State and Local Politics and Policy
It’s especially hard to get low-income Americans living in multifamily buildings across the digital divide. But states and nonprofits are finding ways to do it.
The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade sends the abortion question back to the states. Additional red states are expected to join those with suddenly relevant bans on the books.
While a handful of the largest agencies have funding sources that don’t make the future immediately dire, others are looking at hard decisions next year as city transit ridership remains depressed, cutting into revenue streams.
Texas Republicans aren't pulling any punches, South Dakota attorney general Jason Ravnsborg is impeached and Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser nearly guarantees that she'll win a third term in the fall.
The state’s candidates for governor are addressing jobs, transportation, education and small businesses, but some voters feel they avoid talking about the most-pressing issues, like inflation or the cost of living.
Several democratic local officials from the region have said that they won’t vote for Gov. Kathy Hochul if she doesn’t crack down on crypto mining operations across the state, for fear of the industry’s environmental impacts.
By most reckonings, tiny schools should be gone by now. But a few of them are hanging on in a state where the rural population has been declining for decades.
The May primary saw the highest voter turnout in the last 25 years and many experts are using the numbers to gauge how the parties are growing, especially around the increasing urban-suburban-rural divide.
State Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Sen. Patty Murray slammed the Cerner Corp. after a report found thousands of clinicians’ orders went missing due to a flaw, resulting in 148 cases of harm to veterans.
Much of the information requested by members of the Spokane County Republican Party is already shared publicly, but some of the petition’s requests are limited by the state’s privacy and cybersecurity laws.
The state Senate passed legislation on June 16 that would implement a five-year moratorium on construction of new prisons and jails across the state. The state has the lowest incarceration rate in the nation.
Due to a mail error, ballots that were postmarked prior to election day arrived the day after an Iowa county primary and were not counted in the final tally due to the state’s new law. The county supervisor race was determined by seven votes.
In a June 14 special election, Mayra Flores helped flip a longtime Democratic stronghold and became the first congresswoman-elect to be born in Mexico. The Republican will fill the remainder of Rep. Filemon Vela’s term.
Starting in the 1990s, many cities have come back, growing in population while reducing sky-high rates of crime. A. K. Sandoval-Strausz talks about the overlooked impact of Latino immigrants on their rebirth.
In one of the state’s most hotly-contested races, Republican Nancy Mace has won the primary race to represent the 1st Congressional District, beating Trump-backed Katie Arrington. Mace will face Annie Andrews in November.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hid hospital ratings on surgical complications from public view for the first half of 2020 due to COVID-19 and proposed to continue the practice for data through mid-2021.
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Perry Johnson wants Michigan to stop printing ballots for the August primary while he tries to overturn his disqualification from the race. A federal judge denied Johnson’s request on Monday.
Starting this year, an initiative between several of the California county’s agencies could approve the clearance of up to 10,000 low-level criminal convictions annually; the current court process tops out at 1,800 clearances a year.
Pre-emption has been on the upswing in recent years, leaving many city leaders frustrated. Richard Schragger, author of City Power, talks about the fallout from this power struggle and how it can hurt urban growth.
It seemed we were on a path to genuine progress after the death of George Floyd, but those efforts have faded. There are things we can do to get back on track.
While the state has always been an open-carry state, the new law now allows gun owners to carry a firearm without undergoing gun safety training required for a permit. Critics worry the new law will risk public safety.
The state’s Republican Legislature failed to pass several bills on controversial social issues, like concealed carry, anti-vaccine and gay rights, instead opting to pass legislation to fund infrastructure projects.
Consensus among the states on issues of national importance now seems as elusive as it was in the nation’s pre-Constitution days.
The state Supreme Court ruled that a person’s race should be taken into consideration when determining the legality of police seizures. The Court also changed the rules for excluding a potential juror based on race.
Mayor Jim Kenney’s proposal has a broad definition of anti violence and would include initiatives to push for police and prison reform and would restore spending to agencies that saw cuts in the pandemic. Some say it’s not enough.
Deaths and injuries from motor vehicle accidents were once rampant. Research showed how to decrease the number of fatal crashes and it worked. Patrick Carter believes we can achieve similar results with guns.
Long gone are the early days of digital government services, which often came with a “more is more” approach to graphic design. Mobile-first now means rethinking — and simplifying — public-sector websites.
The state’s Commission for Human Rights has claimed that visually impaired voters were not provided sufficient accommodation for the U.S. House primary race, the state’s first all-mail election.
A study has found that within the first three years of its being enacted, the state’s “red flag” law kept guns away from at least 58 people who threatened to commit mass shootings. The state had the seventh lowest firearm death rate in 2020.
San Francisco recalls progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Alex Padilla seem to be on a glide path to victory in November. Meanwhile, all eyes are on the Latino vote.
Gov. Chris Sununu signed a law on Tuesday that will require vendors to program vote-counting machines to automatically divert ballots that appear to have too many marks for a single office.
