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Houston's mayor has set the pace for leveraging data-driven management to improve city-government efficiency.
The amendment adopted Tuesday reverts Alaska residency requirements to Permanent Fund dividend eligibility, which, among other qualifications, requires a person be physically present in the state.
Henry Perea, leader of Legislature's moderate Democrats, will resign to seek a government relations job.
Council members approved salary increases of 8.1 to 10.6 percent for themselves after deferring raises during the recession. They also decided corporations, unions and political action committees will no longer be prohibited from contributing to campaigns.
Metal detectors were in place Monday at three entrances to the Ohio Statehouse as part of increased security measures. A fourth Statehouse entrance has been permanently closed and legislators have banned backpacks.
Several states mandate public reporting of price information, but online cost estimators offered through insurance company are often inaccurate.
The $31,690 Johnny Melton received to settle a lawsuit over his mother's death was going to help him start life anew after prison.
Alabama would pay just over $51,000 in legal fees to settle a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood Southeast over Gov. Robert Bentley's attempt to cancel the organization's Medicaid contract, under an agreement filed in federal court Monday morning.
The Obama Administration won a small but significant battle on Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court denied Texas’ request for an extra 30 days to respond to the White House’s petition for review of a controversial immigration case.
Californians missed their state-ordered water savings target for the first time, regulators reported Tuesday, and there's a counterintuitive twist: The cooler, wetter weather may be to blame.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has appointed the former top law enforcement officer in Maryland to head a wide-ranging investigation into the chain of pornographic emails exchanged among state prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement officials on government computers.
They are well-known and respected in Chicago's legal community, but whether members of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new policing task force will be able to repair the fractured relationship between the Chicago Police Department and the community and prevent future police abuses was met with skepticism Tuesday.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday announced he has dismissed Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, citing a lack of public trust in the police leadership in the wake of the high-profile shooting that eventually led to a white officer being charged with first-degree murder in the death of a black teen shot 16 times in a Southwest Side street last year.
Many co-op plans were priced low, and customers poured in. But these new customers had high health costs, so the co-ops had to start paying a lot of bills. The math didn’t add up.
Scott Walker has signed a bill to distribute excess Lambeau Field taxes to local governments in Brown County.
The N.J. insurance chief refuses to stop sales of OMNIA health plans.
Takeovers of lousy schools by parents never began. No new schools will be eligible for the trigger for the next three years, according to the Department of Education.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday accepted the resignation of Steven Bohlen, who has supervised California's troubled Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources for the last 18 months.
A Texas veterinarian who offered pet-care advice online lost a battle against state regulators on Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case.
Texas officials are escalating their opposition to Syrian refugees with a new message aimed specifically at resettlement groups that have indicated they will accept people fleeing the war-torn country: change your mind or risk getting sued by the state.
Juneau Mayor Greg Fisk was found dead at his home in Juneau Monday, police said.
The stress of a threatened Luzerne County government shutdown was lifted Monday, spreading a sense of jubilation throughout the courthouse.
Former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted Monday of federal corruption charges, ending the legendary Albany power broker's political career in disgrace and giving Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara a signal victory in his crusade to clean up the Capitol.
California lawmakers are staring down a $1.1 billion hole in next year’s health budget after failing to come up with a way to replace the state’s “managed care organization tax” on health insurance plans that serve Medi-Cal managed care recipients.
Seven months ago, Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby shocked the nation by announcing a range of criminal charges against six police officers in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray.
California and New York both beefed up security.
Hallie Turner, the 13-year-old girl who took North Carolina to court over climate change, received disappointing news the day before Thanksgiving.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will stump in New Hampshire today in an effort to build on the momentum of his endorsement by the New Hampshire Union Leader over the weekend.
The federal government on Wednesday informed refugee resettlement agencies in Texas and across the country that states do not have the authority to refuse to accept Syrians.
As cities -- and slums -- grow around the world, governments are going to need to step up their game.
As transit agencies move toward income-based discounts, they still need to keep larger issues in mind.
