Emergency Session for Fla. Prison Crisis?; Bad Transportation Governance in N.J.

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA
CORRECTIONS | Calling the state’s prisons “a ticking time bomb” the union representing Florida’s corrections officers is calling on Gov. Rick Scott and lawmakers to convene an emergency session of the legislature to address the state’s prison crisis. Three independent audits of the corrections department found that dangerously low levels of staffing could leave the agency vulnerable—the agency loses about one-third of its experienced officers every year, and the replacements coming in are often young, with little or no training. It’s unlikely the union will get the special session it’s requesting. Several Orlando-based Democrats spent the past several weeks campaigning for an emergency session on gun control. Their bid to convene the session failed, falling 46 votes short. [Miami Herald]

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY
TRANSPORTATION | Work at hundreds of road construction sites across the Garden State will stop Friday because Gov. Chris Christie and state lawmakers have failed to find the money to fund the projects. The sites will remain shut down for at least seven days, according to Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. “This is very, very bad governance,” said Martin Robins, director emeritus of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund faces $30 billion in debt and interest payments, according to the authority that runs it. Christie, a Republican, and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, both Democrats, have been unable to reach agreement over the last two years about how to shore-up the fund. The state’s 14.5-cent tax on gasoline has not gone up since 1988. [The Record via NorthJersey.com]

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
MILITIAS | A man who authorities say led a seven-member militia that included three undercover FBI agents pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges that he attempted to blow up a Bureau of Land Management cabin. William Keebler, 57, is being held in a jail in Weber County, Utah, north of Salt Lake City. The FBI started investigating Keebler after he participated in a 2014 standoff with federal authorities at the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy. He is also said to have been friends with Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who was shot and killed by law enforcement officers in January, during the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge that involved Bundy’s son. [Deseret News]

PORTLAND, MAINE
SCOOTERS | Parking can get tough when visitors flock to this coastal city in southern Maine during the summer months. But Portland’s mayor, Ethan Strimling, has a secret weapon that helps him to find a spot more easily: a 150cc scooter. “Traffic in this city is just brutal,” Strimling said. Portland offers free 10-hour, motorcycle-only parking spaces where the mayor parks his scooter—a 2008 Stella, made by Genuine Scooter Company. “I think we ought to really try to incentivize people to take up less room on the road and reduce their carbon footprint,” the mayor also said. “If we had a lot more two wheels, instead of four wheels, we’d be saving a lot of space, saving a lot of parking down here.” [Bangor Daily News]

ROWAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY
LGBT RIGHTS | County Clerk Kim Davis can’t seem to stay out of legal trouble, her anti-LGBT lawyers at Liberty Counsel refusing to release retainer agreements and other documents concerning their relationship upon a public records request from the D.C.-based Campaign for Accountability. Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear, who already had to step in when Davis refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, requested to view the documents privately to no avail. Beshear again found Davis in violation of the law. "There's nothing to reveal here,” said Davis’ pro bono legal counsel. Davis still faces complaints against her in federal court over the marriage license issue. [The Courier-Journal]

TUCSON, ARIZONA
GUNS | City Council banned the sale of high-capacity guns, those capable of firing 10 or more rounds, at the Tucson Convention Center—further restricting private sales at the public venue. A private gun show hasn’t been held at the center in three years. Next month, an Arizona law goes into effect barring cities from enacting tougher gun restrictions than the state’s, so a legal challenge could be coming. [Arizona Daily Star]

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
JUVENILE JUSTICE | While money bail isn’t set for kids in Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system, those who are underaged but charged as adults have a very different experience. For young people in that category—typically 15-17 year-olds—the average bail amounts are often set extremely high. Out of the 46 juveniles charged as adults this year in Philadelphia, 34 had their bail set at least as two times as high as the court’s recommended maximum. The average bail for these young offenders in 2016 so far was $248,000. Benjamin Lerner, the city’s deputy managing director for criminal justice was often outraged by the bail set for these children charged as adults. He says, "[n]ot only was the bail set for these juveniles way above the guidelines, but it bore no reasonable relationship to what they were actually charged with doing." [Philly.com]