2017’s Destructive Wildfire Season Sets New Record

The Route Fifty state and local government weekend news roundup is compiled by our staff and edited by Michael Grass. Help us compile news links using these hashtags: #stategovwire and #localgovwire.

NATURAL DISASTERS | The massive 2017 wildfire season across the nation has so far cost more than $2 billion and is now the most expensive such firefighting effort in U.S. history, straining funding used to respond to and control blazes. With so much money being spent on firefighting, there’s little money left for wildfire prevention and mitigation work, including prescribed burns. Numerous fires continue to burn across the West, including the Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge near Portland, Oregon. In drought-stricken and smoke-filled Montana, firefighters are hoping that early-season snowfall in some parts of the state will help extinguish some of the blazes there. "It’s all about waiting for that season-ending weather event, whether it’s snow or rain," according to Emily Davis of the Northern Rockies Incident Management Team. [Boise State Public Radio; The New York Times; NBC News]

The very active 2017 hurricane season continues to keep emergency managers in the Southeastern U.S., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere on heightened alert. As the cleanup continues in southeastern Texas and Florida following hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the next big threat is coming from Tropical Storm Maria, which is forecasted to grow into a Category 3 hurricane as it approaches Puerto Rico. It’s too early to know where Maria will go as it approaches the Bahamas and Florida by the end of the week. Some forecast models suggest that Maria could later do a bit of meteorological dance with Hurricane Jose, currently off the East Coast, called the Fujiwara Effect. In that scenario, the storms would “pinwheel around each other,” sending Jose into the Mid-Atlantic coast. Stay tuned ... [Miami Herald; The Washington Post]

LAW ENFORCEMENT | Police-community relations remain tense in St. Louis following a judge acquitting a white St. Louis police officer who faced charges in the 2011 shooting death of a black motorist. Protesters took to the streets on Friday and even threw rocks at the mayor’s house. Thirty-three people were arrested and 11 police officers were injured on Friday. Additional protests targeted the Central West End in St. Louis and a suburban shopping mall in Des Peres. “We’re here just to let them know that you’re not going to keep killing black people,” according to one protester. “You can’t keep killing black people with no consequences.” More arrests were made on Sunday after protesters smashed windows in downtown St. Louis. [St. Louis Public Radio; St. Louis Post Dispatch]

The local police department in Corry, Pennsylvania, a small city in the northwestern part of the state, is on the front lines of the nation’s opioid abuse epidemic, like so many other law enforcement agencies elsewhere around the nation. Police Chief Rich Shopene, who oversees a department of 10 officers, says that there’s not enough “manpower or the funding” to effectively address the crisis in his area. As of the third week of August, Erie County had seen 95 drug-related deaths since the beginning of the year, which was the number for all of 2016. [Erie Times-News / GoErie.com]

#STATEGOVWIRE …

Austin, Texas: State prison officials are looking to provide air conditioning to 600 prisoners who were evacuated from one correctional facility before Hurricane Harvey to another that is notoriously hot. A federal judge ruled that after those prisoners arrived at the Wallace Pack Unit near Navasota northwest of Houston, they “were made eligible to join a special class of heat-sensitive inmates subject to a federal lawsuit over hot conditions that have been blamed for nearly two dozen deaths over the last two decades.” [The Texas Tribune]

Carson City, Nevada: State Supreme Court justices issued a temporary injunction last week that blocks the state government from limiting marijuana distribution licenses to only to liquor wholesalers, the latest development in a “long-running administrative and legal battle between independent liquor distributors, state tax officials and recreational marijuana retailers.” [The Nevada Independent]

Norfolk, Virginia: The Virginia Department of Transportation has a major sign-replacement effort underway on its interstate highways where signs that were affixed to overpasses have been moved to their own freestanding posts that extend out over the travel lanes. Why? Since the old signs are bolted to concrete or use adhesives, they can’t be inspected easily according to federal rules. So VDOT has been replacing 166 signs for $11.3 million. [The Virginian-Pilot]

#LOCALGOVWIRE …

Frostproof, Florida: The city manager for this Central Florida community south of Orlando will be facing major questions on Monday during a city council meeting after the mayor and members of the council voice their concerns about Lee Evett not being in the city during Hurricane Irma. “This entire storm from beginning to end has been an opportunity to step up and show we have a strong city manager. I believe he missed that opportunity,” according to Mayor Rodney Cannon. Evett says that he was helping his elderly mother whose home was in harm’s way in Cape Coral and denies he wasn’t in communication with Polk County emergency managers. [The Ledger]

Charleston, South Carolina: Even though Hurricane Irma’s track missed South Carolina, the state’s low-lying coastal areas still saw a 4-foot storm surge. It was the “third year in a row that vast swaths of the Lowcountry temporarily became ocean instead of land. And it was yet another wake-up call” about the impacts of rising sea levels and climate change and gave cities like Charleston “a taste of an increasingly less distant future.” [The Post and Courier]

Grand Junction, Colorado: A newly installed concrete pad at the Grand Junction Regional Airport may be ripped out due after questions of whether it can last the 20 years that had been planned. Work on the airport, mostly funded through Federal Aviation Administration funding, was halted in August after the newly-poured pad failed a structural flexibility test. The local airport authority will have to soon decide how to proceed, including removing the flawed pad. [The Daily Sentinel]

Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: The controversy surrounding symbolic religious boundary markers used by some Orthodox Jewish communities continues in northern New Jersey near the New York state border. The eruv, which consists of white piping attached to utility poles, creates a cordon where certain activities are permitted on the Sabbath when they wouldn’t ordinarily be permitted. The Bergen Rockland Eruv Association has filed a complaint alleging that the Upper Saddle River government has threatened their religious rights by opposing expansion of the eruv. [NJ.com]