Massachusetts Tech Sector’s ‘Political Awakening’; Strong-Mayor System for Sacramento?
The Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston. Action Sports Photography / Shutterstock.com
Also in our State & Local roundup, Atlantic City’s greed, rural Georgia broadband expansion and a Texas fracking ban plan ...
Here is today’s State & Local news roundup for Tuesday, October 21, 2014 ...
BOSTON, Massachusetts: While they aren’t flexing their muscles that much in state politics, “IT workers are experiencing somewhat of a political awakening” in Massachusetts, reports Curt Nickisch of WBUR-FM, who revisits a sensitive episode involving a software services tax that, while eventually repealed, took many in the state’s tech sector by surprise.
ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey: What went wrong in Atlantic City? As George Anastasia writes in Politico magazine, Atlantic City is “in critical condition and the words of the former mayor could serve as its obituary. Greed has done Atlantic City in. … Even during its halcyon days, Atlantic City was an enterprise built around blue smoke and mirrors.”
SACRAMENTO, California: Will California’s capital city, pictured above, benefit from a strong-mayor form of local government? Mayor Kevin Johnson thinks so and is promoting Measure L. But as Ryan Lillis reports for The Sacramento Bee, not everyone is so keen on the strong-mayor system. “It’s one of those instances where if people like the mayor, they want him or her to be a strong mayor,” Jessica Levinson of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles tells the Bee. “And that system can be more efficient, but if you pick someone who is a dithering idiot and is the essence of inefficiency, then no, it doesn’t work.”
DENTON, Texas: This city 40 miles northwest of Dallas “has found itself at the center of a nationwide debate over the safety of fracking, the money it brings, and the role cities play in regulating it,” Mose Buchele reports for StateImpact Texas. Voters are considering a local ban on hydraulic fracturing and if they give it the thumbs up, Denton would be the first city in Texas to ban the controversial drilling procedure.
ALBANY, Georgia: The largest city in southwest Georgia is gearing up to take on the responsibility of providing fixed and wireless broadband services in five rural counties. As Carlton Fletcher reports for the Albany Herald, the proposal would have the Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission “make wireless broadband services — including telephone and computer broadband — available to 21,033 homes, 2,272 businesses and 246 anchor institutions in the five-county region.”
(Top image by Action Sports Photography / Shutterstock.com; second image by Andrew Zarivny / Shutterstock.com)