Governors propose spending billions on overdue infrastructure projects

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It’s Saturday, Jan. 13, and we’d like to welcome you to the weekly State and Local Roundup. There is plenty to keep tabs on with the high court agreeing to hear a case about homeless encampments that could have huge implications in the West, the first all-female city council gaveling into session in St. Paul, a Massachusetts court ruling that “emerging adults” cannot be sentenced to life without parole and the feds cracking down on funny messages on electronic highway signs.

But first we turn to state infrastructure plans, which governors are still pressing forward on even as the financial picture for states is darkening.

Perhaps the most audacious plan comes from Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing to spend $1.5 billion on transportation projects. The vast majority of that would go to the state transportation department before the current fiscal year ends in June, in order to speed up progress on the agency’s list of planned roadwork. The department will use part of that money to establish a freight infrastructure program and give cities and counties $200 million for their own projects.

“Georgia is attracting more people, more businesses and more investment. While the incredible win streak we’ve been on benefits Georgians from all walks of life, in nearly every region of this state, it’s also true that there are costs to that success when it comes to the movement of people and goods across our state,” Kemp told members of the state chamber of commerce this week. “To continue being the best state to live, work and raise a family, our transportation infrastructure must not only keep up with demand; it must look five, 10, 20 years ahead.”

To pay for the upgrades, Kemp would tap into the nearly $11 billion in excess cash the state has stockpiled over the last three years, rather than borrowing it. The move would save Georgia $1.3 billion in interest costs over the next two decades. State budget officials told The Associated Press they couldn’t remember the last time the state didn’t need to borrow money with bonds.

The budget situation has been bleaker in New York, where the state faces a $4 billion deficit. But Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul still called for ambitious infrastructure spending during her State of the State address this week.

The first-term governor asked lawmakers to move forward with a $7.6 billion project to extend the Second Street subway westward along 125th Street in Harlem. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority started expansion of the line in 2017, and Hochul’s announcement marks the start of the second phase of the project. Phase two will bring the subway along 125th Street to Broadway, where it would connect to seven subway lines and 20 bus routes and serve nearly a quarter of a million daily riders. Any extension would take years to complete and would cost at least $8.1 billion.

“By continuing the tunnel boring machine’s westward path beyond the phase two work, the MTA may be able to incur substantial time and cost savings, estimated at over $400 million, relative to performing that work at a later date,” according to a 181-page report the governor released along with her speech.

Hochul also said the MTA would start engineering work on a light-rail line called the Interborough Express between Brooklyn and Queens, potentially giving 900,000 residents access to better transit.

“There are too many transit deserts in New York City—communities that have been left out and left behind for far too long,” Hochul said in a statement. “That’s why I’m so committed to the future of the Second Avenue Subway and the Interborough Express, two projects that will transform the way New Yorkers get around our city.”

For Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, the main infrastructure concern this year is not transportation but aging schools. The governor outlined a 10-year, $2 billion plan to replace dilapidated schools, such as one he visited where sewage was seeping under the cafeteria. Little said it was time to stop kicking the metaphorical can down the road. “Folks, we can do better,” he said in his speech. “The can we are kicking is getting heavier, and we are running out of road.”

The proposal comes after ProPublica and the Idaho Statesman published an investigation showing how years of funding shortfalls led to rural schools across the state with collapsing roofs, deteriorating foundations and freezing classrooms. Idaho ranks last in the nation in terms of school infrastructure spending, and it is one of only two states in the country that requires two-thirds majorities of voters to approve local school bond measures.

Lawmakers have already started discussions on how to channel more money into school repair, including lowering the threshold for bond measure approval. But changing the majorities required for passage would require amending the state constitution. Republican legislative leaders said the details of Little’s proposal, once they are released, could affect its chances of passage.

A top Democrat in the Idaho House said the governor’s proposal should only be viewed as a starting point.

“We need a billion dollars today for our school facilities, and that is just to repair the ones we’ve got, that’s not to build new schools for all the influx of new people coming here. That’s not accounting for the things that are going to break next year, or the year after or the year after,” Minority Leader Ilana Rubel of Boise said, according to the Idaho Capital Sun. “Ten years from now, we are probably going to need $6 billion to fix our schools.”

Keep reading as there’s more news to use below, and if you don’t already and would prefer to get this roundup in your inbox, you can subscribe to this newsletter here. We’ll see you next week.

