Governing: State and local government news and analysis
The new normal is hard to predict. The economic picture is mixed while downtowns remain under peril.
The federal Emergency Broadband Benefit was supposed to help connect the unconnected. A new study shows that the program didn't achieve this goal, but local areas can help increase program participation.
To combat inflation, the central bank will be raising interest rates and shedding a big chunk of its $8 trillion bond portfolio. Its actions will ripple through the world of state and local finance.
In 1963, Sarah Collins lost a sister, three friends and her right eye, when a bomb went off at a church in Birmingham.
There are successful models for leveraging natural systems to improve water quality and supplies, enhance biodiversity and blunt the ravages of wildfires. There’s even something we can learn from beavers.
Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson and the struggle for a more perfect union.
The most affordable homes face the highest risks from disasters for three key reasons.
‘Quiet Title’ laws across the Midwest can disproportionately affect homeowners who don’t speak English, like Natalia Esteban who emigrated from Mexico over 20 years ago.
With students falling behind over months or years of remote learning, online tutoring has become a popular solution, and certain design principles might help make it effective at scale for millions trying to catch up.
America loves its cars and planes, but they are huge contributors of carbon to the atmosphere. What is the cleanest form of transit available?
The agency is moving to incorporate mitigation into recovery efforts, with a particular focus on the needs of underserved communities and resilience in the face of climate change.
Half of public-sector workers are considering leaving their jobs. Unions have stepped up their role in retention and recruitment, but the ongoing lack of normalcy remains a serious challenge.
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 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.
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.
School districts and libraries across the country are removing books. Censorship is not new, but the current wave reflects social divisions, says Columbia professor Farah Jasmine Griffin.
The small city of Hamtramck used to be a Polish American enclave. In the 21st century, it has morphed into something that couldn’t be further from its past.
The Oceanside Police Department faced a problem: It couldn’t reliably share drone video feeds with the officers who needed them for critical situational awareness. But Zoom quickly changed that.
Despite a stellar career that started in the Roosevelt administration, Weaver’s appointment to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1966 didn’t come easy.
Wind turbines often can produce more power than is needed for electricity onshore. That extra energy could be put to work capturing and storing carbon.
Partisan control of most chambers has stayed the same since 2010. Don’t look for many red or blue states to change their colors in the coming decade.
Burying utility lines can be prohibitively expensive, and it is far from foolproof. There are other ways to accomplish the same goal, including the use of drones and smart grids.
Progressives dislike its regressivity, but states and localities depend heavily on the revenue. Some reformers’ eyes are on taxing luxuries and digital intangibles — NFTs, anyone? — but that presents its own problems.
