With federal support diminishing, local governments are on the forefront. They have plenty of effective approaches to draw on to direct resources toward proven ideas — and away from ineffective ones.
Federal policy changes stand to make it harder for local governments to cope with housing instability and homelessness. There are some things they can do to brace for what’s coming.
The state employed disciplined budgeting, debt repayment, spending cuts and targeted tax relief to dig itself out of a cash-flow crisis. To deal with crushing national debt, Washington policymakers should model this discipline.
Success in the coming years will require sustainability, adaptation and perseverance, especially as AI both enhances and disrupts government. Professional leaders need to look beyond the short term, facilitate change where needed, and reinvent themselves.
Zohran Mamdani’s promise to raise taxes on New York City’s richest residents set off a chorus of warnings about tax flight. But when millionaires do move, it’s rarely for tax reasons.
Their minority contracting programs and others are under federal attack, and the consequences reach into the tens of billions of dollars. The souls of our communities should not be for sale.
Private-sector entrepreneurs know how important it is to prototype, even at the risk of failure. For local governments, testing, learning and adapting is a path toward reimagining core municipal services.
In one form or another over decades, this urban improvement program and its predecessors have found bipartisan support. But their record is mixed at best.
The only viable path to a national standard is one built on the foundation that our laboratories of democracy are laying. Congressional efforts to freeze state oversight over AI companies would leave Americans exposed.
They’re an important pipeline of skills, products and innovation for larger industries, but they’re reeling from tariffs. There’s a role for grants and tax breaks, and states need to track who these businesses are and what they do.
After decades of bipartisan reforms that prioritized rehabilitation over punishment, states are moving back toward prosecuting younger teens as adults. It contradicts decades of research, and it doesn’t make communities safer.
They need a lot more support than they get. Their success is crucial to building the workforce our economy needs.
State and local financial managers face the impact of federal aid cutbacks, plus new rules and even some opportunities. It’s time to focus on what’s practical and necessary, both near and longer term.
It’s easier than ever to send out a survey instrument, and they’re an important tool for governments. But with so many of them out there, it’s harder than ever to reach a critical mass of respondents.
It’s about governance and whether these systems can avoid reinforcing existing inequities. States, local governments and agencies need to move to embed fairness, transparency and accountability into every stage of AI use.
New work rules and other reforms could help break the cycle of dependency. But to implement them, states need to move beyond a patchwork of programs that don’t talk to each other. Federal policymakers could help.
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