Reflecting a broader trend of merging health care with other services, a city in California recently opened a clinic next to a firehouse.
A procedural game of chess continued Tuesday between the White House and Texas over the timing of a possible U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Barack Obama's controversial immigration plan that would shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Just months after he was hired to resolve Opa-locka's deepening financial crisis, City Manager Steve Shiver was fired from his job by commissioners in yet another tumultuous development in a city millions of dollars in debt.
In a big win for Chattanooga Mayor Andrew Berke's administration, a federal court judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by four retired police officers and firefighters that challenged the city's decision to reduce the cost-of-living adjustments to their pensions.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a video of an African-American teen being fatally shot by a white police officer Tuesday just hours after authorities charged the veteran cop with murder, all the while trying to head off violent protests city officials feared might result from the images of the teen twisting and falling as he is riddled with bullets.
Maryland’s highest court has approved sweeping changes that will drastically change how companies purchase the rights to legal settlement payouts, effectively remaking how a controversial industry does business with some of the state’s poorest and most vulnerable residents.
The state Department of Health and Human Services is once again seeking to ban food stamp recipients from using their benefits to purchase candy and soda.
Cancer researchers say there has been a substantial increase in women under the age of 26 who have received a diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer, a pattern that they say is most likely an effect of the Affordable Care Act.
Most Southern states have refused for years to make more people eligible for government health care. But a few governors may change that.
Since 1990, CalPERS nation's largest public pension system, has paid out $3.4 billion in performance fees to its private equity managers since while the controversial sector generated $24.2 billion in profits for state retirees.
s Kentucky Gov. Steven L. Beshear prepares to leave office, he is attempting to leave his mark on an issue that has made his state an outlier.
The effectiveness of subsidies is hard to measure. A new rule will make it easier, but there's still a lot of information that governments aren't required to share about business deals.
A new study indicates that moving people into better public housing might result in reduced depressive symptoms, economic disadvantage, perceived community violence, and social disorder.
Eleven people, including a Berkeley, Calif., city employee, several UC Berkeley students, a seminary student and a freelance photojournalist, are seeking damages, saying police violated their First Amendment rights and injured them during the Dec. 6 protest.
Given the chance to move away from Austin following the Nov. 3 passage of Proposition 3, which repealed the state capital residency requirement in the Texas Constitution for certain statewide elected officials, reps for four of the five eligible said they would continue to live near the Capitol Complex.
Every month, Randy Huff, owner of a medical marijuana dispensary, writes a check for about $500 to the city of La Pine.
Acknowledging that a plan to resolve the five-month budget impasse is in "deep peril," Gov. Wolf on Monday blamed Republican legislators for the potential collapse of a tentative agreement and urged them to launch a new effort to save the deal.
Planned Parenthood and 10 of its patients sued the state of Texas on Monday to block officials from cutting off Medicaid funds, calling the state's actions "political" and part of a long-term pattern of denying reproductive health care to women.
Federal appeals judges on Monday agreed with a lower court that a politically polarizing 2013 abortion law is unconstitutional, finding it endangered the health of women.
Gov. Mike Pence is facing a federal lawsuit that challenges his power to block Syrian refugees from resettling in Indiana.
The day began and ended in a fight over Donald Trump's incursion into the home turf of 2016 presidential rival John Kasich.
But a new effort could provide a true count of the number as well as insights into why they became homeless in the first place.
Hoping to keep pollution out of the water, agencies are looking for ways to convince -- sometimes compel -- property owners to inspect and repair them.
Phones can detect your location, but emergency responders can’t. That’s all going to change soon.
Alternative weekly newspapers are going out of business all over the country, leaving a huge void in local government coverage. Who will scrutinize city halls now?
High-level officials around the country have recently been caught misusing their campaign funds.
The city's main train station, which shuttered its doors in 1988, is getting a makeover.
California is saving millions making people compare prices for certain medical services.
