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Colwyn, Pa., is a perfect example of what happens when virtually every aspect of local government breaks down.
Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke has been formally indicted on six counts of first-degree murder and one count of official misconduct for fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the Chicago Tribune has learned.
An appeals court panel on Tuesday refused to revive a lawsuit brought by two civil rights groups challenging Arizona's law banning abortions based on the race or sex of the child.
An arrest warrant for a city councilor in Birmingham, Alabama, who was involved in a fight with the mayor that sent both men to the hospital was withdrawn on Wednesday, officials said.
After years of testing, California has taken its first step toward putting cars that can drive themselves into the hands of its citizens.
New York has agreed to a major overhaul in the way solitary confinement is administered in the state’s prisons, with the goal of significantly reducing the number of inmates held in isolation, cutting the maximum length of stay and improving their living conditions.
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter after jurors said they had failed to reach an agreement on any of the charges against him in the death of Freddie Gray.
The Federal Reserve is raising short-term interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
Increases in retirees' longevity are likely to make an already dismal fiscal picture look worse.
Brazil's largest city is embarking on an ambitious experiment to educate its public employees on the benefits of transparency.
High schools across the United States are graduating students at an all-time-high rate of 82.3 percent.
Two bottom-tier Republican presidential candidates have missed the filing deadline for the Texas primary.
The Delaware governor, who has led the Democratic and National governors associations, talks about workforce development, the state of governors, the future of his party and more.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that he is extending the deployment of National Guard troops at the southern border to combat the dramatic increase in young migrants caught crossing into the U.S.
A new Wisconsin law that provides a time-saving and waste-slashing process for doctors to be licensed in multiple states will expand health-care access in rural areas and, eventually, help curb rising costs throughout the country, proponents say.
Maryland residents may now buy a lifesaving nasal spray used to reverse a heroin overdose without a prescription.
Judge Barry G. Williams on Tuesday ordered a deadlocked jury back to work, asking them to try harder to reach a consensus on Officer William G. Porter's guilt or innocence in the death of Freddie Gray.
Although Florida saw a drop in 2015 in both the number of death-row inmates executed and the number of criminals sentenced to death, findings from a national nonprofit research organization show the Sunshine State continues to be an "outlier" in its administration of capital punishment.
A crudely written email threat to members of the Los Angeles Board of Education prompted officials to close all 900 schools in the nation's second-largest school system Tuesday, sending parents scrambling to find day care _ while New York law enforcement dismissed a nearly identical threat from the same sender as an obvious hoax.
In guiding the transformation, governments need to be in the driver's seat.
For three years, Jesse Ancira Jr. has juggled being a mayor and the top adviser to one of his state's most powerful politicians.
A few cities recently lowered the voting age to 16 for local elections. The idea has been debated for years but now appears to have some momentum.
A federal judge temporarily blocked Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine from going to court seeking changes in how Planned Parenthood clinics dispose of fetal remains following abortions.
Usually what happens in Woodland stays in Woodland, a town 115 miles east of Raleigh with one Dollar General store and one restaurant.
The Seattle City Council voted unanimously Monday to give taxi, for-hire and Uber drivers the ability to unionize.
Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said he won't seek re-election so his administration can focus on reducing the Caribbean island's $70 billion debt load.
The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust probe of two massive proposed insurance mergers has dominated the spotlight as hospitals, doctors and lawmakers fret over the impact of allowing Anthem to absorb Cigna Corp. and Aetna to swallow Humana.
After a brief but tearful plea for leniency from former Secretary of State Dianna Duran, state District Judge T. Glenn Ellington on Monday sentenced her to 30 days in jail, a fine of $14,000 and restitution totaling $13,866.
In 2016, states are expected to continue the growth they've experienced since the Great Recession. But the new era of growth is a modest one.
Budgets aren't as transparent as they could be. There are ways (some simpler than others) to fix that.
