Saying “we should be protecting all of our children, including those who identify as LGBTQ, instead of subjecting them to a dangerous practice,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) issued Executive Order No 97, a directive that bars state money from being used to pay for gay conversion therapy.
The Tar Heel State joins Utah to become only the second state – and the first in the South - to use an executive order to ban the controversial psychological treatment that some claim is able to change a young person’s sexual orientation. Seventeen others, including Massachusetts, Colorado and Maine this year, have passed laws barring the practice. (NEW YORK TIMES, RELIGION NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
In the wake of the nation’s latest (as of this writing) mass shooting, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) proposed a package of reforms to his state’s gun regulations. The hard part will be not having them instantly shot down by his fellow Republicans that control the Buckeye State Legislature.
DeWine, who ran as a devout Second Amendment devotee, made his pitch in the days after a gunman killed nine people and wounded 27 more in Dayton. That attack came the same day a different gunman killed 22 people and injured over two dozen more in an attack carried out in El Paso, Texas.
The governor’s proposal calls for running background checks on the majority of firearms buys and implementing a so-called “red flag” law that would allow authorities to take away the guns of someone deemed a potential threat to public safety. He also called on lawmakers to toughen current penalties for a range of gun-related crimes, including providing minors with weapons, and to allocate more resources to the state’s mental health services.
DeWine crafted his proposal after consulting with pro-gun groups. Whether that will be enough to satisfy the GOP-dominated Legislature is still to be seen. To date, Republican leaders have said they would give the measures “thorough and deliberative consideration.” In 2017, however, GOP leaders vehemently opposed and subsequently killed then-Gov. John Kasich’s (R) attempts to pass almost identical legislation to what DeWine pitched last week.
Lawmakers said they would begin reviewing the proposal when they return in mid-September. (CLEVELAND.COM, USA TODAY, WASHINGTON POST)
OREGON Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed legislation this month that will allow Oregonians to mail in their election ballots for free starting with the November 2020 contests. Brown also signed a measure that will require so-called “dark money” groups to disclose large donors, but it won’t take effect until December 2020. (OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING)
State and local officials in ILLINOIS are spending millions of dollars to upgrade their election systems’ cyber defenses, including hiring internet security specialists and buying new polling machines. Election websites in at least 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers in 2016, but Illinois suffered a significant breach of its voter database, exposing the names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers and other personal information of 76,000 voters (CHICAGO TRIBUNE)
MONTANA will hold off on implementing a new voting system until 2021 instead of doing so before the 2020 election as planned, according to the secretary of state’s office. County election administrators had expressed “grave concerns” about the aggressive timeline of the transition. (INDEPENDENT RECORD [HELENA])
-- Compiled by KOREY CLARK
President Trump has given up on the idea of getting a citizenship question included in the 2020 Census. But the fight to keep undocumented immigrants from being counted in the congressional apportionment process isn’t over for the state of Alabama.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) and state Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) filed a lawsuit about 14 months ago challenging the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s Residence Rule, granting the Census Bureau the authority to include undocumented immigrants in its calculation of how many U.S. House seats each state gets. A status hearing on the case is set for Aug. 23.
The stakes are high for Alabama: It appears likely to lose one of its seven U.S. House seats.
“The threshold for us is to fight to keep a congressional seat,” Marshall said in an interview last month. “We are not the only state that will be adversely impacted on the apportionment count if people are in the country unlawfully.” (BIRMINGHAM NEWS)
This session Colorado’s Democrat-led General Assembly passed legislation (SB 42) adding the state to the national popular vote interstate compact. That agreement commits the signatory states’ electoral votes to the candidate in a presidential election who wins the national popular vote, if enough states to constitute a majority of the Electoral College - 270 electoral votes - have done so.
Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, representing a total of 196 electoral votes, have joined the compact. But a group called Coloradans Vote wants to let voters decide whether Colorado and its nine electoral votes should remain among them.
The group says it has submitted 227,198 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office to qualify a referendum on SB 42 for the state’s November 2020 ballot. That number is well over the 124,632 valid signatures required and would be a new record for statewide ballot initiatives in the state.
