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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.

Whether used for medical reasons or recreation, cannabis is a multibillion-dollar industry that could play a role in a post-pandemic recovery. Legislators have been addressing regulatory details.
Bills that address contact tracing take aim at the costs related to testing and tracking COVID-19 infections as states reopen. Others tackle privacy concerns and ensuring tracer workers reflect community diversity.
Public schools face a litany of problems relating to COVID-19 that include significant drops in funding, distribution issues for school lunch programs, lack of broadband access and bus driver protection.
Currently, the country has hired just a fraction of the contact tracers needed to contain the spread of the coronavirus and help the economy return to life. Experts say a national workforce is needed.
COVID-19 has accelerated demand for telemedicine services. Recently, state legislatures have introduced bills that provide remedies for issues such as reimbursement and credentialing that have slowed implementation.
Despite a huge drop in revenues, states are taking some measures to relieve pressure on taxpayers and have introduced bills that extend filing deadlines, remove penalties and limit certain liabilities for now.
Governing is building a 50-state map to visualize the changes underway to declare states “Open for Business” even as the coronavirus remains at large across the country.
Despite widespread disruption to session calendars, state legislators still find time to address matters other than the pandemic, an illustration of how the wheels of democracy keep turning.
Leaders from special districts in California, Illinois and New Jersey, with widely varied responsibilities, talk about maintaining operations, as well as functioning remotely, during the pandemic.
The need to protect public health in the remaining primary elections, and uncertainty about the state of the coronavirus pandemic in November, are forcing legislators to consider changes to voting guidelines.