Casey Hodge stepped from the prison van, trembling under the weight of her thick handcuffs and leg shackles. The slight 25-year-old was led with a group of other women into a small room and ordered to strip naked.
Ali Sinicrope and her husband would like to buy a house, but they’re not sure they can afford it. They’re public school teachers in Middletown, Connecticut, and they owe $80,000 in student loans.
Controversy over Arizona's tough immigration law rages on, but an Arizona Daily Star analysis shows that the Border Patrol is picking up few people in Tucson for possible deportation.
The Chicago Teachers Union on Monday delivered the city a message that union leaders have threatened for weeks: Educators are prepared to walk off the job for the second time since 2012 if an agreement can't be reached on a new contract.
States and cities spent this enrollment season finding creative ways to reach the millions who still have no health insurance.
California lawmakers' repeated failures to agree on legislation to resolve the state's seemingly endless battle over how to use its water resources raise new questions about whether they'll ever be able to find a compromise.
A Collin County judge has denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's requests to dismiss criminal charges accusing him of financial fraud.
As United Nations officials worked towards a compromise on the fight against global climate change, cities and regions representing nearly one-fifth of the world’s population took the chance to announce their own accord.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Sunday that states should be granted access to federal terror watch and no-fly lists for use in screening potential gun buyers.
Planned Parenthood has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court aimed at protecting access to safe and legal abortions for women in Ohio, according to a statement released by the organization on Sunday.
Sylvester Turner's 24-year quest for the mayor's office was realized by a narrow margin Saturday night, driven by overwhelming support from black voters and a robust effort to push supporters to the polls.
From parking meters to freeway lighting, governments are finding new ways to turn infrastructure liabilities into assets and improve services.
What if people who live near transit stations drive less and own fewer cars for reasons that have nothing to do with the transit stations?
Through what’s known as a drug waiver, state officials will have new spending flexibility as they try to improve outcomes and reduce social and financial costs of people with substance abuse disorders.
Researchers can mine Google data to identify searched phrases that spiked during previous upticks in a particular disease. Then, they measure the frequency of those searches in real time to estimate the number of emerging cases.
More than two dozen religiously affiliated colleges and universities across the United States have received exemptions from the federal civil rights protections provided under Title IX since 2014, documents show, waivers that activists said allow them to discriminate against students and employees on the basis of categories like sexual orientation and gender identity.
Gov. Bill Walker on Wednesday released his long-awaited proposal to fix the state's budget deficit -- a plan with new and steeper taxes, smaller budget cuts than last year's, and a restructuring of the Alaska Permanent Fund that includes a cut in state residents' annual dividend.
With the stroke of a pen, the No Child Left Behind Act became history on Thursday.
Jurors Thursday night found a fired Oklahoma City police officer guilty of sexual offenses involving eight victims and chose punishments that could mean he will never go free.
he United States and Britain are bound by a common language and a shared history, and their law enforcement agencies have been close partners for generations.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced Thursday that he will sign an executive order blocking anyone on federal government terrorism watch lists from obtaining a gun permit.
After two brutal winters and allegedly being overcharged for road salt, Cleveland is ready for snow.
As cities explore ways to use citizen complaints to enhance public services, research shows there are drawbacks to such data.
Just like in Washington last year, Pennsylvania state lawmakers are still struggling to produce a state budget and avoid a partial government shutdown.
A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
The small, rural town of Gifford, S.C., survives with help from just 12 enthusiastic public employees -- most of whom aren't even paid.
Republicans have the governorship and the state House in Iowa, but Democrats have Mike Gronstal, who adheres to the old-fashioned sense that voters elect politicians to work on policy before retreating to their respective partisan corners.
Over the past two decades, corporations have doubled their profits but contributed increasingly less to state revenues. Where is all the money going?
These are the biggest policies and problems that states will confront this year.
Bees are vital to the food we eat, and they’re vanishing. Michigan State University is coordinating efforts to save them.
Roughly 1 in 20 pregnant women use illicit drugs. States are cracking down on the problem with starkly different approaches.