“Over 100,000 of those signatures are from volunteer circulators, which is historic for Colorado,” said Monument Mayor Don Wilson, one of the group’s organizer.
Wilson and other opponents of the national popular vote movement say it will give a handful of populous states like California and New York outsized influence in who is elected president.
“People feel that giving away your electoral votes without a vote of the people is overstepping,” Wilson said.
But Toni Larson of the League of Women Voters of Colorado said: “Opponents have engineered this ballot referendum solely because they believe a National Popular Vote would put them at a political disadvantage. In fact, a National Popular Vote is the only way to guarantee that every vote – Republican, Democrat, or Independent – actually makes a difference in who’s elected president.” (DENVER POST)
GEORGIA Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has ordered all state agencies to cut their budgets by 4 percent this year and 6 percent next year. State agencies haven’t received such an order since the Great Recession. (WSB-TV 2 [ATLANTA])
NORTH DAKOTA Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread announced this month the state has received federal approval to establish a reinsurance program under the federal Affordable Care Act. He said the program could reduce rates an average of 8 percent to 20 percent for residents who aren’t insured through their employers or who have purchased plans on the individual market. (BISMARCK TRIBUNE)
The LOUISIANA Department of Health has picked four companies it plans to award multi-billion-dollar contracts to manage care for its 1.7 million Medicaid patients. The companies are: AmeriHealth Caritas Louisiana, Community Care Health Plan of Louisiana (Healthy Blue), Humana Health Benefit Plan of Louisiana and United Healthcare Community Plan. (ADVOCATE [BATON ROUGE])
An audit released last week by KANSAS’ new Medicaid inspector general, Sarah Fertig, indicated that 95 emails alleging or seeking information about reporting fraud were ignored by the state’s Department of Health and Environment. Forty-two of those emails were found to contain information that was either partially or wholly substantiated. (TOPEKA CAPITAL-JOURNAL)
CALIFORNIA Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a plan last week to direct $331 million the state received from a 2012 national mortgage settlement with major U.S banks over unfair mortgage practices to nonprofit housing organizations to help homeowners and renters avoid foreclosures and evictions. Last month the state’s Supreme Court ruled the state had misspent the $331 million, intended for helping homeowners, on paying off housing bond debts. (SACRAMENTO BEE)
In the first six months of California Gavin Newsom’s (D) new administration, companies, associations, unions and other organizations spent $187 million to influence policy and legislation in the state. Adjusted for inflation, that sum is 12 percent more than the $146 million spent on lobbying in the first two quarters of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s first term in 2011.
The biggest lobbying spenders this year were the California Teachers Association, which spent $4.3 million, mostly on legislation aimed at weakening charter public schools; the Western States Petroleum Association, which spent $4.1 million on policy and legislation pertaining to emissions, oil and taxation; Chevron, which spent $3.7 million; the California State Council of Service Employees, which spent $2.2 million; and the American Civil Liberties Union, which spent $2.19 million, mainly on the use of force by law enforcement and criminal justice issues. (CAL MATTERS)
In 2008, Arizona voters overwhelmingly endorsed Proposition 200, which banned the practice of providing short-term, high-interest loans known as payday lending. But according to a report released this month by the Center for Economic Integrity in Tucson, payday lenders have since got around the ban by migrating to another form of lending, auto title loans.
There are 73 companies offering auto title loans in the state to individuals who own their vehicles as well as those who don’t. Over a third of the companies were licensed as payday lenders prior to the passage of Prop. 200.
The loans tend to be small dollar with annual interest rates of up to 204 percent and are secured by bank accounts, making the borrowers vulnerable to overdraft charges and fees for insufficient funds. The loans are generally taken out by individuals with lower incomes who are often racial minorities.
Kelly Griffith, one of the co-authors of the report on auto title lending said the loans made to those who don’t own their cars, known as “registration” loans, are merely “payday loans in disguise.”
The report concludes with a recommendation to support a proposed November 2020 ballot measure, the Arizona Fair Lending Act, which would ban auto title loans.
