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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.

What you need to get up to speed in terms of how state lawmakers are addressing education, energy, health, housing and even international affairs.
Tech entrepreneurs make the case that government and big tech will both benefit by sharing a focus on the public good.
Almost half of working Americans are underpaid. Wage standards for companies that receive government funding could help change this.
Swatting — falsely reporting a serious emergency to provoke aggressive police response — is on the rise. Fighting this dangerous and distracting trend remains challenging, both legally and technologically.
Changes in state laws are making it easier for drug users and responders to test drugs for additives that can prove fatal.
Better pay for legislators is on the table in several states. It’s a sticky subject, even when their work is compensated below the minimum wage.
Is crime out of control? The homicide rate went down 12 percent last year. Still, there’s more than one kind of crime, more than one data set and more than one way to spin things.
State lawmakers will be rushing to address crime, AI, housing and a host of other issues – including growing budget gaps – ahead of elections this year.
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $1 billion to help states implement modern building codes. The CEO of the International Code Council outlines both obvious and underappreciated reasons they are essential.
The latest data from HUD shows a 12 percent increase in the homeless population. After declines over the last decade, current trends are troubling, but it's not clear how long the upward swing will last.