Instead of chewing on a shoelace or scratching the living-room couch, as their domestic counterparts would do, about 100 feral cats have been tearing apart screened-in porches, urinating in children's sandboxes and spraying shrubs in the backyards of Cohoes, New York. Faced with the problem of controlling these feline terrorists, the Common Council recently settled on a humane solution: a Trap-Neuter- Return program.

Referendums held in special districts permit multimillion-dollar bonds to be issued based on the casting of a single vote.

For as long as public service has existed, public servants have clung to their familiar little platoons of co-workers, trying their best not to identify with the impersonal entities above them that make the big decisions. Their loyalties have been to the office over the division; the division over the department; the department over the city, the county or the state.

For as long as public service has existed, public servants have clung to their familiar little platoons of co-workers, trying their best not to identify with the impersonal entities above them that make the big decisions. Their loyalties have been to the office over the division; the division over the department; the department over the city, the county or the state.

Once again, Lee Honsan isn't in the office. Once again, his staff needs some guidance. Once again, they call you. Once again, you have to drop your own work to do Honsan's.