Archive
Of all the steps taken since Washington legalized marijuana, North Bonneville's might be boldest.
The governor promised more than $11 million to complete 41 environmental projects, and then he changed his mind.
The politician's campaign logo includes map of Maryland — with a sliver of Virginia in it.
State officials says the problems with tests last week were due to a cyber attack.
Rural youths are nearly twice as likely to commit suicide as their urban counterparts, according to a study by Ohio State University researchers.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Monday denied that administrators in his Department of Environmental Protection were banned from using the terms "global warming" or "climate change."
The Missouri Supreme Court announced Monday that it will take the "extraordinary action" of reassigning all Ferguson municipal court cases to the circuit court, starting next week.
Starting next year, the federal government will require health insurers to give millions of Americans enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans or in policies sold in the federally run health exchange up-to-date details about which doctors are in their plans and taking new patients.
The judge who blocked President Obama's executive action on immigration has ordered the Justice Department to answer allegations that the government misled him about part of the plan.
President Obama took a direct swipe at Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican and likely presidential candidate in 2016, for signing a so-called right-to-work bill that will limit the power of private-sector unions.
Nearly 100 percent of eligible Oregonians take advantage of food stamps, far more than any other state. That might be a good thing.
He's the first U.S. president in 20 years to address the National League of Cities conference.
Gov. Scott Walker on Monday signed the contentious right-to-work bill at a factory in Brown Deer, making Wisconsin the 25th state with such a law.
On the ground in Iowa, which will kick off the 2016 primary season, the Texas governor is taken seriously.
Will California and New York be the next to enact such laws?
Building on the success of the University of Chicago's crime and education labs, the schools is adding three new initiatives: a health lab, an energy and environment lab, and a poverty lab.
The justices will consider a case crucial to Kathleen Kane's political future. After a seven-month investigation a grand jury concluded the attorney general had illegally leaked confidential information to embarrass a political foe and then lied about it to the jury.
After long lines turned voters away in November, Connecticut is the most recent state to seek rules and requirements for election administrators.
Following Arizona's footsteps, states are starting to make students pass the U.S. citizenship test that immigrants take in an effort to create a better-informed citizenry.
Gov. Charlie Baker learned about former Gov. Deval Patrick’s hiring by the Boston 2024 Olympics boosters from news reports, and is renewing his demand for transparency from the nonprofit group, which has not revealed how much Patrick will be paid.
The University of Oklahoma became a trending topic Sunday night on Twitter as videos allegedly showing members of one of the school's fraternities shouting a racist chant made their way across the Internet on YouTube and Instagram.
A bill dissolving Cover Oregon, the state's dysfunctional health insurance exchange, has been signed by Gov. Kate Brown.
Starting March 27, legally married same-sex couples will be able to take unpaid time off to care for a spouse or sick family members even if they live in a state that doesn’t recognize their marriage.
Florida's government may have figured out a way to beat climate change: ignore it.
A Madison, Wis., police officer who fatally shot an unarmed 19-year-old African American man Friday had been exonerated in a previous fatal shooting, officials disclosed Saturday.
Toxic chemicals are sweeping across our nation's most important agricultural region and officials are using time-tested tactics not to find solutions, but to make the problem appear minor.
Two veteran police commanders have resigned and a city court clerk has been fired over racist emails cited this week in a Justice Department report critical of the city of Ferguson's law enforcement
In a powerful illustration of the state's increasingly polarized politics, the Wisconsin Assembly passed so-called right-to-work legislation Friday on a strictly party-line vote, with two Republicans who had previously sided with unions now lining up against them.
Police departments seek out 'less lethal' weapons to use in law enforcement.
Under Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed cuts to the Department of Children and Family Services, thousands of older state wards for whom Illinois failed to find permanent placement before they aged out of foster care will be forced to fend for themselves.
A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
Democrats and Republicans unveiled six bills designed to help create pathways to jobs in construction, information technology and health care.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is now under investigation as part of a growing federal probe into the handling of sexual violence complaints.
A record-breaking snowstorm slammed Kentucky on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, stranding thousands of motorists on interstates and prompting a statewide emergency declaration for the second time in 21/2 weeks.
Allies of former Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday rolled out a Super PAC that can raise unlimited amounts of money to boost the likely 2016 presidential candidate.
Unions representing New Jersey state troopers are the first to sue Gov. Chris Christie over pension payment proposals contained in his latest budget address.
New Jersey announced Thursday that it has settled an environmental damage claim against Exxon Mobil Corp. for $225 million, $25 million less than originally reported last week and far less than the $8.9 billion it had originally sought.