News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

• HOMELESSNESS: Supreme Court to hear case over street camp rules in Oregon. The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a challenge to cities using local ordinances to enforce bans on public camping, a case that could reshape policy on homelessness for years to come. The case stems from a lawsuit challenging local laws in Oregon that restrict sleeping and camping in public spaces, including sidewalks, streets and city parks. A ruling could have broad implications, particularly for Western states grappling with how to address a homelessness crisis. In court filings, lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that in 2013, Grants Pass, a city of about 40,000 people in southwestern Oregon, “began aggressively enforcing a set of ordinances that make it unlawful to sleep anywhere on public property with so much as a blanket to survive cold nights, even if shelter is unavailable.” The plaintiffs say that these rules violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, “effectively punishing the city’s involuntarily homeless residents for their existence” in the city.


• JUVENILE JUSTICE: Adults younger than 21 cannot be sentenced to life without parole, court rules. In a landmark split ruling, Massachusetts' highest court declared it unconstitutional for judges to sentence anyone under the age of 21 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The closely watched case is believed to make Massachusetts the first state in the country to eliminate such sentences for people considered "emerging adults." Prior to this ruling, the state prohibited only those under the age of 18 from being sentenced to life in prison without the opportunity for parole. In Thursday's 4-3 ruling, the justices cited several factors underlying the court's decision. Chief among them was discussion of scientific data and evidence that supports the idea that young adult brains are still developing.


• LAWMAKING: St. Paul, Minnesota, makes history with all-female city council. The youngest and most diverse city council in the history of Minnesota’s capital city was sworn into office on Tuesday. Experts who track women in politics said St. Paul, with a population of about 300,000 people, is the first large U.S. city they know of with an all-female city council. All seven women are under 40 years old, and six out of the seven are women of color. According to researchers with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, women continue to be underrepresented as municipal officials across the country. Seven out of 10 municipal office holders across the country are male, and most of them are white. The council is a nonpartisan office, but all seven members are Democrats.


• TRANSPORTATION: White House unveils $1B for electric school buses. The Biden administration announced Monday $1 billion in funding for more than 2,700 electric and low-emission school buses across 37 states. This is a second part of funding of a $5 billion, five-year initiative from the bipartisan infrastructure law. In total, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program has awarded nearly $2 billion and funded approximately 5,000 electric and low-emission school buses nationwide. Out of the 2,737 school buses, 95% will be electric, the White House said. Low-income public school districts and tribal communities make up about 86% of the projects selected to receive funding. Some of those funding mechanisms include grants, rebates and contracts.


• GOVERNORS: New Louisiana governor sworn in. Jeff Landry took the oath of office Sunday to become the 57th governor of the state of Louisiana. Landry, 53, is a former congressman, who first gained national attention for breaking decorum during President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. Closer to home as attorney general, Landry backed initiatives to scrutinize public libraries over LGBTQ+ material and put doctors on notice that they would be subject to prosecution if they violated the state’s abortion ban. He also got the state court system to throw out one of former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ first executive orders, which protected LGBTQ+ state workers from discrimination. As a candidate for governor though, Landry tacked to the political center on issues such as crime and economic development. Public safety continues to be a top priority for the incoming governor, a point he emphasized in his inaugural address.


• EDUCATION: Four-day school week faces scrutiny in Missouri. With more Missouri school districts switching to four-day weeks—including some of the largest—education leaders and state legislators are raising concerns. Four-day weeks have been an option for Missouri schools since 2011, and now over 30% of the state’s districts have adopted this shortened week. Many of the districts are in rural parts of the state. Some state lawmakers, concerned with the shortened schedule, are pushing bills to rein in the practice. The State Board of Education was scheduled this week to review a study on the four-day school week. The study concludes that, overall, the four-day schedule had “no statistically significant effect on either academic achievement or building growth.”


• CLIMATE CHANGE: Minnesota’s lawsuit against big oil moves forward. A major hurdle was removed on Monday to a lawsuit seeking to hold fossil fuel firms responsible for climate change. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to a lawsuit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against six companies connected to oil production. The companies had sought to have the lawsuit moved to federal court. Minnesota's suit, filed in 2020, is one of several brought by cities, counties and states in the past seven years that seeks to hold oil firms accountable for their contributions to a warming planet. None has yet reached the point where each side is presenting evidence and arguments, however, because of repeated battles over whether the lawsuits should be heard in state or federal courts. Minnesota's suit argues that the companies duped consumers by hiding evidence that burning fossil fuels heats the planet. The defendants include the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil Corp. and Koch Industries.