You most likely saw a photo or video of the millions of black plastic balls covering the Los Angeles Reservoir. They protect the region’s drinking water, but now they're being replaced.
Discovering anything about legislative pensions can be tricky. Kentucky legislators keep their retirement accounts separate and undisclosed.
Old houses are being torn down and replaced in suburbs all over the country. But not everyone, especially the people being priced out of once-affordable neighborhoods, is happy seeing the past obliterated.
Marijuana arrests in the state jumped 10 percent in 2012 and 2013, according to the latest New Jersey State Police Uniform Crime Reports.
Patients with mental illness are being detained in emergency rooms, often for weeks at a time. Now some states are rethinking the entire psychiatric care system.
Since Gov. Jerry Brown signed California’s end-of-life options bill last month, a new chapter is starting for Compassion & Choices, a Denver-based nonprofit that led the campaign for the measure and has pushed for such laws for nearly 19 years. California is the fifth state, and largest by far, to allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to patients who want to end their lives in their last stages of terminal illnesses.
The public sector used to be a place of upward mobility for minorities, particularly black women.
Researches found insurers denied 16 percent of prescriptions for expensive drugs like Sovaldi, Harvoni and Viekira Pak, the drugs. The proportion of Medicaid denials, however, was 46 percent.
The US germ warfare defense system is erratic, a GAO report says, and cannot be counted on to detect an attack.
Twelve municipalities in St. Louis County sued the state on Thursday to try to stop what they called an unconstitutional new law that will limit the revenue they can make from fees and fines for minor traffic violations.
The subway scenario -- straphangers being terrorized by roving shooters -- was fake. The response from NYPD officers and other rescuers Sunday couldn't have been more real.
For Tuscaloosa, Alabama, there are lessons to be learned from the terror that gripped Paris just over a week ago.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken up his predecessor's crusade against the federal government, spending nearly a quarter of a million dollars suing the federal government in six new legal challenges since taking office in January.
The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to reverse a lower court ruling that blocked the president's plan to defer deportation for as many as 5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
Louisiana elected Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor on Saturday, ending eight years of Republican rule and making Louisiana the only state in the Deep Red U.S. South led by a Democrat.
As one may expect, Southerners devote more time to religion, while people out West play more sports.
View the latest jobs data for states -- and trends over time.
Indian gaming has contributed $1 billion to education in Oklahoma over the last 10 years, according to the results of a new study, but the state is getting less of that money as gaming operations in the state change.
The Washington State Supreme Court denied several motions to reconsider its Sept. 4 decision that the state's charter-school law is unconstitutional, which means the ruling is expected to become final on Dec. 14.
The State Board of Education on Wednesday rejected a rule change that would have allowed school boards to hire anyone they wanted as superintendent — even if the candidate had no public education experience — as long as they had some kind of post-baccalaureate degree and intended to pursue superintendent certification.
Hoping to curb underage smoking _ and keep some teens from ever lighting up _ Kansas City and Wyandotte County on Thursday banned sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products to people under age 21.
Communities with big homeless populations are increasingly turning to a strategy known as housing first. The idea: helping chronically homeless people to find a permanent home—and stay in it—is the best way to help them lead stable, healthy lives.
Homelessness is on the rise in many of America's biggest cities as wealth concentrates in urban centers, elevating rents and squeezing supplies of affordable housing in places like Los Angeles and New York, new federal data show.
The practice is loved by government accountants and scorned by bankers and investors.
A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
In their quest to make public records requests easier, faster and cheaper, some governments are publishing them online for anyone to see.
From city managers to auditors, local officials offer ways to fix data collection.
Nonbiological parent to have say in custody when same-sex couples separate, Oklahoma court says
Under the proposal from Ranked Choice Voting Maine, the state would become the first in the nation to fully use a ranked-choice ballot system for its elections.
The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust has sued Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, saying that he intentionally broke its regulations by sending the 360,000 coins even though he knew the panel accepts only checks.
Families are suing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in federal district court, accusing the agency of perpetrating an “arbitrary seizure” of land along the Red River.
