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The new estimated price tag to finish California’s high-speed rail route from San Francisco to Los Angeles, after another $5 billion was added to the cost. When the project was first proposed in 2008, the initial cost was estimated to be $40 billion, but has continued to climb since then.
Richard Sing, attorney for Hawaii’s former Senate majority leader J. Kalani English, regarding English’s receipt of more than $18,000 in bribes in exchange for shaping cesspool legislation. Hawaii state Rep. Ty Cullen also received bribes to steer legislation; Cullen submitted his resignation earlier this week. (Associated Press — Feb. 9, 2022)
A federal appeals court upheld a union-backed law that bars state government officials from dissuading their employees from joining unions or paying union fees. The 2017 law was challenged with freedom of speech violation claims.
The U.S. Department of Labor issued a guidance letter to state unemployment agencies stating they should expand jobless waivers to thousands of people and absolve those who received overpayments due to state error.
The Supreme Court has signaled it's ready to reconsider or even abolish the use of race in redistricting. At risk are the Voting Rights Act and decades of precedent.
You can build all the subways you want, but they won’t produce city life without attention to what’s around them.
The bill allows workers at businesses of 26 or more employees to take up to two weeks paid time off to recover from the disease or address COVID-related responsibilities, and will be retroactive to Jan. 1 and expire on Sept. 30.
A coalition of community-based organizations will select 330 families to receive a guaranteed basic income of $500 a month for a year. Applicants must be a member of an undocumented or mixed immigration status family.
The Biden administration wants enough offshore wind capacity to power 10 million homes by 2030, but some states have set even more ambitious goals, hoping that offshore wind can help spur economic development.
They include $64 million to increase police numbers, reduce juvenile crime and revive a gun-tracking task force. The Connecticut governor also wants police to be able to check gun permits for those who openly carry firearms.
Dr. Jessica Hamilton, associate medical director for abortion services for a Planned Parenthood chapter that covers much of California and Nevada. Abortion providers in liberal states are preparing to expand clinics, train more staff and boost travel assistance to help patients from conservative states if the U.S. Supreme Court curtails abortion access. Overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision would end the right to abortion in 26 states. (Reuters — Feb. 8, 2022)
The approximate amount that the U.S. government must pay to the 80 people who were either victims or families of victims in the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre.
The rules for conducting elections aren’t the only thing being debated in state legislatures. Some want more control over the entire process. The bills reflect a growing loss of trust in democratic systems.
With $1 billion on the way from the new infrastructure law, state cybersecurity planning committees will need to be creative to fairly and uniformly distribute funds across diverse government landscapes.
His legacy has mostly slipped through the cracks, but his ideas provided a blueprint for re-creating the city as a center of modern social life, laying the groundwork for today’s New Urbanist movement.
Having already spent millions on ads and more to come, officials are considering new ways to encourage vaccinations, which have stagnated. Over 6 million state residents have already been vaccinated.
The city’s recently appointed Racial Equity Initiative leader was the subject of a criminal investigation regarding substantial unemployment fraud claims that occurred while she headed Ohio’s jobs department.
A bill would connect the state’s emergency response system to the national suicide prevention hotline system and provide several other response services for mental health emergencies.
The natural gas-fired power plant would provide reliable and cheap power to five rural electrical co-ops through 2045, but critics say the plant’s reliance on fossil fuels is contradictory to the state’s climate goals.
First Lady Jill Biden, regarding a proposal to make community college tuition free that has been dropped from a larger social welfare and climate bill. Dr. Biden has taught at community colleges for many years and has been a longtime advocate of waiving tuition at these colleges. (Associated Press — Feb. 7, 2022)
The proportion of Black people in the U.S. who are either immigrants or children of immigrants, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center.
We need a holistic approach that not only gets firearms out of the hands of people with elevated risk of violence but also addresses issues such as income inequality, health disparities and poorly performing schools.
Donald Trump’s remarks at a recent rally in Texas and polling results, in which a growing number of respondents justify violence against the government, keep last year’s Capitol riot in the spotlight.
Federal and state governments are turning to a facial recognition company to ensure that people accessing services are who they say they are. The move promises to cut down on fraud, but at what cost?
A landmark California environmental justice law was supposed to clean the air in 15 key communities, but it’s hard to say if it’s worked.
Phoenix’s new Urban Agriculture Fellowship Program will pair nine residents between the ages of 18 to 24 with local farms and pay them to work and study under some of the most knowledgeable growers in Arizona.
The California county’s budget office reported that the jail requires an extra $1.5 million to cover the increased costs of food – a 26 percent rise in budget allocation – despite a reduction in overall jail population.
The COVID-era Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program has capacity to train more than 17,000 unemployed veterans, yet less than 700 have graduated from the program and it is set to expire in December.
A Washington state bill that would create an office to address homeless encampments around state-owned rights of way passed its first committee vote last Wednesday. There are 871 homeless camps documented in Seattle.
The Secretary of State’s office is now reviewing the actions of a third county clerk, Douglas County’s Merlin Klotz, for allegedly breaching election security protocols. The previous two clerks were from Elbert and Mesa counties.
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