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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.

A survey of state and local government employees finds that the prolonged stresses of the pandemic are taking a toll. One in three have considered changing jobs.
State legislatures introduced more than 560 LGBTQ rights bills in 2020. An analysis by the Human Rights Campaign finds barriers remain to equal access to housing, employment and health care for the LGBTQ community.
Hispanics are almost 19 percent of the U.S. population, but account for only 6 percent of state legislators. Thirteen percent of these officials are Republicans.
State legislatures will have a lot on their plates. They’ll deal with issues in wildly differing ways. We set the context for the 2021 session with an overview of everything from abortion to redistricting.
Just under 10 percent of the nearly 7,500 legislators serving in America’s state houses are Black, and only 13 are Republicans.
After a record-breaking hurricane season, city planners in Florida focus on best practices to rescue affordable housing, while architects adopt new housing designs for the long-term needs of a changing coastline.
Faced with a cascade of unprecedented and overwhelming challenges, legislators still found time to acknowledge the simple pleasures of life, including onions, country music and a hound dog named Jo Jo.
Social media posts are a new contribution to the archive of political discourse. A historian discusses how they affect the current moment and how it will be remembered.
The new administration hopes to achieve a shift in federal immigration policy. Recent proposals from state legislators reflect an existing climate of compassion, including financial support, health care and safety.
The 2020 Menino Survey of Mayors examined the social, public health and economic impacts of COVID on American cities, and the ways it has changed the future of work, transit and racial inequities.