Republicans could strengthen their power in many states this year, but Democrats only have realistic chances in two.
A 17-year-old was shot by Wichita police. Police say he was armed and running toward the police officer who fired. His mother says her son was "unarmed and shot in the back while running." The shooting was captured on camera.
Called Cards Against Urbanity, the game is a twist on the popular and politically incorrect Cards Against Humanity.
Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have given millions to overhaul public education. But their cash has proven to be anything but free money or a remedy to systemic problems.
After voters eased penalties for several common crimes, opponents claim the reforms have led to a crime wave.
The Ohio governor and long-shot presidential candidate would ban gun sales to those on the no-fly list, but he said he worries about banning sales from the larger Terrorism Screening Database because that it would alert people that they are being watched as terrorism suspects.
The growing intensity of natural disasters is a threat to state and local governments’ fiscal stability. How can they protect their finances and the environment?
Massachusetts has begun using data analytics to predict where they might occur.
Many states and cities get hung up on low prices and fail to consider a company's performance when deciding whether to contract with them.
Most important, their prospects for survival can teach us about the resiliency of urban areas everywhere.
In some cities, the personality of its residents may play a part in economic success (or failure).
Republican-controlled chamber scheduled a Jan. 12 hearing on whether Kathleen Kane, who is facing criminal charges and whose law license has been suspended, can continue to function as the state's top law-enforcement official.
When lower-income Americans move, it's seen as a result of displacement instead of opportunity. This negative perception needs to change.
Gun rights groups will likely stage their demonstration on Guadalupe Street, adjacent to campus.
In the ideological war over urban planning, anti-transit conservatives are gaining funding and allies.
State insurance exchanges are healthy financially even without the federal funding that ran out this year, a top Obama administration official told a House subcommittee Tuesday.
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a new bid by Texas officials to block Syrian refugees, describing the source of the state's fear of letting in nine more people from the war-torn country as "largely speculative hearsay."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried to reset how he's handled the most severe crisis of his tenure, giving a determined and at times emotional speech to the City Council on Wednesday in which he pledged to finally end Chicago's entrenched practice of police brutality and apologized for failing to fix the deep-seated issue sooner.
Former D.C. mayor Vincent C. Gray will not be charged after a years-long federal probe into the illegal financing of his 2010 campaign, as prosecutors announced the end of the investigation Wednesday.
The future of affirmative action at public universities appeared in some doubt Wednesday as the Supreme Court justices debated for a second time whether to strike down a race-based admissions policy at the University of Texas.
Almost 14 years ago, the U.S. House of Representatives voted by a huge, bipartisan margin to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, which put the federal government front and center when it came to how K-12 schools measured student performance and fixed struggling schools.
The organization is spending $42 million to help the selected cities improve their performance and services using data-driven decisionmaking.
By spiking in later years, pension benefits don't align with experience. We need to be fairer to educators who are learning their craft.
California recently revealed that it paid billions in fees to private equity managers, leading several other state pension systems to call for more transparency in such investments.
Michael Nutter accused the businessman of taking “a page from the playbook of Hitler” in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination,
The nation’s growing diversity is not reflected in state legislatures. Nationwide, African-Americans, who make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for 9 percent of state legislators. Latinos, who are 17 percent of the population, only account for 5 percent of state legislators.
Last month, voters in America's fourth biggest city rejected a gay rights law. This month, they elected a new mayor dedicated to expanding government services.
Gov. Mike Pence said Tuesday he will not block a Syrian refugee family from receiving state aid such as food stamps and health care, even as he continues to oppose its relocation to Indiana.
Cities and towns across Illinois will soon receive an infusion of cash to operate 911 centers, plow roads and train firefighters under a measure the Senate sent Gov. Bruce Rauner and he quickly signed Monday.
Democratic lawmakers -- with no Republican votes --passed a bill Tuesday that cuts corporate taxes and slices $350 million in spending to balance the state's $20 billion budget in the current fiscal year.
