...
"It's not an easy job being a jailer," says Captain Hunter Petray, who works in the sheriff's office in Benton County, Arkansas. Few would dispute...
Given a climate of national recession, Maine's budget process went pretty smoothly in 2009. Despite some scary revenue shortfalls, the legislature passed a $5.8 billion budget bill...
It took Laura Chick barely a month in Sacramento to start making waves. As California's new inspector general charged with overseeing how the state spends...
The president brought it up himself. He talked seriously to a New York Times reporter in May about end-of-life health care choices--the tremendous drain they...
As an engineer with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, John Chang is always on the lookout for ways to save water. Recently,...
Ron Dellums never really wanted to be mayor of Oakland. He expressed doubts when civic leaders recruited him to run in 2006, and ever since then,...
When Roy Barnes lost his reelection bid as Georgia's Democratic governor in 2002, it was the surprise of the year. Now, the man his opponents once...
The recent bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors are halting, for now, a furious burst of state legislative lobbying by the nation's car dealers.
As...
Transportation might seem like the one issue best suited for local, state and federal cooperation. No transit system is built without affecting the planning process...
Fiscal shortfalls in the tens of billions of dollars are virtually an annual occurrence in California. But this year, the state's voters seem even more...
Photo by Christopher Swope
Janette Sadik-Khan is the transportation commissioner of New York City, and a leading proponent of idea that streets serve many uses...
The biggest production on Broadway this summer won't be in a theater. Rather, the show will be out in the street, starring the road itself....
After 20 years of technology proliferation and integration in the public sector, government has become totally dependent on the use of IT solutions to conduct daily...
While pondering how to help people recovering from a mental illness, Elise Sanford, a photographer and mental health advocate in Athens, Ohio, had a hunch:...
There is a consistent concern with performance-based contracting in education, physical and mental health, and social services: Providers will want to sign up only those...
When it comes to surviving the swine flu, Texans, Californians and folks in other states along our southern border have fared better than their neighbors...
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has something none of his predecessors have had: billions of dollars in discretionary funds. The question is whether they will be...
With the census less than a year away, cities across the country are gearing up fast. Although the census is a constitutional responsibility of the...
Sam Adams may be off to the worst start of any American politician since President William Henry Harrison. While Adams didn't catch a fatal case...
These days, even cops can't get immunity. Given state and local budget woes, governments are taking a serious look at cutting programs they'd rather hold...
California, 2008
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't sign the budget until 85 days after the 2009 fiscal year began, making it the latest in state history. Although state government...
Despite his abysmal poll ratings, it might be a mistake to rule out Governor Jon Corzine for reelection in New Jersey. This coming month may...
Last summer, just as the nation's credit markets were about to tighten, Gregory Schmidt received a loan from his bank under extraordinarily generous terms. His...
When Pam Fischer sees motorists holding a cell phone while driving, she doesn't hesitate to pull up alongside, roll down her window and inform them...
More than two decades ago, Michael Hunt noticed something interesting about Hilldale, a well-established neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin. Elderly people were moving into its apartment...
The biggest production on Broadway this summer won't be in a theater. Rather, the show will be out in the street, starring the road itself....
Fifteen years ago, when a new business tried to put down roots in Kansas, the business owner had to mail in a paper registration and...
Things were starting to go sour for Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe. Earlier this year, both chambers of the state legislature quickly passed a new 3-cent...
We'd always take a tax cut, of course," says David Johnson, the former chairman of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association. Nothing surprising in those words, but...
Tax incentives have long been endorsed as the highway to prosperity -- attracting businesses, providing jobs and enriching the state. That's been conventional wisdom in...
On January 29, Florida's voters will decide whether to approve a constitutional amendment -- sent to them by the state legislature -- that would set sharp...
It's been known for a long time that obsolete state tax systems are not producing the revenue states need. But what's becoming clear today is...
What will they think of next? Winter Haven, Florida, is imposing an accident response fee -- for services rendered when police officers and firefighters come...
You may have never thought about the color of your pipes. You might even think the topic is so mundane that no one could possibly...
The Balitmore Police Department provided GOVERNING with footage from one of the city's cameras, located in a western section of downtown Baltimore. Police Commissioner Frederick...
When some labor unions in Rockford, Ill., came out in support of an increase in the local sales tax last month, it wasn't big news....
