California's new finance director, Donna Arduin, is bringing tough- love budgeting to a deficit-addicted state.

This sounds like something Enron would have dreamed up. Cities across the country are being visited by financiers with a startling offer: Lease us your sewer systems, transit lines or civic centers, and we'll give you a pot of money.

Fifty-eight years ago, Justice Felix Frankfurter told his brethren to stay out of the business of drawing political maps. "Courts ought not to enter this political thicket," Frankfurter warned in Colegrove v. Green. "The fulfillment of this duty cannot be judicially enforced."

A growing number of local agencies--and even a state legislature--are hiring CIOs to bolster their top management teams.

Applying the principles of managing for results to running a child's soccer team leads to some unexpected outcomes.