What started as groupware in the business world is providing better ways for governments to collaborate with citizens.
Policemen say the legalization forces them to decide whether to violate the Colorado Constitution or the U.S. Constitution.
Currently, the tax bill for a house assessed at $113,000 is $1,112. If Nutter's proposal is approved, it would go up to $1,216.
Paul LePage vows to spend the "rest of my days" fighting opponents of his plan to cut income taxes and hike sales taxes.
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with a freight railroad in its efforts to avoid paying sales tax on diesel fuel, but the legal challenge isn't over yet.
When the 1951 flood swept through north Topeka, the business district never quite recovered.
The Cleveland Police Department got its third leader in four days Wednesday after Tennessee's police regulatory agency told City Manager Janice Casteel she couldn't serve in that position.
Chicago is the latest example of the many local and state governments that are haunted by interest rate swap agreements they made before the Great Recession.
It was reasonable for police Officer Darren Wilson to be afraid of Michael Brown in their encounter last summer, a Justice Department investigation concluded, and thus he cannot be prosecuted for fatally shooting the unarmed 18-year-old.
Supreme Court justices raised tough questions Monday about Arizona's use of an independent commission to draw legislative maps, in a case crucial for political operators and reformers in California and beyond.
Florida's congressional redistricting maps should be rejected because they are the product of a shadowy process infiltrated by Republican political operatives in violation of the law against partisan gerrymandering, lawyers argued before the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday.
New York will become the nation’s first major metropolis to close its public schools in observance of the two most sacred Muslim holy days, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Wednesday, a watershed moment for a group that has endured suspicion and hostility since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Supreme Court justice's view could open a revisitation of question about web sales taxes.
A Census report explores demographic shifts set to take place.
East Coast cities are expected to experience more hurricanes and more blackouts in the coming years.
The legislative proposal Greg Abbott favors has attracted mixed reactions from early education advocates, who hope it can be strengthened. The plan as it stands will barely change the status quo.
Some scientists and government officials fear that a solar superstorm or a nuclear detonation could disable the electric grid. That has prompted legislators to sponsor grid-protection measures.
Many states have them, but few evaluate whether efficiency commissions are themselves efficient.
Rahm Emanuel's dilemma echoes that of Hillary Clinton, widely expected to run for the Democratic presidential nomination: how much should progressives matter in the party?
Some about two dozen American law enforcement agencies are under investigation by the Justice Department.
In U.S. Supreme Court arguments, a justice many view as a deciding vote questioned the Obama administration's case for the health law as well as the constitutionality of the challengers'.
Gov. Robert Bentley defended his proposed $541 million tax increase in his State of the State address Tuesday.
Read and watch the governor's annual address.
Gov. Tom Wolf today proposed an expansive plan for Pennsylvania state government that would shift the burden of education funding from the property tax toward the personal income tax while drawing on natural gas drilling to increase money for schools.
The 2015 session of the Legislature began Tuesday with two starkly different visions of Florida, as Republicans and Democrats used the opening day to mark their political territory and set contrasting priorities for the next two months.
The Obama administration, as part of a broader push to address persistent poverty and childhood hunger in rural areas, said Tuesday that it would provide millions of dollars in grants to help several economically distressed communities.
Leading Texas Republicans on Monday asked the Obama administration for greater flexibility to administer Medicaid — a move that has gotten little traction in the past — while reiterating that they would not participate in an expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed legislation Tuesday that would ban abortions at 20 weeks' pregnancy, noting that the law would not pass constitutional muster.
Alabama's highest court once again ordered judges not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, defying a federal judge who struck down the state's ban on such unions as unconstitutional and ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to intervene.
Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce Wednesday that a Department of Justice investigation found patterns of racial bias in Ferguson's police and municipal court that violate the Constitution and federal law.
States can help keep health insurance affordable even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against Obamacare subsidies. But only some are willing.
Mayors say the U.S. Department of Transportation pilot program would help boost their local economies.
The state will halt all executions due to problems with lethal injection drugs.
Read the governor's annual address.
Read and watch the governor's speech here.
Advocates for the elderly and people with disabilities have long pushed for higher wages for personal care attendants, who are typically paid through Medicaid-contracted companies. This year, the cause has been newly championed by a group of fiscally conservative state leaders, led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
The ordinance, modeled after similar laws in Rhode Island and Illinois, establishes specific protections that would make it more difficult to displace homeless people from public property.
Taser International is covering airfare and hotel stays for police chiefs who speak at promotional conferences. It is also hiring recently retired chiefs as consultants, sometimes just months after their cities signed contracts with Taser.