If a citizen is having trouble with a state agency, what should he or she do? E-mailing the governor's office seems like a logical idea...
Last year, the City of Boston needed help, and a lot of it. Its top management team was suddenly full of holes. In the space...
With prison populations that have swelled by factors of six or eight over the last 25 years, many states, including California, are facing real problems regarding...
A couple of years ago, the state of California did something surprising. It changed the name of its Department of Corrections, tacking on the words "...
Justice Martin Johnstone's first campaign for the Kentucky Supreme Court was a big deal. It was 1996, and state judicial elections had always been small-time affairs....
PARTISAN ELECTIONS
Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Michigan, Ohio
NON-PARTISAN ELECTIONS
Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota,...
Almost two years ago, this space discussed George W. Bush's centerpiece education program in a column that started off this way: "There is a rebellion...
It isn't a strong economy that produces healthy people. It's healthy people that produce a strong economy." Peter Johnson is standing in a meeting room...
The Colorado city's citizens are going along with a "carbon tax" to control greenhouse gases that affect the climate.
No doubt the new U.S....
Tracy Welsh is the executive director of the HIV Law Project, a New York City group founded in 1989 to provide legal and advocacy services to...
Call it the six stages of GASB 45: anger, denial, sorrow, acceptance, study and action. That's been the general response to a new set of governmental...
On a rainy day last June, local officials in Washington, D.C., gathered under tents erected on a public plaza to be tested for HIV....
Governing Correspondent Rob Gurwitt went to Los Angeles to get a feel for the politics and policies of its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. I talked with...
One of the most expensive flops in television history was "Supertrain", a show about a 200-mile-per-hour, nuclear-powered locomotive -- a landlocked "Love Boat" with celebrity...
During the first week of December 2006, about a dozen Los Angeles hotel workers set up a week-long fast outside the Westin LAX hotel, not far...
Talk about impact. One day Wal-Mart is launching a small pilot program in Tampa to sell 314 generic drugs at $4 each for a 30-day supply. Two...
Dana Levenson is the chief financial officer of Chicago. A former banker, Levenson came to city government in 2004 as Chicago was wrapping up its $1.83 billion...
Edwin Harrison is director of financial services for Harris County, Texas. Last year, Harris County looked into selling or leasing its 83 miles worth of toll...
Bradley Abelow is the treasurer of New Jersey. In September, he asked the investment bank UBS to scour state government for assets to consider selling...
Richard M. Daley might say, with a wink and a nod, that he's got a bridge he'd like to sell you. Except that Daley has...
When I set out for New Hampshire to report "Blue Challenge" my task was clear. I had to explain how the Democratic gains in the...
John Shea, of Nelson, New Hampshire, is nothing if not persistent. For many years, he has wanted a seat on the state Executive Council, the...
Much of the Democrats' success in state elections last year was due to dissatisfaction with the way things were going in Washington, D.C. Voters...
When it comes to the growing costs of government, one thing particularly rankles Dean Rich, the finance director for O'Fallon, Illinois: two police officers claiming...
Language is powerful. So when a negative word becomes linked to an idea or program, the result often is damaging.
That's what I see happening...
The technology staff for Indianapolis and surrounding Marion County recently deployed a sophisticated new piece of hardware - a collaboration tool, known to many carnival-goers...
It's tough to imagine that steamy Florida may be running out of water. Yet state and local water managers this spring barred homeowners from sprinkling...
Tracy Finch would prefer to show visitors around the south side of Charlotte by train. But the city's first light-rail line won't open until this...
Rhode Island's been quick off the mark. When it comes to health IT, it's got a lot going for it. The governor, Donald Carcieri, doesn't...
This year, lawmakers in Washington tried everything to extend health coverage to the uninsured. They earmarked money to cover more children, allowed small employers to...
Picture this: Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell comes to the nation's capital to tell a gathering of health care advocates, health industry representatives and health writers...
For the past five years, clerks at the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles have been enforcing new rules for getting a driver's license. It hasn't...
For one year ending this spring, hundreds of motorists around Portland, Oregon, got used to watching their cars' odometers very closely. They had good reason...
You can find practically anything you need along Indian School and Thomas roads in Phoenix - at the tortillerias, the pharmacies, the supermarkets, the auto...
