State News articles from May 2004

State News archives from May 2004

Back in time.(inside story)
May 1, 2004... In May 1979, this magazine was reporting on two challenges that state policy-makers are still dealing with 25 years later. President Carter proposed legislation to control rising hospital costs that had increased by 13 percent the previous...

Florida AG puts pump prices on Web.(tool box)
May 1, 2004... As we approach the busy summer driving season, little relief is in sight from high gas prices. With prices hovering near $1.80 per gallon in most parts of the country this spring, consumers are feeling the pain with each fill up. So,...

National anti-crime database facing obstacles.(tool box)
May 1, 2004... Since its inception, 16 states have signed on to the Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) project, a program to create a mega-database of criminal and other publicly available records for local law enforcement. State...

Rural school districts try four-day week.(tool box)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... It's a high school student's dream come true: the four-day school week. In an effort to cut costs and deal with dwindling tax revenues, school districts in at least 10 states have switched from the traditional weeklong schedule to the four-day...

Selected state administrative officials: annual salaries by region.(state snapshots)(Illustration)
May 1, 2004... Selected State Administrative Officials: Annual Salaries by Region State or other Lieutenant Secretary jurisdiction Governor governor of state Eastern Region Connecticut ...

Auto industry moves south.(state sources)
May 1, 2004... From the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama, to the BMW facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the new Toyota plant in San Antonio, Texas, the automobile industry's economic contribution to Southern states has assumed critical importance in...

Online 'silver tsunami' gains momentum.(state sources)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The percentage of older Americans who use the Internet has increased rapidly in recent years, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Between 2000 and 2004, the percent of Americans age 65 or older with Internet...

1 in 8 Americans lack health care.(state sources)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... You've probably heard about the 43 million Americans who don't have health insurance. But did you know that 36 million people in the United States don't have access to basic health care? That's according to a recent report by the National...

Corrections attitude adjustment.(state sources)(State Correction Deparment)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... During the "get-tough-on-crime" era, state corrections departments' budgets increased from a collective $7 billion in 1990 to $35 billion in 1999. This decade, however, has been a different story, as corrections departments, like all state...

Workers' comp intensifies state fiscal woes.(state sources)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Fewer workers' compensation claims are being filed than in the past but the cost of those claims is much larger, according to a report by The Council of State Governments. The report lays out the effects of rapidly increasing workers'...

Higher education versus health care?(state sources)
May 1, 2004... More than three-fourths of all postsecondary students in the United States attend public institutions, and higher ed enrollment is expected to continue increasing throughout this decade. Yet, according to researchers at the Rockefeller...

Rx for prescription drug abuse.(trends alert)
May 1, 2004... Prescription medications are vital for many individuals suffering from anxiety, pain and various other medical conditions. There are millions of individuals nationwide, however, who buy, sell, steal and abuse these same drugs for recreational...

Diabetes: a case for quality health care: improving the quality of care for patients can prevent complications and reduce costs.
May 1, 2004... Three-and-a-half years ago while waiting in an exam room during a routine visit to his doctor Massachusetts Rep. Dan Bosley noticed a poster on the wall. He recognized some remarkable similarities between the disease described and symptoms he...

Special courts: specialty courts emerging in state justice systems.
May 1, 2004... Vigo County Indiana, like many rural communities, has a drug problem. In three of the last four years, Vigo has led the state in the number of methamphetamine labs found in tile county by law enforcement agencies. And while the county's court...

A healthy partnership: innovative farm to school programs address childhood nutrition.
May 1, 2004... The United States loses two acres of mostly prime farmland every minute to development--the fastest such decline in the country's history, according to the American Farmland Trust. More than 25 percent of Americans under 19 are overweight...

Immigration's impact on states.(state trends)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The impact of America's growing foreign-born population, which grew 57 percent between 1990 and 2000, is being felt throughout the nation's economy, culture and politics. The number of immigrants in the United States climbed from 19.8...

Health care.(state trends)
May 1, 2004... As immigration expands the population of the United States, the health care system must adapt to changing conditions. Immigrants, for example, have lower rates of insurance coverage and face greater barriers to care than do native citizens. ...

Education.(state trends)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Immigration's explosive growth poses immediate challenges for the nation's schools to educate children who can not speak English. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of 5 to 24-year-olds who spoke a language...

Agriculture.(state trends)
May 1, 2004... For many immigrants agricultural labor is their first employment in the United States. Agriculture and related food processing industries are the major magnets drawing immigrants into the rural areas. Limited job skills and language barriers as...

