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Carl Smith

Senior Staff Writer

Carl Smith is a senior staff writer for Governing and covers a broad range of issues affecting states and localities. For the past 30 years, Carl has written about education and the environment for peer-reviewed papers, magazines and online publications, with a special focus on conservation and sustainability. He has guest-edited special issues of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health focused on the Precautionary Principle and the human rights dimensions of environmental degradation. Carl attended the University of Texas and the University of Georgia. He can be reached at carl.smith@governing.com or on Twitter at @governingwriter.

Floods are frequent, unpredictable and expensive. Fremont, Calif., is one of the first cities to secure flood insurance designed using AI.
State and local governments depend on federal data for everything from community planning to disaster response. What happens if it goes away?
Local government jobs weren’t a focus for career technical education at a Central Texas school district until a new human resources director came to Cedar Park.
Hurricane season begins in earnest in August. The devastating floods in Texas earlier this summer underscored the importance of state and local readiness as the federal government rethinks its role in disaster response.
Groups focused on food security are scrambling following the cancellation of federal programs supporting purchases from local farmers.
The nation’s warmest large city can’t turn down the temperature, but it is finding ways to address factors that make heat dangerous for residents.
Flood events are bigger and more frequent. Governments can’t change the weather, but they can invest in infrastructure that is better able to handle it.
After more than 1 million deaths, opioid mortality is dropping fast.
Arizona has seen more turnover in its election offices than most states. A fellowship program showed a path for attracting young workers to these jobs.
It won’t be easy, but former mayors Michael Tubbs and Aja Brown hope to prevent displaced lower income Altadena residents from being displaced for good.