GOVERNING STATES AND LOCALITIES ABOUT THE AUTHORS KEVIN B. SMITH is a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of The Ideology of Education and numerous scholarly articles on state politics and policy. He is also a former associate editor of State Politics & Policy Quarterly. Prior to becoming an academic, he covered state and local politics as a newspaper reporter ALAN GREENBLATT has been writing about politics and government in Washington and the states for more than a decade. As a reporter at Congressional Quarterly, he won the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume award for political journalism. Since joining the staff of Governing magazine, he has covered issues of concern to state and local governments, including budgets, taxes and higher education. Along the way, he has written about politics and culture for numerous publications, including the New York Times and the Washington Post MICHELE MARIANI is a senior associate with the Pew Center on the States, a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts, where she counts among her projects the Government Performance Project, a regular assessment of government management. Prior to joining Pew, she wrote about government and business for newspapers and magazines, including Governing.