In his final hours as governor, Steve Beshear Monday night granted 201 pardons and six commutations to people sentenced for a range of offenses, including 10 women sentenced for violent crimes they committed after suffering years of domestic violence.
Should children and noncitizens count in drawing political districts?
The FBI’s system for tracking fatal police shootings is a “travesty,” and the agency will replace it by 2017, dramatically expanding the information it gathers on violent police encounters in the United States, a senior FBI official said Tuesday.
Particularly during a recession, a county's ability to attract and retain residents depends largely on what industries drive its economy.
As coastal communities are confronted with increasingly costly storms, they are turning to buyouts, to create natural buffers along the coast and help protect nearby neighborhoods and businesses from flooding.
The Iowa Republican, who's been in office through three economic downturns, surpasses the 18th-century governor who previously held the title.
At least seven states could vote either way in next year's presidential election, but that number may be even higher. If it is, Democrats should worry.
Thanks to a change in federal law, states are moving away from stringent reporting requirements that can keep low-wage parents from working.
A neighborhood zoning administrator says the manager constitutes the violation, not the zombie dolls within it.
The "Voter Accountability and Transparency Act" would change state law to require that the financial statements all candidates are required to file include credit scores.
Because of the importance of churches in African-American communities, Alameda County has focused specifically on churches, inviting religious leaders to discussions about mental health and funding workshops to help congregants reach out to one another.
A visibly disgusted Gov. Charlie Baker condemned fellow Republican Donald Trump's call for a "complete and total ban" on Muslims entering the U.S. yesterday, even as new details emerged that Islamic extremists have considered using the refugee program to infiltrate the country.
The Supreme Court took up a bitter dispute Monday between the state of California and an inventor it says moved to Nevada in the early 1990s to avoid paying taxes.
After a day of celebration Tuesday on becoming Kentucky's 62nd governor, Republican Matt Bevin faces the stark reality of governing a challenged state.
Connecticut's governor, Dannel P. Malloy, has been auditioning for this moment.
The U.S. Justice Department announced a civil rights investigation Monday into the use of deadly force by Chicago cops, prompting Mayor Rahm Emanuel to make what just days ago would have been considered a stunning admission: He needs the federal government's help to clean up his police department.
The Supreme Court gave an apparent green light Monday to lawmakers who want to restrict the sale of guns such as the rapid-fire weapons that have been used in the recent wave of mass shootings from Paris to San Bernardino, Calif.
Over the last decade 49 states experienced a drop in the per-capita rate of delinquents required to live at correctional centers and group homes. But North Dakota saw an 18 percent rise during this period.
Robert Patton is leaving as director of Oklahoma Department of Corrections after controversy over bungled executions of condemned inmates.
The city has a new green "bike box," designed to improve safety and give cyclists a head start against motorists.
What will the cities of tomorrow be like? Today's innovations offer clues.
State legislators receive a relatively modest base salary of $24,140 but the lawmakers' average total compensation runs about $60,000 a year.
This time, the vote in Congress to send a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act to President Barack Obama's desk was supposed to be easy.
The state pension fund is more than doubling investments in clean energy and sustainability, including a new $2 billion fund that will put more money behind green energy and less in companies responsible for large emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said Friday.
It is a system seemingly designed to fail.
The U.S. Department of Justice will open a wide-ranging civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department after the release of a video showing a patrolman's fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald and police reports from the officers on the scene that conflict with that video.
The massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., now being investigated as a terrorist attack, has reshaped the political debate in an election that strategists in both parties had thought would be fought primarily over domestic policy.
Since 1993, 11 people have been killed in abortion-related attacks — doctors, clinic staff, and last week, a police officer and two visitors in the line of fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
Under new policy if a home or business has a rooftop solar system, most of the wattage isn't included in the ambitious requirement to generate half of the state's electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind by 2030.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider allowing a Puerto Rico law that would let its debt-ridden public utilities restructure their obligations.