Public safety.(state trends)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Two federal proposals under debate in Congress would tremendously impact state law enforcement policies regarding the apprehension and detention of illegal immigrants. The Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003, introduced...

The environment.(state trends)
May 1, 2004... The words "immigration" and "environment" are cropping up together with increasing frequency these days, especially in the context of the current controversy over the Sierra Club's stance on immigration. Recognizing that population growth...

CSG-WEST publishes first 'year in review'.(csg spotlight)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... For anyone in search of a guide to the Western region of The Council of State Governments, the recently published 2003 Year in Review is the best road map around. With 20 pages of color photos and easy-to-read text, this first-time report...

Eastern Trade Council reports on exports.(csg spotlight)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The Eastern Trade Council, an affiliate of CSG/ERC, recently released export reports on each Eastern Regional Conference member state, and a report on the entire Northeastern region in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute for Social and...

MLC names co-chair for BILLD Committee.(csg spotlight)(BILLD Steering Committee)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Michigan Rep. Jerry Kooiman has been named co-chair of the Midwestern Legislative Conference's BILLD Steering Committee. In that position, Kooiman will help lead the bipartisan group of legislators that oversees the Bowhay Institute for...

Murkowski appointed to Homeland Security Committee.(csg spotlight)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... In March, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge appointed two new members of the State and Local Officials Senior Advisory Committee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, CSG's 2004 president, will represent...

Order the Quarantine!(csg spotlight)
May 1, 2004... The Council of State Governments will host a national teleconference on May 5 entitled "Order the Quarantine! Assessing State Health Powers and Readiness." The 2001 postal anthrax episode and a recent incident involving a ricin-laced letter in...

CSG/SEI launches new environmental projects in Asia.(csg spotlight)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... In February 2004, the Council of State Governments' State Environmental Initiative worked with the US-Asia Environmental Partnership field offices to launch several SEI grant projects in Asia. The projects are promoted by U.S. state...

Healthy schools teleconference.(csg spotlight)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... As the nation's awareness of the obesity trend among children and adolescents has grown, states have taken few actions to reverse the problem and to avoid the costs associated with poor nutrition and physical inactivity. State leaders are eager...

Access to driver's licenses.(state trends)
May 1, 2004... Since Sept. I 1, the debate has grown over immigrants' access to driver's licenses and state identity documents. Some state officials argue that denying undocumented immigrants driver's licenses aids in the effort to combat terrorism,...

Conference calendar.(Calendar)
May 1, 2004... This calendar lists meetings as designated by CSG's Annual Meeting Committee. For details of a meeting, call the number listed. "CSG/" denotes affiliate organizations of CSG. Visit www.csg.org for updates and more extensive listings. Other...

40 years ago--May 1964 earthquakes and tsunamis.(time line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... On March 27, 1964, Prince William Sound, Alaska, experienced the second largest earthquake in the 20th century, with a magnitude of 9.2. The earthquake and resulting tsunamis, which affected the Western U.S. Coast, Canada and Hawaii, were...

25 years ago--May 1979 nuclear fallout.(time line)
May 1, 2004... The magazine focused on the aftermath of the March 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. "People had the notion that a nuclear accident was unthinkable. That's been shot to hell by Three Mile Island," said...

Unfunded mandates.(time line)
May 1, 2004... The "Federal Report" described proposed federal legislation that would requite Congress to consider the costs new federal mandates would impose on state and local governments. Another bill proposed by President Carter would address rising...

10 years ago--May 1994 Stings and Scandals.(time line)
May 1, 2004... We featured a series of articles called "Stings and Scandals" that focused on the fallout from recent corruption scandals in state legislatures in Arizona, Kentucky and South Carolina. Articles examined the effects on individual legislators...

Back to the future.(time line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Dan. R. Bucks, executive director of the Multistate Tax Commission, wrote a futuristic account of the impacts of GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) on state and local governments titled "Trade Trouble Ahead." "It's 2004 and...

NAFTA power shift.(time line)(North American Free Trade Agreement)
May 1, 2004... Georgetown University law professor Robert Stumberg argued in "NAFTA Rewrites Status of States" that the trade agreement would shift power to the federal government. "By design, NAFTA represents a power shift to Washington," he wrote. "NAFTA...

Godmother of state e-government.(time line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... "I had no idea when I introduced this little two-page bill that it would generate all this," said California Assemblywoman Debra Bowen, referring to the interest generated in her bill that made California the first state to put legislative...