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6 days ago | 
governing.com | Jared Brey |Jabari Simama |Mattie Quinn |Girard Miller
He got his income tax cut, business courts and ban on cellphones in schools, prompting him to say Wednesday it was probably the best session in his seven years in office. “Look. The governor should be very happy,” House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said early Friday. “He got everything he wanted this session.” The legislative session, which ended Friday, was a mixed bag for Gov. Kevin Stitt. But then came Thursday, effectively the final day of the legislative session.
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1 week ago | 
sacbee.com | Girard Miller
May 27-Money market interest rates have held quite steady this year while the stock market, long-term bonds and financial futures have bobbed and weaved in response to turbulent tariff news and shifting views of recession risks. Public treasurers and cash managers have lost nothing so far by staying ultra-short in their portfolio maturities, but external, outsourced managers running public money against popular indexes in the one- to three-year range have outperformed most others.
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1 week ago | 
governing.com | Girard Miller
They had equal say in big funding decisions, and worked in tandem to coordinate housing programs through a joint city-county agency called the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. But after scathing audits criticizing the homeless authority, the county is blowing up that joint agency and starting over — despite the objections of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Now, questions remain about how the shakeup will affect the more than 75,000 unhoused people living in L.A. County.
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1 week ago | 
governing.com | Girard Miller |Alan Greenblatt
After graduating from high school in Vermillion, S.D., Pearson knew he didn’t want to pursue a four-year degree and instead scrolled through the list of majors offered at Mitchell Tech, one of the state’s four technical colleges. “When I came to the wind energy program, I thought, ‘Well, that sounds kind of cool,'” Pearson, 28, recalled during a recent interview at Mitchell Tech, the only South Dakota college with a designated wind energy major.
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1 week ago | 
governing.com | Girard Miller |Alan Greenblatt
This is in line with last year, when a majority of governors also prioritized behavioral health in their State of the State addresses. With 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experiencing mental illness, leaders from both parties recognize the urgent need to expand access to quality care—particularly in rural communities and among vulnerable populations.
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1 week ago | 
governing.com | Girard Miller
Money market interest rates have held quite steady this year while the stock market, long-term bonds and financial futures have bobbed and weaved in response to turbulent tariff news and shifting views of recession risks. Public treasurers and cash managers have lost nothing so far by staying ultra-short in their portfolio maturities, but external, outsourced managers running public money against popular indexes in the one- to three-year range have outperformed most others.
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2 weeks ago | 
governing.com | Jared Brey |Girard Miller
In the face of real and potential cuts to federal programs that state and local governments rely on, those governments are faced with particularly challenging programmatic decisions. There is a variety of tools that they can use to determine whether to cut programs that are no longer federally supported or try to continue them using their own funds.
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3 weeks ago | 
governing.com | Carl Smith |Alan Greenblatt |Girard Miller |Jabari Simama
The 2002 sci-fi thriller “Minority Report” depicted a dystopian future where a specialized police unit was tasked with arresting people for crimes they had not yet committed. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the drama revolved around “PreCrime” — a system informed by a trio of psychics, or “precogs,” who anticipated future homicides, allowing police officers to intervene and prevent would-be assailants from claiming their targets’ lives.
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3 weeks ago | 
governing.com | Jared Brey |Girard Miller
Gov. Bob Ferguson on Monday signed House Bill 1596 into law, requiring a new speed-limiting device as a condition to getting a restricted driver’s license after getting it suspended for reckless driving or excessive speeding. Judges can also require the speed limiters as a condition of pre-trial release or post-conviction probation. In a few years, with the help of technology, prolific speeders in Washington won’t be able to drive as fast as they want.
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3 weeks ago | 
governing.com | Jared Brey |Girard Miller
If you haven’t heard, there’s been a wee bit of debate about whether ideological moderation helps candidates win elections. Mainly, this is a debate within the Democratic Party, which only intensified after Trump’s win in 2024. Here is one summary of the debate, from Ezra Klein in 2021. On one side are “popularists” who argue that candidates win more votes when they take popular positions – specifically, because those positions win over swing voters.
