Oregon County Voters Say ‘No,’ Again; West Virginia’s Data Lawsuit
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Also in our State & Local roundup: Pennsylvania county vs. Haiti and Nebraska’s minimum-wage proposal.
CURRY COUNTY, Oregon: On Tuesday night, voters in a cash-strapped county in the southwest corner of the state rejected another proposed tax increase that officials said was necessary to keep the local jail open. As The Associated Press reports that “Curry is among several timber counties in southwestern Oregon struggling to pay for basic services such as law enforcement as voters refuse to raise their taxes to fill the gap from declining federal timber revenues.”
SAN FRANCISCO, California: A member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors wants the city to consider distributing the promising HIV/AIDS medication PrEP to all San Francisco residents “regardless of income level,” according to Rachel Swan of SF Weekly. PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is not a cure, but it has been show to be highly effective in preventing transmission of HIV. Supervisor David Campos will discuss the idea of distributing PrEP citywide during a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
ERIE, Pennsylvania: Economic growth in and around Pennsylvania’s fourth-largest city is happening very slowly, up 0.2 percent to $10.48 billion in 2013, according to a new report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. As Jim Martin of the Erie Times-News reports, that “means that Erie County, population 280,646, has a substantially larger economy than the the island nation of Haiti, population 10.3 million.”
CHARLESTON, West Virginia: The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has refused to provide a public interest law firm with data on water pollution levels at coal mining sites across the state. That state agency is now facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the matter, Ken Ward Jr. reports for The Charleston Gazette.
LINCOLN, Nebraska: What would be the impact of raising Nebraska’s minimum wage to $9 per hour? According to report from advocates pushing for a higher minimum wage in the state, a $9 per hour wage “would create 400 jobs to handle a projected $74 million increase in consumer spending.” One in six Nebraska workers would see higher wages under the proposal, according to Paul Hammel of the Omaha World-Herald.
(Image by Spirit of America / Shutterstock.com)
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