John W. Smith, who has worked in the court system for more than 40 years. will retire as director of the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts effective May 1.
Evesham Township Mayor Randy Brown provokes an outcry after he decides that residents would not be permitted to question council members during public meetings,
Gov. Charlie Baker hopes to convince about 4,500 state workers to take early retirement. It'll cost the state $50 million, but his administration says the overall budget savings will more than make up for it.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a possible presidential candidate, has flown to Washington for Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
Beverly L. Hall, the former Atlanta schools superintendent whose renown as an education reformer dissolved amid the ignominy of the nation's largest test-cheating scandal, died Monday of breast cancer. She was 68.
A federal judge on Monday blocked Nebraska's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, though the ruling will not take effect immediately.
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski's startling announcement Monday that she will not seek re-election in 2016 after more than four decades in elected office set off a political free-for-all as Maryland's most powerful politicians began to position themselves for the opportunity to run for a rare open seat.
The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that blanket statewide restrictions on where sex offenders may live violate the constitutional rights of parolees in San Diego County -- and potentially those in other counties.
A national policing commission set up by President Barack Obama after the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson is recommending independent investigations of police-involved deaths.
Few places in the U.S. are benefiting from lower gas prices as much as Mississippi. Residents spend about 6 percent of their after-tax income on gasoline, more than any other state.
Rahm Emanuel's failure to avoid a runoff has less to do with him and more to do with Chicago's problems, which run deeper than many want to acknowledge.
Tom Wolf called Bill Green yesterday to inform him that he was removing him as chairman of the city's School Reform Commission.
The festering troubles at the state’s prison system have emerged as a problem that won’t go away.
Their numbers may pale in comparison to the peak protest rallies of 2011, but the passion was much the same for those who showed up Saturday to demonstrate their opposition to right-to-work legislation in Wisconsin.
Gov. Christie's proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 assumes hundreds of millions of dollars in savings achieved through the expansion of Medicaid under President Obama's health-care law.
Twenty-nine percent of children taken from their families and placed in foster care failed to receive at least one required medical checkup, the Health and Human Services Department Office of the Inspector General said in a report out today.
The cost of healthcare premiums could rise as much 779 percent if the Supreme Court erases ObamaCare subsidies in a majority of states this year, according to a new study.
After bolting to national prominence on a record of bringing public employee unions to heel and taming runaway pension costs like those that have challenged state governments across the country, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hit a very large hurdle recently.
The number of statehouse reporters has drastically declined, but journalists see reasons for optimism.
They're inevitable for a host of reasons, and the blame will fall on top elected officials. Can they fix problems before they become full-blown crises?
By putting off dealing with its retirement-system underfunding problems, New Jersey has dug itself into a 'draconian' fiscal hole.
Workers are feeling the pinch the most in the South and in areas highly dependent on the tourism industry. View data for nearly 200 metro areas.
A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
About 61,000 Ohioans will lose their tax-funded health coverage at the end of this week.
The deployment of additional state police and Texas National Guard troops to the southern border last June has reduced illegal border crossings but cost more than $100 million and compromised the Department of Public Safety's ability to combat crimes elsewhere, according to an internal DPS assessment prepared for Gov. Greg Abbott and lawmakers.
Gov. Scott Walker told thousands of conservative activists Thursday that his experience standing up to 100,000 protesters in 2011 has prepared him to face the threat posed by Islamic State terrorists
Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich _ a lifelong high achiever who appeared poised to make a strong run to be the state's next governor _ died Thursday in St. Louis in an apparent suicide.
Nearly two dozen directors of states' largest program have resigned in the last year.
People living and working near the Western Hemisphere's first location to get gigabit-per-second Internet service should soon have access to the same speedy broadband their neighbors
The impact of oil's price drop depends on how much a local government relies on the oil industry for revenue and jobs.
That's what House Republicans, who allege that a secret plan exists to maintain health insurance subsidies, repeatedly asked the president's top health official.
In 1881, when the gunman died, the Territory of New Mexico didn't issue death certificates.
Guroo.com shows the average local cost for many common diagnoses and medical tests in most states. That’s the real cost — not “charges” that often get marked down — based on a giant database of what insurance companies pay.
Sen. Bill Ketron's legislation would allow underage college students to taste beer they make in a brewing course. The students would be required to spit the beer out.
Alaska's law legalizing recreational marijuana use went into effect Tuesday. While the law outlines conduct surrounding personal use, what commercialization will look like is left up to the state to figure out.