But Matthew Benson, a spokesman for the Arizona Financial Choice Association, said, “There’s a tremendous need in Arizona for some form of short-term, alternative financing to meet credit challenges.”
He also said the ballot measure is being “bought and paid for by East Coast elites who have zero employees in this state,” and banning auto-title loans could force Arizonans to turn to illicit lenders.
But the auto title lending report points out that most of the companies providing such loans are headquartered in states other than Arizona.
“These companies are not a boon for the local economy,” said Griffith. “These are economic exporters.”
And she said with the passage of Prop. 200, “A lot of people thought this was already taken care of.”
“They’re asking why we’re still having this conversation.” (ARIZONA REPUBLIC [PHOENIX], CENTER FOR ECONOMIC INTEGRITY)
Legislation dealing with medical balance billing - the charging of patients by healthcare providers for services not fully covered at the providers’ rate by the patients’ insurance - has been introduced in 32 states this year, according to analysis by LexisNexis State Net. Seven of those states have enacted such measures.
Source: LexisNexis State Net
When SNCJ reported in August 2017 on medical balance billing - the direct charging of patients by healthcare providers for services that aren’t fully covered at the providers’ rate by the patients’ insurance - nearly half of the states had passed legislation addressing the practice, but some were saying congressional action was needed. Two years later there are more state laws on the books but still no federal enactments.
As of January 2017, 21 states had enacted laws or regulations that provided at least some consumer protections against balance billing, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that advocates for better healthcare, particularly for vulnerable populations, including the uninsured, those with low incomes and minorities.
The laws in all 21 states required insurers to hold consumers harmless for balance bills, also known as surprise bills because they are often incurred as a result of care received unknowingly from out-of-network providers at in-network facilities, such as a non-network anesthesiologist or radiologist contracted by the emergency department (ED) of an in-network hospital.
Some of the laws went further, prohibiting healthcare providers from balance billing patients. All of the laws applied to HMOs, while about three fourths of them also applied to PPOs. And nearly all of the laws covered ER visits, with about two thirds also covering non-emergency care at in-network hospitals.
The laws in six states - California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and New York - provided what the Commonwealth Fund considered to be “comprehensive protections.” The laws covered both emergency and non-emergency settings, applied to both HMOs and PPOs, and included both consumer hold-harmless provisions and prohibitions against balance billing by providers. In addition, the laws in all six states either set payment standards or established a process for resolving payment disputes between insurers and providers. The laws in California, Florida and New York did both.
Those additional payment provisions allowed for considerable variation among the laws in the six states. For instance, California’s law required insurers to pay 125 percent of the Medicare rate or the average in-network rate in the region where the services were rendered, while Illinois’ law set no such payment standard. But the Commonwealth Fund noted the laws had “been relatively successful in limiting balance billing in the emergency and in-network hospital settings,” according to interviews it had conducted with insurance regulators.
Four more states - Arizona, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon - passed laws providing balance billing consumer protections in 2017 and 2018, according to another report from the Commonwealth Fund early this year. That report also said New Hampshire and New Jersey expanded their existing protections, qualifying them as comprehensive, while Oregon’s new law met that standard as well. Those developments brought the total number of states with consumer balance billing protections to 25 and the number of states with comprehensive protections to nine.
This year legislatures in 32 states have considered 94 measures dealing with balance billing, seven of which have been enacted, according to data compiled by Diana Ramsey, a solutions consultant for LexisNexis State Net who specializes in healthcare and health insurance legislation.
The enactments include:
Colorado HB 1174, which requires healthcare providers, facilities and insurers to inform patients about the provision of services by out-of-network providers;
Nevada AB 469, which limits the amount out-of-network healthcare providers can charge insured patients for certain medically necessary emergency services and requires insurers to arrange for the transfer of insured persons to in-network facilities in certain situations;
Texas SB 1264, which, among other things, authorizes regulatory agencies that license or certify healthcare providers to take disciplinary action against them for balance billing and authorizes the state attorney general to bring civil actions against such providers; and
Vermont SB 31, which prohibits surprise billing for out-of-network emergency medical services.
