North Dakota Police vs. Protesters in ‘Ongoing Riot’; A ‘Worrying Trend’ for Ohio Jobs
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Also in our State and Local Weekend News Digest: Wildfires continue in Georgia; Chicago student information improperly shared; Rhode Island vs. higher sea levels.
PIPELINE PROTESTS | Law enforcement officers in North Dakota responded on Sunday night to what was described as an “ongoing riot” involving around 400 protesters of the Dakota Access pipeline project in Morton County, near Mandan. [Forum News Service]
ECONOMY | Unemployment in Ohio is up to 4.9 percent as of October, compared to 4.8 percent in September and 4.7 percent in October 2015, the state having lost 2,800 jobs in what Policy Matters Ohio calls “a worrying trend”. [Cleveland.com]
WILDFIRES | Firefighters are continuing to work to bring wildfires in drought-stricken Georgia under control. In Rabun County, located in the northeast corner of the state, two of the state’s largest wildfires continue to burn. Overall, fires across the state have burned more than 40,000 acres. [WXIA-TV]
AIR QUALITY | If you’re curious about the environmental benefits of public transit systems, look no further than the pollution levels recorded in Philadelphia during the recent four-day Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority strike. Levels of inhalable particles produced by burning gasoline and coal were four times higher during the strike, compared with days when the transit agency is fully operational. [Philly.com]
DATA SECURITY | Chicago Public Schools has notified families of up to 30,000 students that a district employee had shared their confidential information with a charter school operator for use in a direct mailing campaign.[Chicago Tribune]
RESILIENCY | If Rhode Island experiences another storm like Hurricane Carol, which hit the state in 1954, the damage would be immense along the state’s coastline. But new modeling shows just how destructive such a storm would be with higher sea levels from climate change. Most of the homes in Warwick and Charlestown “are ill-suited to a future of higher seas.” [The Providence Journal]
TRANSPORTATION | For the past 22 years, the Colorado Department of Transportation has “unlawfully condemned land for highway widening and improvement projects throughout the state,” according to the Colorado Supreme Court. [The Denver Post]
WORKFORCE | Seeking to attract and retain good workers, Gov. Mark Dayton made Minnesota the fourth state to approve paid parental leave for state employees—up to six weeks—so long as the GOP-controlled legislature votes to keep the benefit next year. [Star Tribune]
WORKPLACE HAZARDS | Municipal workers in Chillicothe, Ohio, have been moved out of a building used for city services and parks and recreation because hundreds of bats have made their home inside. [WCMH-TV]
NEXT STORY: Ohio Fiscal Transparency Initiative Includes Hundreds of Local Governments