West Virginia's Boy Scout Amendment; Texas State Auditor's Big UNT Findings
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Also in our State & Local roundup: Stories from Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., Los Angeles City Hall and Eugene, Ore.
Here is today’s State & Local news roundup from around the nation for Thursday, September 25, 2014 …
EUGENE, Oregon: After a lot of heated discussion, Eugene City Hall will be demolished and replaced with a smaller structure. The city council on Wednesday voted to tear down the building instead of renovating it. Still, as Edward Russo of The Register-Guard reports “the council indicated a willingness to consider at a future meeting whether to save the council chamber within City Hall.”
DENTON, Texas: An investigation by State Auditor John Keel’s office accuses the University of North Texas of having a “coordinated effort” to manipulate its payroll spending so the university received excess state funding, according to Holly K. Hacker and Jenna Duncan of The Dallas Morning News. The university’s chancellor confirmed that the auditor’s findings were accurate. The auditor wants state lawmakers to mandate that the university repay at least $75.6 million.
CHARLESTON, West Virginia: In November, West Virginia voters will consider a state ballot proposal that would help non-profit organizations that focus on “adventure, educational or recreational activities for young people” that also hold property worth more than $100 million. As David Gutman of The Charleston Gazette writes: “If that sounds like a really specific constitutional amendment, that’s because it is. It was written with just one group and one location in mind: The Boy Scouts of America and its Summit Bechtel Reserve, in Fayette County.”
Los Angeles City Hall (Photo by trekandshoot / Shutterstock.com)
LOS ANGELES, California: The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a measure that would mandate higher wages for some hotel workers, a victory for organized labor. As the Dakota Smith of the Los Angeles Daily News reports, the vote was a reminder of the diminished stature of the city’s business community at City Hall. “You have a business community that isn’t very strong,” Jaime Regalado, a Cal State-Los Angeles political science professor emeritus, told the Daily News. “They still have voices, but there’s no comparison to the power that they had before the mid-1970s.”
HO-HO-KUS, New Jersey: A resident in this North Jersey borough paid $600 to conduct her own traffic study on a popular commuter shortcut and had traffic-counting strips installed without the borough’s approval, a move which prompted local officials to write a letter directing her to remove the strips. Chris Harris of The Record reports that although Donna Cioffi said she wasn’t concerned that the borough would intervene with her traffic study, the traffic strips were eventually removed Wednesday night.
(Image via LesPalenik/Shutterstock.com)