The rate has increased in every state in the last decade, yet few are doing much to prevent it.
The states have a long dispute about how to share the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.
Earlier this year, Indiana was poised to become the first state in the nation to permit use of newborn safety incubators, also known as "baby boxes," to temporarily shelter babies abandoned by their parents.
Members of Texas' State Board of Education on Wednesday narrowly rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to scour Texas schoolchildren's textbooks for factual errors.
The City Council has selected De'Carlon Seewood as Ferguson city manager.
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio had a message for New Yorkers in an unusual late-night news conference in Times Square last night: Keep going about your business.
A Virginia mayor ignited a backlash Wednesday after he cited America's mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II as support for his call to deny Syrian refugees the opportunity to resettle in the United States.
The latest chapter of the national dispute over the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. took place Wednesday, with Connecticut's Democratic governor welcoming a married couple from Homs, Syria, and their 5-year-old son, who were turned away this week by the Republican governor of Indiana.
A solution to a decades-old parking problem in one city shows how others can harness the power of market economics.
Companies like Uber drive money out of local communities and erase the benefits that employees fought hard for. Co-ops could fix that.
States have increased their spending in every major area but two, according to a new NASBO report.
As a new report makes clear, few of our urban areas are adapting to the changes that are revolutionizing the way we get around.
The election has been less about issues and more about personalities -- but not always the candidates'.
After less than two years on the job, Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim announced Tuesday that she will resign as the agency’s executive director to take a top job in New York City.
An interview with Vicki Estrada, a California-based urban designer whose firm often works with local governments.
With the current trend of end-to-end encryption meant to protect user privacy, many police agencies are having a difficult time decoding potentially dangerous threats. William Bratton is trying to fix that.
Gov. Charlie Baker unveiled a slate of overhauled policies for the state's beleaguered child welfare department yesterday, eliminating the two-tiered track that divided cases by perceived risk, mandating background checks for the first time and requiring monthly reviews of all cases.
Days before the Chicago City Council's internal watchdog departed his post Monday, the FBI came to his office and picked up his computers and the bulk of his files, Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan said.
School superintendents in the Merrimack Valley reacted mostly favorably to the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education vote Tuesday to develop a "next-generation MCAS" that would combine elements of both MCAS and PARCC.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case filed by New Hampshire Right to Life that would have put the high court in the middle of the debate over federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who campaigned as an unstinting champion of social conservatives but found himself crowded out by other more forceful, dynamic personalities, on Tuesday abruptly ended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich advocated Tuesday for an aggressive foreign policy that would reassert "Judeo-Christian" values against extremist values and aggressive enemies.
Some new approaches are emerging that could help booming and struggling areas alike.
Compare data for states' average emergency room wait times.
Hoping to improve safety, some cities and states are cracking down on distracted biking.
At least seven states have implemented tax cut “triggers” that give refunds, credits or a reduction in rates to taxpayers or businesses on the grounds that government shouldn’t hoard money if it has sufficient revenue to run the state. But such policies can create huge fiscal problems.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier ideas include requiring peer review groups and comprehensive risk management plans for "transportation mega-projects exceeding $2.5 billion," as a way to monitor costs and delays.
They’re far from irrelevant, but campaign financing laws have hurt their influence.
The governors running for president possess what voters are looking for -- yet all of them are struggling in the polls.
In North Carolina, lawmakers don't want to embrace the state’s shift away from rural, small-town life. But their efforts may be futile.
Gary Blackmer talks about auditing police, changes in the field and the toughest parts of the job.
Like many cities, Mobile, Ala., didn't even know how many blighted properties it had. Instagram offered a cheap and simple way to start figuring that out.
Governor Chris Christie vows to veto the bill if it comes to him.
Rick Snyder's statement -- coming from a governor who actively sought Syrian refugees for Michigan before -- set off a round of bellicose refusals from other state executives to accept new refugees.
