High-Speed Rail Eyes Cadillac Country; Hiking Legislator Pay in Florida to Draw Working Class Lawmakers
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Connecting state and local government leaders
Also: Banning bad charter schools from advertising in Ohio and a well-intentioned student labeling exercise in Connecticut draws howls.
Here’s some of what we’ve been reading today…
AUSTIN, Texas: High speed rail in the kingdom of the long and low Cadillac? There are no plans yet, but rail companies around the world are readying themselves for the moment when Texas finally decides to embrace what the companies at least see as the inevitable, reports The Texas Tribune. “There comes a time when adding new highway lanes is not a solution anymore,” said Alain Leray, president of SNCF America, the U.S. subsidiary of the French rail operator. The company has been talking with Texas officials in earnest for about a year about potential projects, reports the newspaper. Texas Central Partners over the last three years has been weighing a Dallas-Houston high-speed rail project using Japanese trains. [The Texas Tribune]
TALLAHASSEE, Florida: State Sen. Arthenia Joyner of Tampa, the highest-ranking Democrat in the legislature, is pushing a bill that would boost lawmakers pay 68 percent, from $29,697 a year to $50,000, reports The Bradenton Herald. Joyner says it’s not about rewarding current lawmakers; it’s about making it possible for working Floridians to run for office. "We need working-class people up here who know what it is like on the ground," she said. [The Bradenton Herald]
COLUMBUS, Ohio: The Ohio School Boards Association is asking state lawmakers to ban charter schools with lousy student performance records or dicey finances from advertising. The Association also wants lawmakers to force all charter school ads to include details about student performance, according to The Plain Dealer. It’s not clear whether the proposal will gain traction. [The Plain Dealer]
HARTFORD, Connecticut: It was a well-intentioned exercise but not very well thought out. A school teacher training plan at the city’s SAND school saw instructors use color stickers to identify students based on their learning needs, reports The Hartford Courant. Green stickers were pressed onto special education students. Yellow stickers onto English language learners. Blue stickers onto students who were both special education and English language learners. Parents were outraged. A tipster called the newspaper, which called Kelvin Roldan, the city schools chief spokesman. He told the Courant that the sticker exercise would never happen again. “The procedure is not appropriate,” he said.“"It was the first and last time.” [The Hartford Courant]
RALEIGH, North Carolina: Seven deadlocked town council elections across the Tar Heel State will be decided “by lot” — that is, by chance. “A state law on the books since the 1970s dictates that municipal election tie votes must be determined by lot and that County elections officials get to decide how to carry that out,” reports The News and Observer. In this case, it mostly means the elections were decided by coin toss. Some were decided by a single coin toss. Others by a best of three tosses. [The News and Observer]
(Photo by Leena Robinson / Shutterstock.com)
John Tomasic is a journalist who lives in Boulder, Colorado.
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