Governing: State and local government news and analysis
No city in the country has had as much success keeping its residents safe from the coronavirus as San Francisco.
In many cases, state and local governments have more jobs than applicants. HR departments are fighting employee burnout, rising retirement and competition from the private sector to fill them.
Technology leaders in California, Colorado and Minnesota convened at NASCIO to offer best practices on bridging connectivity and digital literacy gaps in their states.
Taking away a license over unpaid fines for minor traffic infractions makes work and family life a misery for low-income Americans. States should reform this punitive, unjust practice.
It’s a bold attempt to transform cybersecurity. State and local government organizations, along with their vendors, will benefit from strengthened federal requirements.
Jealously guarded as the country's most sacred text, the highest law in the land is an artifact of history even as competing forces put demands on it to guide the country into the future.
Big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple could soon face a 2 percent tax in New York state for profiting off of consumer data — if a recently proposed bill gains enough support to become law.
Body-worn cameras and freedom of information laws do enable oversight and accountability of the police, but they also hold the potential to force sensitive data and stressful episodes in private citizens’ lives into public view that’s easily accessible online.
The breach highlighted the ability of ransomware to interrupt the vital services on which Americans rely. The incident raises important legal and ethical questions surrounding ransomware payments. Just because paying off cyber attackers may be lawful in some contexts, that still doesn’t make it the morally correct thing to do.
The Great Depression crushed the economy. The New Deal saved it. Can an analogy be made with today’s economic situation? Professor Jason Scott Smith talks about what happened in the 1930s and what might happen today.
The research is clear: The creative and cultural sectors are a powerful force for helping communities large and small turn the corner on the pandemic’s economic shocks.
The author of a new book on the pioneers of the civil rights movement says, as different as the two were from each other, they were also each other’s alter egos in the struggle against racism.
The U.S. could have done much better in battling COVID-19, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths. But its decentralized system of governance failed to rise to the challenge.
Its growth will provide more and more high-demand, high-wage jobs. Our education system is key to training that workforce of the future, with a particular focus on marginalized communities.
Half the states have passed legislation to address policing, sometimes in ambitious fashion. But rising crime and discomfort with a racial reckoning have slowed momentum in many places.
The battle over Route 17, a rural highway in upstate New York and a popular route to the Catskills, is a microcosm of national divisions and choices in transportation policy.
Much depends on their tax structures, particularly if Prop. 13-style tax caps are in place. But inflation-driven pressure for wage increases could squeeze budgets and crush pension funds.
They need to leverage public spending and build partnerships to create and nurture sustainable-wage employment and training for local residents, particularly those from underserved communities.
As the economy reopens, there’s increased demand for Uber and Lyft, which are still short on riders. That may push some riders back to transit, but systems are still well under capacity.
A new book the author calls “an owner’s manual for American citizens” recovers a lost language that Americans need to talk with each other about things that matter.
Digital equity advocates, state broadband offices and local government staffers are encouraged by the president’s emphasis on their work, but what do they need at the federal level to fully solve this challenge?
An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.”
A new Information Technology and Innovation Foundation report argues that any U.S. infrastructure plan should bank on digital infrastructure because it offers the greatest long-term social and economic gains.
With most of the state gripped by extreme dryness, some conditions are better, some worse, than the last record-breaking drought. Over-pumping of wells hasn’t stopped. But urban residents haven’t lapsed back into water-wasting lifestyles.
America doesn’t hear about ‘shovel-ready’ or ‘New Deal’ work projects anymore because the Biden administration knows infrastructure spending doesn’t generate jobs in the short term. But it does create long-term economic development.
The pandemic and all the frustrations it's brought to parents have increased support for charter schools and vouchers. States that had resisted such ideas have ambitious new programs.
The pandemic has significantly increased the number of students who don’t attend class. Solutions aren’t easy, but school districts can recover the chronically absent by digging deeper into data.
In 1972, the city and King County were determined to build a giant multipurpose, domed stadium in Seattle’s International District. Just as determined to stop it were the Asian Americans who lived there.
A new state board in New Hampshire offers a speedy, non-judicial way to challenge onerous local land-use decisions. It’s a way to prevent a hot housing market from overheating.
Social sentiment analysis is helping local officials understand the views and concerns of their residents about COVID-19 vaccinations, giving them information they need to shape effective messaging strategies.