After a long controversy, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names last week approved changing the names various bodies of water in two states.
Advocates and states disagree over the effectiveness of ignition interlocks, which are basically car breathalyzers, versus 24/7 sobriety. Congress, though, will soon weigh in.
Gov. Bill Walker announced Monday he had accepted the resignation of the commissioner of Alaska's Department of Corrections after release of a scathing report that detailed widespread failures and dysfunction that may have led to deaths in Alaska jails.
The Baltimore Police Department is better prepared than ever before to handle civil disturbances, given the lessons it learned from the rioting that broke out in April, the mayor and police commissioner said Monday.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Monday he is "100 percent cancer free."
The West Virginia Board of Education Friday moved forward with a repeal of the state's current Common Core-based K-12 math and English language arts standards, in order to replace them with a version the state schools superintendent says isn't based off the national standards blueprint.
A ruling from the Texas Attorney General's office has just made it more difficult to access information about the kinds of crimes undocumented immigrants have committed in Dallas County — and whether local officials turned those offenders over to federal authorities.
In most states, consumers with HIV or AIDS who buy silver-level plans on the insurance marketplaces find limited coverage of common drug regimens they may need and high out-of-pocket costs, according to a new analysis.
What do Denver, Nashville and Boston have in common?
After the terrorist attacks in Paris, more than half of the nation's governors -- almost all Republicans -- refused to accept Syrian refugees. Whether they have the authority to do so is questionable.
The state agency that oversees jails is issuing a new intake form so jailers will ask more specific, direct questions when booking people.
The tentative accord announced Tuesday by Gov. Tom Wolf and Republican legislators only deals with general issues. The deal could still collapse over school funding, property taxes and pensions.
Eugene Dooley, one of 12 members of the state Judicial Conduct Board weighing sanctions against state Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin over offensive emails, also received the messages.
The Kansas governor began instituting more stringent welfare policies soon after he became governor. He says the new rules encourage work and other behavior needed to lift people out of poverty.
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. sat behind the big desk in his formal and stately City Hall office here, with a photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on one wall and a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee staring down from another.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has unveiled the Mobile Justice New Mexico app, a tool that lets New Mexicans use their smart phones to record police or Border Patrol encounters and file reports of law enforcement misconduct.
Requiring convicted sex offenders to register their address with authorities is not cruel and unusual punishment, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a 7-2 decision in a case from Clark County.
With Saturday's fatal stabbing of a 27-year-old man in West Baltimore and fatal shooting of a 22-year-old in Westport, the city's annual homicide count passed 300 for the first time since 1999, pushing the city across a deadly threshold once considered a relic of the past.
The Supreme Court on Friday set the stage for its most important pronouncement on abortion in two decades, agreeing to hear a dispute over efforts by some conservative states to regulate the procedure.
Gov. Rick Snyder's decision to suspend efforts to bring Syrian refugees to Michigan in light of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday has sparked controversy and launched the state into the national debate of how to protect U.S. citizens while providing a haven for those who desperately need help.
Forty-one states, plus the District of Columbia, license security officers, but requirements vary greatly from state to state. Alaska, for example, mandates 48 hours of training initially, plus another eight hours in firearms training for armed guards. South Carolina requires four hours of training and an additional four for those who carry a gun.
Many argue that Proposition 47, which reduced penalties for many violations, resulted in increased crime in the state's largest cities.
Puerto Ricans, who from birth are U.S. citizens, have historically moved to the mainland in times of trouble, but this latest wave of migration is desperate and accelerating.
The coach, convicted of sexually abusing 10 boys he met through his work with a charity for at-risk youth, has been fighting to have his $4,900-a-month Pennsylvania State University pension restored since 2012.
Critics and supporters predicted that the federal health law would have a huge impact on the time it takes to see a doctor. Turns out they were both wrong.
Removing one of the several obstacles to resuming executions in California, a federal appeals panel Thursday struck down a judge's ruling that the state's snarled capital punishment system is arbitrary and therefore unconstitutional.