Pacifist Klansmen and gay-tolerant anti-Islamists fight in this Dallas suburb, which rarely saw public dissent beyond a split City Council vote until recently. Residents are having trouble keeping up with all the counter-protests and counter-counter-protests.
New DEA rules in 2014 allow pharmacies to collect unwanted controlled substances; some state and local officials want drugmakers to pay for drug disposals.
All levels of government experienced weak job growth, while the private sector expanded five times faster.
Democrats in the state Legislature could not override Gov. Chris Christie's veto of gun-control legislation. The bill would have made it more difficult for people with a history of mental illness to expunge such records for the purpose of buying a firearm.
Jeffrey Beard, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has announced he plans to retire.
Forty Kansas State University distinguished professors have signed a letter to the Legislature, seeking to halt the plan to allow concealed weapons on campus, the university reported Wednesday.
The city will not ask voters to approve a plan to finance the construction of a new professional football stadium on downtown's north riverfront.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday reversed his opposition to a possible U.S. Justice Department review of the Chicago Police Department's practices, the type of investigation that has led to federal court oversight and sweeping reforms in other troubled, big-city police departments throughout the country.
The U.S. Postal Service has warned newspapers that it is a felony to mail material that includes marijuana advertising.
At the federal level, there's little to no movement to change the nation's gun laws one way or the other.
Thirty-five investors who lost nearly $20 million in South Dakota’s EB-5 program sued the state Wednesday, accusing the state and its agents of committing fraud and misrepresenting the viability of a $120 million beef packing plant.
Planned Parenthood gets most of the attention in the abortion debate. But independent clinics and their employees actually provide the majority of abortions in America -- and are more at-risk.
States are trying to figure out how to regulate and tax fantasy sports sites like FanDuel and DraftKings.
The New Jersey governor has approved a measure prohibiting the state from awarding tax breaks of more than $25,000 to an applicant that hasn't fulfilled the requirement of an earlier award.
The outgoing Philadelphia police commissioner still plans to retire altogether, despite the sudden opening of what he once described as "a dream job."
Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Democrats have reached a decision about how pay lottery winners, help cities and towns operate 911 centers, plow roads and train firefighters.
The City Council approved six weeks of paid parental leave Wednesday.
Gov.-elect Matt Bevin’s plan to end Kynect has brought a strong rebuke from Obamacare advocates and the outgoing governor, but it’s also revived questions about whether the states or the federal government are best positioned to run the marketplaces.
A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
In a hotly contested move, Los Angeles lawmakers decided Wednesday to carve out more exemptions to a city law meant to curb the carnage of mass shootings, arguing that it would better protect the public from such attacks.
Masked assailants armed with assault rifles opened fire on a holiday banquet for county employees in San Bernardino on Wednesday, killing 14 people and plunging a nation already on edge about terrorism and mass shootings into hours of tense uncertainty.
Texas state officials on Wednesday sued the federal government and a local nonprofit in an attempt to keep out a family of six Syrian refugees who are scheduled to arrive in Dallas on Friday, setting up the first legal fight over the Obama administration's plans to take in more refugees from the war-torn country.
A preliminary autopsy report indicates Mayor Greg Fisk died of natural causes Monday, the Juneau Police Department said Wednesday afternoon.
California will have a massive footprint at the United Nations summit on climate change in Paris, a symbol of the state's political commitment to fighting global warming and the business interest of companies that can benefit from clean energy policies.
After nearly a decade of wrangling over the role the federal government should have in education, Congress is poised to approve an overhaul of the 2002 No Child Left Behind law that would give more authority to Maryland and other states to address their failing schools.
The number of fatal car crashes fell overall last year. But in some states, they were on the rise.
Here's how the new bill, which has been signed by Obama, will impact states and localities.
New England’s most densely populated city is testing a new way to alleviate congestion and free up more space for public transit, pedestrians and bicyclists.
A roundup of public-sector management news you need to know.
