Indy's Adult Bookstore Ordinance; Missouri Mayor Faces 2 Felony Charges in Bicycle Incident
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also in our State & Local news roundup: Stories from Delaware, Arizona and Utah.
Here is today's State & Local news roundup for Thursday, October 2, 2014 ...
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana: Is Indianapolis’ 2003 ordinance restricting hours on stores that sell adult books, movies and sex paraphernalia constitutional? It could be decided by the U.S Supreme Court. As Maureen Gropee writes for The Indianapolis Star:
If the city’s appeal of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down the ordinance is not accepted, the businesses that successfully challenged the ordinance will seek to recover damages from the city that could top $1 million.
The Supreme Court’s new term starts Monday.
PHOENIX, Arizona: Cities in the Grand Canyon State are putting many big municipal projects on hold because of changes in state funding laws, including a new library on Glendale, a water-treatment plant expansion in Scottsdale and a fire-training facility in Gilbert. As Kaila White of The Arizona Republic reports, legislation pushed by the homebuilding industry in 2011 “changed the way cities collect what are known as development-impact fees from builders and developers and redefined what they can build with that money.”
MILTON, Delaware: Municipalities in the First State have until Nov. 1 to apply for the state’s new Downtown Development Districts Program, which aims to help languishing downtowns flourish, Jon Offredo of The News Journal reports. Only a couple localities have applied thus far but the state expects many more to follow suit in the coming weeks.
SUNSET HILLS, Missouri: The mayor of this St. Louis County suburb is now facing two felony charges in connection with an incident from this summer where he was accused of intentionally striking a cyclist with his red Mercedes convertible, according to Mitch Ryals of the The Riverfront Times.
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah: The state’s new American crow hunt has apparently only resulted in only one successful kill, Brett Prettyman of The Salt Lake Tribune reports. "I’m not surprised. The birds actually in danger of getting shot are in areas where they can’t be shot [because they are in city limits]," Utah Wildlife Board member Bill Fenimore told the newspaper. "With the price of gasoline and steel shot, I don’t see many people going out to shoot a bird that doesn’t put any bacon on the table."
(Image via Rudy Balasko/Shutterstock.com)