The Arkansas governor has approved to require a doctor to be physically present when an abortion-inducing drug such as RU-486 is administered,
Federal judges have stopped similar pre-viability abortion bans in Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Arkansas and North Dakota.
When President Barack Obama dropped into his hometown a few days before the city election to designate the historic Pullman district a national monument and heap praise on Rahm Emanuel, rivals decried the move as pure politics aimed at pumping up African-American support for the mayor.
With echoes of 2011's labor battle, Republican state senators approved so-called right-to-work legislation Wednesday, less than a week after they announced they were fast-tracking the measure.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cut back on the power of state licensing boards to restrict competitors from offering low-cost services, a victory for consumers that could prove significant in industries as disparate as taxicabs, funerals and cosmetology.
With little fanfare Wednesday, Gov. Terry Branstad signed a fuel tax increase that would hike prices at Iowa pumps for gasoline and diesel by 10 cents per gallon beginning on Sunday.
Gov. Charlie Baker moved to seize control of the state's Health Connector board yesterday forcing out four members -- including MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, the controversial architect of Obamacare
The city that brought America government shutdowns and all-night filibusters is set to make pot legal on Thursday. But by the time the chaos over implementing the law is settled, most everyone in the District of Columbia might wish they were smoking some.
See how average hourly earnings compare when adjusted for an area's cost of living
See data showing how reported pension liabilities have changed for state and local government retirement systems under new GASB 67 accounting standards.
Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland will seek to challenge Republican Sen. Rob Portman next year, launching what could become one of the top-tier Senate races of 2016.
The number of daily attacks on the state government's computer systems is staggering and growing in both incidents and cost.
Saying fewer inmates are returning to the corrections system, South Carolina officials said Tuesday the state will close its second minimum-security prison in a year.
Gov. Larry Hogan unveiled Tuesday what he called a "holistic" strategy to deal with Maryland's growing heroin problem, but stopped short of declaring the state of emergency he vowed last year to put in place.
Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday used a small southwest Ohio town to demonstrate that a resilient state is back on its feet even as he challenged lawmakers to have the courage to "follow the plan" to continue the progress.
Read and watch the governor's annual address.
After Rick Perry won an upset race for agriculture commissioner in 1990, he needed a flashy issue — something that would bring him a little notoriety, get him out on the road.
A California lawmaker has proposed a bill that would allow the most populous U.S. state to establish an embassy in Washington.
The Maine Department of Education will suspend the A-F school grading system this year because students are taking a new assessment test and the state will not have enough data to measure their progress, education officials said Monday.
Gov. Christie said today that a plan has been outlined to fix the state's chronically underfunded pension system, claiming an "unprecedented accord" with the state's largest teachers' union on the issue.
Rahm Emanuel failed to win a second term Tuesday, suffering a national political embarrassment as little-known, lesser-funded challenger Jesus "Chuy" Garcia forced the mayor into the uncharted waters of an April runoff election.
The Congressional bill sets the stage for negotiations with Democrats to keep lower-income children insured and state budgets from turmoil.
On-demand services like Uber and Airbnb will force state and local governments to rethink taxes, zoning and retirement.
Technology has made it easier for people to commit tax fraud and for governments to catch it.
Most politicians fail to communicate the importance of policies to the public because they lack skills in the art of the anecdote.
Regulating businesses is necessary, but it can have negative impacts on struggling cities.
Despite many perceptions, entrepreneurship and self-employment have been on the decline for years, especially among Millennials.
The lack of urban legislators in Republican states means cities will have their concerns largely ignored or challenged.
Dan Gilbert of Detroit is just one example of what a CEO determined to help their communities can accomplish.
Some worry the benefits of a better education don’t outweigh the new problems it brings.
President Barack Obama rejected a bill Tuesday that would have approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, the first veto of a year that seems likely to feature repeated such moves as the Democratic president confronts the Republican-led Congress.
An artist in Chicago uses the city’s potholes as his canvas.
Decades of stagnant pay is costing states and localities tax revenue.
Southern California’s Salton Sea has been neglected for decades, but there’s reason to hope for its restoration.
Driven by fear and frustration, protesters are starting to drown out the supporters of the nation's most ambitious attempt to fix failing schools.
Most governments don’t plan for population growth well. But Utah’s grassroots, nonideological, research-based approach has become a model for other states and localities.
More kids in the U.S., especially low-income and foster-care children, are on antipsychotics than in any other country. States are just starting to intervene.
Despite states’ e-recycling laws, electronics are the fastest-growing type of waste in landfills.
A looming court ruling will decide whether states have to give minimum wage and overtime pay to home health aides. Most states argue it would be financially crippling.