Most dry summer months, somewhere in the country, a wildfire flares into a fearsome sight that fills the sky with harrowing flames and forbidding columns...
Under New York Police Commissioner Bratton and his small brain trust of tacticians, the NYPD became a proving ground for police officers and officials who took seriously the idea that they could prevent crimes from occurring.
It's hard to imagine an entertainer anywhere in America more despised by the Republican right than pop singer Sheryl Crow. She's a boisterous supporter of...
Get ready for a medical malpractice crisis. The roiling stock market could drag down earnings on investment portfolios: If it does, insurance companies that issue...
That means focusing on infrastructure funding in response to the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. It also means trying to get homeowners into less-risky fixed-rate mortgages,...
Back in the summer of 1966, a rock group named the The Standells enjoyed their only major hit, "Dirty Water." The words were inspired by Massachusetts'...
David Litchliter is an unusual creature in state government - a longtime chief information officer, whose 13 years on the job make him as rare as...
California is home to slightly more nurses than lawyers, but that's about to change. According to state projections, there will be a glut of attorneys...
Anyone who shops online knows how one purchase can quickly lead to another. It's not just the ease of clicking on an item and having...
To say it's been a remarkable year for Michael Nutter is to understate the case. As the campaign for mayor of Philadelphia began last winter,...
When an established magazine changes its design, publishers call it a "relaunch." So it's perhaps fitting that Governing's premiere issue in its new look comes...
Every summer, but especially in off-year election seasons like this one, the Mississippi state capitol moves to a dusty fairground in Neshoba County. The unofficial...
We have just selected a president who is concerned about health care in this country. But the economic downturn has made President-elect Barack Obama's challenge...
As winter sets in, mayors in northern climes may want to reflect on something that David Axelrod, one of the masterminds of Barack Obama's presidential...
Here's a typical Friday schedule for Jeff Herring, the director of human resources for the state of Utah: First, a leisurely breakfast with his wife...
When a full moon rises in Richmond, Virginia, police officers may feel their hackles rise, too. The presence of a full moon statistically correlates with...
For years, efforts to expand health insurance seemed like an exclusively "blue state" activity. Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine enacted sweeping proposals designed to expand...
On a sunny fall afternoon, Rafael Ramos pulls up in front of a modest house in a working-class neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. He hops...
Two years ago, when Massachusetts legislators began debating near-universal health insurance, a lot of smart people helped them craft the package. And all of these...
After this month's elections, President Bush is likely to end up with a large memorial in San Francisco to visit during his retirement. It's neither "...
When the town of Vallejo, California, declared bankruptcy this spring, Mayor Osby Davis predicted -- and rightly so -- that he'd get an earful from...
Leon Duff retired as a Maine school superintendent in 2001, but not for good. In the seven years since, he's been called back into school administration...
If you want to see how regional consolidation works when it really works, you might take a look at Stuttgart, the manufacturing capital of southwestern...
The Florida Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion. It also protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it defends the...
Two years ago, a report came in of a plane crash on a grassy hillside near Anchorage's airport, in the middle of a park where...
It won't be like Hurricane Katrina: a cataclysmic event that kills, injures or traumatizes everyone within its force and destroys homes, highways and businesses within...
When public finance officers met this summer in Anaheim, their association's outgoing president kicked off the convention with an all-out assault on an accounting board....
Call it the Google lift or the Microsoft bump. This spring, these tech powerhouses announced they were entering the field of personal health records, and...
Before dawn on April 29, the driver of a gasoline truck in Oakland, California, lost control of his rig and flipped it on an Interstate connector...
Randi Weingarten likes to brag a little about the reading and math test scores posted this year at two New York City charter schools she...
They're on the rise - again. Health insurance premiums are up 6.1 percent on average this year - a relatively modest increase - but overall they're 78...
With Virginia struggling to pay for such pressing priorities as transportation and education and the legislature exhibiting its traditional lack of appetite for raising taxes,...
A year of electronic forensics has failed to resolve what went wrong at the polls in Florida's Sarasota County last November, when 18,000 voters mysteriously appeared...
Late this month, 10 Northeastern states will conclude an auction like no other in American history. What's up for grabs is not art or property. It's...
Earlier this summer, residents of Lenoir, North Carolina, a small town about 70 miles northwest of Charlotte, gathered for a community picnic. Under a white tent,...
