State Legislatures articles from May 2003

State Legislatures archives from May 2003

High standards need support. (20 Years After "A Nation at Risk").
May 1, 2003... Twenty years ago, a controversial report titled A Nation at Risk challenged our country to improve its public education system. The report sparked the standards and reform movements, and with them, the expectation that all students would...

Terrorism protection money goes to the states. (Statestats).
May 1, 2003... As the nation was raised to an "orange/high" level of alert and military action began in Iraq, the Bush administration released money in March for state and local governments to use to prevent, prepare for and respond to terrorism. Funding...

Nation at orange alert. (Statestats).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... As the magazine goes to press, Americans have been advised that the nation is at an "orange" level of alert. This means that intelligence sources believe there is a "high risk of terrorist attack," according to the Department of Homeland...

As drug costs soar, states join forces to cut expenses. (On First Reading).
May 1, 2003... States are teaming up to help defray the soaring costs of prescription medicine for Medicaid patients. Policymakers are looking at two ways to help defuse the medication cost hikes: forming joint purchasing pools and dealing directly with drug...

Making sure kids are ready to learn. (On First Reading).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... "Getting kids ready for school" used to mean packing lunches, finding mittens and kissing rosy little cheeks goodbye. In today's policy environment, "school readiness" is a serious and important topic that's generating conversations from the...

Toxic mold flourishes as modern household affliction. (On First Reading).
May 1, 2003... Stachybotrys chartarum/atra. Toxic mold. It has been said that mold, is mold, is mold. But when people get ill, when houses are burned and insurance settlements soar into the millions, mold becomes something more. Mold is being blamed for...

Virulent viewing or picture taking? (On First Reading).
May 1, 2003... The Washington state Supreme Court says that it's not illegal to take photos in public up a woman's skirt. So the Legislature is doing something about it. A bill is being considered to ban photographing people in places where they expect...

Fewer tears, less stress. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... As vaccines prevent more and more diseases, the average number of shots for infants has increased. In fact, today's children receive approximately 20 immunization shots by the age of 2. The good news is that children can now be protected from...

Smaller classes, but how? (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Florida voters approved Amendment 9 last November to significantly reduce class sizes in all public schools. Now legislators, educators and the governor are trying to figure out just how to accomplish that. The mandate requires the state to cap...

Polluted mud must wait. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it needs another year--until 2006--to plan and design for the dredging of the upper Hudson River in New York in order to remove and dispose of the PCB-polluted mud. General Electric...

Microbrews test limits. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... State limits on the alcohol content of beer mean you can get drunk faster in Nebraska (no limit) than in North Carolina (6 percent). And that is making some North Carolinians who like specialty beers hopping mad. A move to double the limit is...

Cigarettes barred from net. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... A law banning Internet and mailorder cigarette sales in New York has been upheld by a federal appeals panel. The ban, intended in part to prevent children from buying cigarettes, was approved by the Legislature in 2000, but never took effect....

Meeting the goals of No Child Left Behind. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Wondering how your state compares to its neighbors in challenging math, reading and science standards? Curious about how it's doing in meeting other goals and requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act? A new Web database, unveiled by the...

The risk of weird eyes. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The desire for exotic eyes is imperiling kids' eyesight, causing corneal ulcers--abrasions that can lead to infections--and other injuries. The weird eyes come in the form of contact lenses that come in patterns that include zebras, cat eyes,...

War hits home. (Stateline).(Utah, Alabama and North Dakota)
May 1, 2003... The war with Iraq and the ongoing fight against terrorism has hit some states, including North Dakota, Utah and Alabama, hard. Those states have seen 29 percent, 26 percent and 25 percent of their total reservists and Guard members called up....

Problems for Pippy in Pennsylvania. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The Iraqi war and troop buildup has also affected individual legislators. Representative John Pippy from Pennsylvania was running for an open Senate seat when the West Point graduate was called to active duty. According to Army rules, he had to...

Laughs in the legislature. (Stateline).
May 1, 2003... Kentucky, like many states, is looking at laws regulating nuclear transplantation--or cloning. When a bill came up before the legislature prohibiting cloning for the purpose of producing a child, Representative Thomas Burch attached an...

Protecting girls from polygamists. (Stateline).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Utah is taking a new look at the issue of polygamy. The Legislature is considering a bill that would as much as triple penalties against any polygamist convicted of marrying a girl under age 18 and any religious leader who orchestrates such a...

Fiscal storm turns tempest: California struggles to overcome the largest shortfall in state history. It's not alone.
May 1, 2003... When California Governor Gray Davis started spending the last of the dot-corn surplus in the spring of 2001 and drained the state's dwindling reserves, he was asked why he was not saving some of that extra money for what might be even more...

Beleaguered state budgets: state budget problems are dominating national headlines and topping legislative agendas.
May 1, 2003... State finances are closely tied to the health of the national economy, so when the national economy stumbled so did state budgets. As early as FY 2001, lawmakers began seeing budget gaps. And that was just the beginning. In fact, many...

Four-day school week? Policymakers have been eyeing the four-day school week as a way to cut education costs. There have been mixed results where the schedule has been adopted.
May 1, 2003... With promises of a 20 percent reduction in overhead and transportation costs, the four-day school week is growing more attractive to legislators seeking to cut education costs--especially in energy, transportation and classified personnel...

Cyber terrorism: no longer fiction; the threat of cyber terrorism became much more real after Sept. 11. Here's how states are trying to reduce the risks.
May 1, 2003... On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, New York Senator Michael Balboni was on his way from Long Island to deliver a lecture in midtown Manhattan when he heard about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. As a native New Yorker whose...

Winds of change: controlling emissions of pollutants by power generators can be done, but there's lots of disagreement on the best way.
May 1, 2003... "These changes in the NSR rule will reduce energy use and air pollution, provide incentives to install state-of-the-art pollution controls...and remove perverse and unintended regulatory barriers to investments in energy efficiency and...

Shedding light on epilepsy: advocacy groups are pushing to raise awareness about epilepsy and encourage legislatures to make it a more integral part of public health programs.
May 1, 2003... Jack Thoman is in his late 40s and lives in the western part of the United States. He is a director at a high-end computer company. He's married and has a child. Jack was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 21, after being involved in two...