Climate Change

To successfully unlock FEMA funding for extreme heat emergencies, states and localities need to start tracking the true costs of responding

Flint residents ‘disappointed and angry’ after dismissal of criminal water charges - mlive.com Climate change means California can't save every burned town - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) Philadelphia issues apology for Holmesburg Prison experiments (inquirer.com) Times Square Gun Ban, Other NY Restrictions Blocked by Judge (1) (bloomberglaw.com) Republicans' rhetoric about cities—“soaked in blood”! “Living the purge”!—has lost touch with reality. (slate.com) President Call

Murphy Says NYC Congestion Pricing Can’t Burden NJ Taxpayers - Bloomberg California Law to Cut Public Meeting Disruptions - Bloomberg Federal Monitor Investigating How Arsenic Got Into NYCHA’s Water - THE CITY 'It's a disgrace': West Baltimore residents demand action on contaminated water - CBS Baltimore (cbsnews.com) Teddy Bears and Racial Justice: How St. Louis Became a Laboratory for Social Work - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Michigan’s high court puts abortion quest

What Does the Inflation Reduction Act Do for State and Local Government? (governing.com) What Should Mayors Do After Mass Shootings? - Bloomberg Ten cities and towns are poised to ban fossil fuels from new buildings - The Boston Globe Pipeline break spills 45,000 gallons of diesel in Wyoming - ABC News (go.com) Report: Rural Electric Cooperatives Lack Women, Minorities in Elected Positions | The Daily Yonder Ramsey County jail officers of color barred from guarding Derek Ch

What Croydon, a ‘Live Free or Die’ Town, Learned About Democracy - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Climate Activists Pivot to Local Action, Frustrated by Washington Gridlock - Bloomberg Newsom to Sign Bill Allowing Residents to Sue Over Illegal Guns - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Deadly heat: US cities are hiring 'chief heat officers' as they face increasing heat threat - CNN Pittsburgh passes three bills to protect reproductive freedom (pittsburghpa.gov) Oklahoma T

Minneapolis ordered to cease implementation of 2040 plan - StarTribune.com New map highlights home deeds with racist language in Ramsey County | MPR News Florida Abortion Ban Violates Jews' Religious Freedom, Lawsuit Says | U.S. News® | US News Abortion protections in New York fortified ahead of SCOTUS ruling - POLITICO New Jersey aims to lure Georgia firms by warning of ‘dangerous’ anti-abortion policies (ajc.com) Rural America Reels From Violent Crime. ‘People Lost The

SRO Housing, Nearly Zoned Out of Existence, Could Re-Emerge (governing.com) As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces An ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Study: Denver's STAR program reduced crime, costs | FOX31 Denver (kdvr.com) Historic California report on systemic racism in law and policy hailed by slave reparations advocates | PBS NewsHour Is New York City More Dangerous Than Rural America? - Bloomberg And a bonus story from blog fou

Illinois Law Bans Schools From Fining Children With Tickets. So the Police Are Doing It for Them. Why Don’t We Just Build New Cities? Disney’s special tax district suggests its repeal is illegal Georgia governor sign bills on banning books, transgender sports, and race Federal Appeals Court Rules Local Governments Can sue Oil Companies Over Climate Change

Preserving History in a Town that Doesn’t Want to Remember San Francisco’s public nuisance suit against pharma for opioids will go forward Biden is Doubling Down on a Push to Roll Back Single-Family Zoning Laws The Jeffrey Toobin of Local Government A Lake in Florida is Suing to Protect Itself NYC’s Big Clean-Energy Project Poses A Major Climate Test For The Country

This week's Swan's Picks spans a range of topics and a number of regions, highlighting interesting and important stories in state and local news. “A Battle Over Building Codes May Be the Most Important Climate Fight You’ve Never Heard Of” High School Students in Florida Walk Out in Protest of the Don’t Say Gay law A School Segregation Lawsuit in New Jersey Returns to Court “What Happened When Oakland Tried to Make Police Pay for Misconduct” A new book about Kiryas Joel The

Ithaca, New York made headlines recently with its announcement that it would fully decarbonize its buildings . The city’s Energy Efficiency Retrofitting and Thermal Load Electrification Program is part of the Ithaca Green New Deal, which has a goal of carbon neutrality for Ithaca by 2030 . In the past several years, a number of other local governments have taken steps toward decarbonizing the building stock by either banning natural gas hookups in new homes , or by amending

Sheila R. Foster & Chiara Pappalardo The Biden Administration has focused his governing agenda on recommitting the United States to the Paris Agreement and advancing environmental and racial justice . While much has been written about this focus, what has not been emphasized is how some of his efforts are a result of scaling up innovations from state and local governments. State and local governments are innovating and piloting policies that can help usher in not just a tr

Last week’s tropical storm Ida was another stark reminder of the realities of climate change and how vulnerable our infrastructure is to...