• VOTING: A judge has found Ohio’s new election law constitutional. A federal judge has upheld as constitutional provisions of the sweeping election law that Ohio put in place last year, rejecting a Democratic law firm’s challenge to strict new photo ID requirements, drop box restrictions, and tightened deadlines related to absentee and provisional ballots. In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Nugent determined that the state’s new photo ID requirement “imposes no more than a minimal burden, if any, for the vast majority of voters.” The suit was filed last year on behalf of groups representing military veterans, teachers, retirees and the homeless, and it  argued the law imposed “needless and discriminatory burdens” on the right to vote. The judge wrote that voters have no constitutional right to a mail-in voting option—or, for that matter, early voting—at all. He added that Ohio’s new schedule for obtaining and returning absentee ballots remains more generous than 30 other states.


• LAW ENFORCEMENT: WA lawmakers consider blocking police from lying during interrogations. Under a bill in Washington, anything a suspect says in custody while a police officer uses “false facts about evidence or unauthorized statements regarding leniency” during interrogation will be thrown out of court. The legislation is meant to prevent false confessions. Lara Zarowsky, who heads the Washington Innocence Project, said 29% of DNA exonerations recorded by her group involved a false confession. While police deception in interrogations is legal in every state, several states have introduced similar proposals to ban the practice. Oregon, Illinois, Utah and California have also passed legislation to protect juveniles from police deception in interrogations.


• PUBLIC HEALTH: Effort to ban youth tackle football advances. California lawmakers who want to ban tackle football for kids under 12 to reduce brain injuries gained ground Wednesday in the legislature but still face a very long field and a clock that is ticking. The Assembly committee that regulates sports voted 5-2 to send a bill banning the sport to the full chamber. The full Assembly has only until the end of January to approve it. If they do, it goes to the Senate and then Gov. Gavin Newsom. Heightened concern over concussions and the growing popularity of flag football are driving the effort to impose the ban, which opponents say would take away the ability for parents to decide their children’s activities, put California youth players behind those in other states and cut off some children from a source of exercise and an important after-school activity. But advocates say the bill will protect kids from the risk of brain damage, which studies have shown increases the longer a person plays tackle football. No state has banned tackle football for kids despite some attempts. State Assemblymember Kevin McCarty introduced a similar bill in 2018 that failed to pass. Other proposals in New York and Illinois also failed to pass.


• CRIME: From 42 to 0—how a city cut its nation-leading homicides to zero. In 1992, East Palo Alto, California, was dubbed the “murder capital” of the U.S., with 42 murders in its 2.5 square miles—a per capita rate higher than that of any other city of any size. In 2023, according to East Palo Alto Police Department statistics released last week, the turnaround seemed complete: zero homicides. Law enforcement leaders, residents and city officials point to a complicated mix of circumstances that turned a crime-ridden community into what the mayor now calls “one of the safest places to live in the peninsula.” Residents and city leaders point to more job opportunities, programs for youth and community policing, scoffing at the overly simple idea that gentrification solved the city’s problems.

Picture of the Week

The folks at the MaineDOT who come up with funny safety messages on highway signs may have to do away with the humor. It turns out the FHA is not laughing at quirky road signs.https://t.co/GnnvRBT9jv

— CBS 13 News (@WGME) January 12, 2024

Ever since electronic billboards have gone up on highways around the country, many state departments of transportation have been using them to get laughs. Massachusetts has urged drivers to “Use Yah Blinkah,” Utah has pointed out that “Driving Basted is for Turkeys” and over the holidays Arizona went with “Use headlights like Rudolph uses his red nose,” reported The Wall Street Journal. But for America’s funniest highway sign-writers, there is a slowdown ahead. As Route Fifty’s Daniel C. Vock reported in December, the Federal Highway Administration released long-awaited updates to its manual for traffic signs and road design. Among them was new guidance on traffic safety messages: Signs should avoid language that uses pop-culture references or humor. Federal officials say funny signs can distract drivers. But state highway officials argue their signs focus on safety and are part of broader campaigns to encourage responsible driving at a time when it is badly needed.

Government in Numbers

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The number of fur hats that the Alaska Department of Public Safety anticipates buying a year to equip new troopers and to replace damaged hats that are no longer serviceable, according to Alaska Beacon. The department issued a public notice this week seeking proposals for the hats. The state has for decades supplied such fur trapper-style hats as part of the regular trooper uniform. According to the request for proposals, the hats must be made with either otter or beaver fur, have fur lining around the trim, have leather straps, be unisex, waterproof and windproof and be good to temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, among other qualities. Proposals from would-be suppliers are due on Jan. 12, according to the notice.