One day this June, a group of state agency managers came to Governor Mark Sanford with a pitch. They wanted to raise the projected growth...
Texas' first foray into a high-profile streamlining of social and health services delivery paid off impressively: In 1993, the Lone Star state won an Innovations in...
Hey! What do you know? It's cold!"
Rick Simonetta isn't talking about the temperature in downtown Phoenix, which today is 92 degrees in the shade. What's...
Aneesh Chopra has entered the nail-biting phase of the venture capital investing cycle. He has scoured his market carefully for new uses of technology. And...
When a dozen peacocks turned up in Judi Zito's fenced backyard in Pinecrest, Florida, one of 28 small municipalities that are part of Miami-Dade County, she...
There is going to be a hard-fought campaign for mayor of Atlanta next year, and to understand it better, you might pay a visit to...
These are nervous days in Montgomery. Federal prosecutors, investigating corruption in Alabama's two-year college system, have subpoenaed legislators by the dozen -- in some cases...
It is an understatement to say that the financial markets are in an "unsettled" state. They are in paroxysms of uncertainty. For those in charge...
The death of Deamonte Driver shocked the country. Deamonte, a 12-year-old from suburban Prince George's County, Maryland, died in February 2007 when bacteria from an abscessed...
Shalique Edmond has come to the Loft at Charlotte's children's library, as he does nearly every Saturday, to record a hip-hop song. In the library's...
Clearly, residents of San Diego would rather not drink their own wastewater. The first time the idea of it came up, about a decade ago,...
When his state holds its primaries later this month, Bill Bradbury will be in charge of the details. That's part of his role as secretary...
Blame it on Orange County. Back in 1994, the huge California county filed for bankruptcy after losing billions of dollars on a risky investment in financial...
Woodbury County, Iowa, isn't the first place you'd expect people to worry about where their food comes from. The county, which includes Sioux City and...
Winter Haven, Florida, imposes an accident- response fee-for services rendered when police officers and firefighters ride to the rescue. Wisconsin triples the price of its...
I live in Massachusetts, where 97 percent of the population now has health insurance. Yet state leaders are scrambling to cut costs in the face of...
Ask 10 people what a park should be, and you're likely to get 10 different answers. Some think parks are for strolling, hiking, bicycling or rollerblading. Others...
The federal stimulus package provides $8 billion for high-speed rail--and a lot of tough questions. As states fight for this pot of money, they'll have to...
Woody Allen once described death as "a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses." In the past decade, states all over the country...
Gambling proponents typically overstate the amount of revenue that lotteries and casinos will generate for state treasuries. But the numbers rarely fall as far short...
For a few months in 2005, people in San Antonio were talking about Julián Castro as the Hispanic Barack Obama. The city councilman, educated at...
Jeff Frederick won't give up. Ousted as chairman of the state Republican Party last month, he may seek the post again at the party convention...
Last month, the Iowa Supreme Court threw out a state law banning gay marriages, while the Vermont legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto to allow same-sex...
A flurry of gruesome shootings nearly always brings the issue of gun control back into public debate. That's happening again, in the wake of cop...
Laura Allen is no one's idea of an unrepentant lawbreaker. But under California's state plumbing code, that's exactly what she is. Allen, a soft-spoken elementary...
ALASKA/Checkbook Online
URL: fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/checkbook_online
What it does: Provides Excel or PDF spreadsheets with spending by organization, vendor...
"A new level of transparency" is what President Obama says he wants as state and local governments spend economic-stimulus dollars. But what does that mean?...
In 2006, Georgia's information technology systems were a borderline mess. No one was a harsher critic than the man in charge of them. "Our business model...
It's Friday night, a few minutes past 9 o'clock, and people are pouring into the 13,500-seat Baltimore Arena. They're here to see one of the biggest...
In the Atlanta region, commuter buses have all the comforts of home. With television sets on board, passengers can lean back in cushy seats and...
Twelve years ago, Bill Clinton and the U.S. Congress ended "welfare as we know it." Gone was the idea of an open-ended entitlement for...
Each branch of the federal government is housed in its own palace in Washington. The White House -- always surprisingly small to visitors -- is...
Whacked by budget deficits and with no end to sluggish economies in sight, states, cities and counties have been forced to make the hardest cuts...
