Chicago Mayor Releases Emails From Personal Account; Is Utah’s New Prison Too Big?
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Andrew Harnick / AP Photo
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also in our State and Local Daily Digest: Atlanta-area county’s new drought rule; Oahu rail project costs; and a jurisdictional land shift in Alaska.
TRANSPARENCY | Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has agreed to release 2,700 pages of emails from his personal accounts, in which he conducted public business in private, as part of a settlement with the watchdog group Better Government Association. The mayor also has until Jan. 27 to index government-related emails and texts as part of an ongoing lawsuit with Chicago Tribune. A handful of city alderman corresponded with Emanuel through a personal address, as did political strategist David Plouffe—who the mayor once worked with under President Barack Obama—when lobbying on Uber’s behalf. [Chicago Tribune]
PRISONS | There are questions over whether a new 4,000-bed prison planned near Salt Lake City will be too big. Cost estimates for the project stand at $650 million. "I'm nervous. I don't want to be the one who says we only need 3,000 beds, but we know for a fact—I hate to break it to everyone—Utah is growing," Rollin Cook, executive director of the state’s Corrections Department said. "As the person who is responsible for corrections, it makes me nervous. So I walk away four years from now when I'm done or whenever I'm done and they say, 'Well, who's the moron who said you only need 3,000 beds.'" [The Salt Lake Tribune]
DROUGHT | In response to a regional drought, DeKalb County, Georgia, in the Atlanta area, is requiring 5,000 food service establishments to only serve water upon request. [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE | Hawaii state Sen. Jill Tokuda, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, indicated this week she’s not feeling pressure to fast-track legislation to meet the Federal Transit Administration’s April 30 deadline calling for the City and County of Honolulu, which includes all of Oahu, to put together a financing plan for the HART passenger rail project. Estimates show the project could cost as much as $9.5 billion. The FTA wants to know how the city will make up for a shortfall that might reach $2.7 billion after accounting for financing expenses and interest. About $1.5 billion in federal support for the project could hinge on the city providing a plan that answers that question. [Honolulu Civil Beat]
LAND MANAGEMENT | This week, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced that it would be launching a new approach to surveying the 35 million remaining acres of land yet to be returned to Alaska since the territory gained statehood in 1959. The new method—which uses satellites and GPS to mark the boundaries rather than putting teams of surveyors on the ground—should speed up that process quite a bit. "I think Alaskans want to have the land that's due to them sometime short of a century after they became a state," said Neil Kornze, BLM director. However, state officials worry that while this method is more convenient for BLM, it will pass huge costs to the state and private landowners. [Alaska Dispatch News]
INSPECTIONS | Palm Beach County voters may have approved the Office of Inspector General in 2010, but cities aren’t required to fund the watchdog agency, a state appellate court ruled. The county may appeal its case to the Florida Supreme Court, as the office was created in the wake of numerous elected officials being arrested in a federal corruption sting. [Sun Sentinel]
NEXT STORY: Wait—Utah Is The Fastest-Growing State?