The volume of introductions is up from this same time in 2017, when Ramsey had identified 66 measures in 27 states. The number of enactments is down slightly compared to two years ago, seven versus 10.
Despite all the activity on the issue at the state level in recent years, some have said state laws can only go so far because federal law, the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), exempts health insurance plans provided to workers by private-sector employers from state regulation. And those health plans, known as “self-funded” or “self-insured” plans, in which employers pay their workers’ claims directly with company funds instead of contracting with an insurance carrier to do so through a “fully insured” plan, cover 61 percent of insured workers, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2018 Employer Health Benefits Survey.
As the Commonwealth Fund stated in its 2017 report, “A federal solution would go farthest, since most individuals with private insurance are in employer-sponsored self-insured plans.”
There was some interest in such a solution in Congress last session, with bills having been introduced by Democrats in the House and Senate, and draft legislation released by a bipartisan group led by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), according to a blog post by the healthcare policy journal Health Affairs.
“One of the most critical aspects of the draft proposal, titled ‘Protecting Patients from Surprise Medical Bills Act,’ is that it would protect people in the ERISA-covered population,” noted the National Conference of State Legislatures.
This congressional session at least nine bills dealing with balance billing have been introduced, according to the State Net data. The legislation includes a bipartisan measure sponsored by Sen. Cassidy and an introduction from Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).
President Trump has also voiced support for ending the practice of balance billing.
“The pricing is hurting patients, and we’ve stopped a lot of it, but we’re going to stop all of it,” he said at a roundtable discussion with surprise medical bill recipients, doctors and health policy experts in January, according to a report by Kaiser Health News.
That discussion evidently left some of the attendees feeling optimistic about the prospect of federal action on the issue.
“Reading the tea leaves, I think there’s big change coming,” said David Silverstein, founder of the Colorado-based nonprofit Broken Healthcare.
Until that change comes, however, states will likely continue to take action on balance billing. A white paper issued this year by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Health Policy and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics suggested there’s room for states to do so - and even protect enrollees in self-funded employer plans - without the risk of ERISA preemption by focusing on health care providers rather than insurers.
“Since the mid-1990s, the Supreme Court has been clear that states can engage in ‘general health care regulation’ - even if the rules affect ERISA plans,” the paper states. “Thus, states are permitted to regulate the conduct of health care providers even when they treat patients covered by self-funded employer plans.”
The paper lays out two broad approaches states can use to address surprise billing comprehensively. One is “billing regulation,” restricting how much out-of-network providers can charge insurers and patients in certain situations, either by setting specific rates or by allowing rates to be determined through arbitration.
The other approach is “contracting regulation,” effectively eliminating the possibility that ancillary ED staff or services can be out-of-network at in-network facilities, either by requiring those providers to join the insurance plans the facilities they are affiliated with are in or by prohibiting the providers from contracting with insurers or directly billing patients, making them dependent on their affiliated facilities for payment.
The paper’s authors acknowledge those approaches present some challenges for state policymakers. Payment standards, for instance, can be set too high, leading to excessive healthcare spending, or too low, potentially reducing access to certain medical specialties due to insufficient financial incentive to pursue the necessary training. Requiring facility-based clinicians to “join every single health plan network that the facility is in, especially for clinicians practicing in multiple facilities, could prove time-consuming and administratively burdensome,” the authors also point out.
The state of Washington took a different tack with the balance billing measure it enacted this year, HB 1065. The law bans the practice for certain services provided to individuals enrolled in fully insured health plans and plans offered to public employees, and allows self-funded plans to opt to be subject to the same provisions.
With studies showing that 1 in 5 ER visits involve care from out-of-network providers that could result in balance bills and many of those bills reaching into the thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, state lawmakers that haven’t addressed the issue may come under increasing pressure to take action of some kind, whether it encompasses employer-provided plans or not.
