Rick Steves Pushes Oregon Pot Legalization; Louisville’s Big Mulching Effort
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Also in our State & Local roundup: Stories from Wisconsin, Delaware and Texas.
Here’s today’s State & Local roundup for Thursday, October 9, 2014 ...
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin: Delinquent property taxpayers are a problem for any city. In Milwaukee, that problem has necessitated that the city borrow $33 million to fill the budget gap caused by unpaid property taxes. Don Behm of the Journal Sentinel reports that since the economy has improved, the number of delinquent taxpayers has decreased.
SALEM, Oregon: Rick Steves, the travel writer perhaps known best for his public television program on European travel, is on a 10-city tour of Oregon advocating for the passage of Measure 91, which would legalize and tax marijuana in the state for those 21 and older. Speaking in Salem on Wednesday night, he told a packed ballroom that his years of traveling throughout Europe opened his eyes to the benefits of marijuana legalization, Anna Staver of the Statesman Journal reports.
NEWARK, Delaware: Truck drivers on Interstate 95 like to avoid the Delaware Turnpike’s toll plaza by using local roads which has helped lead to a steady decrease in toll revenue from commercial truckers. As Melissa Nann Burke of The News Journal reports, the Delaware Department of Transportation wants to reinstate funding for special police patrols to ticket non-local trucks, but “the definition of ‘local’ varies from town to town, police agency to police agency.”
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky: The largest city in the state is instituting a ban on plastic bags used for yard waste starting Jan. 1 and the Louisville and Jefferson County Metro Government Waste Management District is gearing up to educate the public about the new rules. James Bruggers of The Courier-Journal reports that part of the public education campaign is geared to promote composting and mulching at home.
DALLAS, Texas: Most county administrators have never had to deal with something as big as an Ebola outbreak. But that’s the position Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has found himself in. “Certainly, having the federal and state government ask you to run point on an Ebola outbreak is not anything you expect when you run for county judge,” Jenkins told Alexa Ura of the Texas Tribune.
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