-- By KOREY CLARK
Okay, if you’re the governor you figure that in these polarized times half the voters don’t love you no matter what you do. But even the hardest hearts have to acknowledge the awesomeness of dogs. Case in point this week comes from Michigan, where the Detroit Free Press reports that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and family have adopted a seriously adorable brown and white Labradoodle puppy named Kevin that has become the gov’s constant companion. Yep, if you want to meet with Whitmer these days, you had better prepare for several minutes of puppy talk before you get down to business. Kevin follows a string of similarly-feted First Pooches: Doogie, former Gov. Rick Snyder’s beagle, and Mackinac, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s chocolate Labrador.
-- By RICH EHISEN
In theory, facial recognition programs are supposed to be another close-to-infallible tool that helps police ferret out the bad guys. In reality...not so much. As a pair of California lawmakers pointed out last week, said programs can actually be off by a whole lot. Case in point, as the Sacramento Bee reports, Assemblyman Phil Ting and Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer were among 26 Golden State lawmakers who were pegged as criminals by facial recognition software when their portraits were compared to mug shots in police databases. Which goes a long way toward explaining why they are also the authors of a bill that would bar police from using the technology in their body cameras. Because just like Jaws 3, this time it’s personal.
Rhode Island has a number of distinctions. It is the smallest state, but also has the longest official name: Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It is the home of the Tennis Hall of Fame, the birthplace of author Cormac McCarthy, and the site of America’s very first jazz festival. It was the first colony to declare independence from England, but the last of the original 13 to achieve statehood. And, as WPRI in Providence reports, it remains the only state with a legal holiday to honor the end of World War II, which it has done every year since 1948. Arkansas once had a similar holiday, but dropped it decades ago. Numerous attempts have since been made to convince Rhode Island lawmakers to follow suit, but last Monday the Ocean State celebrated Victory Day for the 71st time, with no end in sight. Because being unique is not an issue for Rhode Islanders.
The PORTLAND City Council approves charging landlords an annual $60 registration fee, with the funds designated to go to a new city agency that tracks tenant complaints about negligent landlords and enforces fair housing laws (ROUTE FIFTY).
The SACRAMENTO City Council approves a rent control and tenant protection proposal that caps annual rent increases at 6 percent plus inflation, prohibits landlords from evicting tenants without a reason and creates a process where tenants can report landlords who violate the new ordinance. The law takes effect on September 12th (SACRAMENTO BEE).
The MINNEAPOLIS City Council approves a measure that makes the city the largest in the country to ban construction of new drive-thru restaurants. Existing drive-thru facilities will be allowed to remain in place (MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE)
-- Compiled by RICH EHISEN
ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signs HB 3390, which requires that kennels in the Prairie State be staffed at all times or have a sprinkler system or fire alarm that automatically notifies first responders of a fire (DAILY HERALD [CHICAGO]).
NEW HAMPSHIRE Gov. Chris Sununu (R) signs SB 258, a bill that adds primary care physicians and pediatricians to the list of doctors who can bill the state Medicaid program for visits that happen by phone or video conference (NEW HAMPSHIRE PUBLIC RADIO).
ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signs SB 2023, which allows nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistant to authorize patients for medical marijuana treatment. The measure, which also adds 11 conditions to those legally treatable with marijuana, goes into effect right away (CBS CHICAGO).
NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signs AB 5842, a bill that adds bus drivers to the list of mandated reporters of abuse in private schools (ALBANY TIMES-UNION, NEW YORK GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signs HB 246, which will require textbooks used in public schools to include the roles and contributions of people covered under the state’s Human Rights Act. The law takes effect on July 1, 2020 (LEXISNEXIS STATE NET).
ILLINOIS Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signs SB 75, an omnibus bill that, among several things, extends legal sexual harassment protections to contract workers, limits the use of contract provisions designed to prevent workers from reporting sexual harassment, and bars employers from disclosing the name of a victim of an act of alleged sexual harassment or unlawful discrimination in any disclosures. The new regulations go into effect on Jan. 1 2020 (CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS).
NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signs AB 8421, a wide-ranging measure that makes several changes to the Empire State’s workplace harassment laws, including the elimination of the “severe or pervasive” standard for behavior, banning non-disclosure agreements, expanding protections for domestic workers and independent contractors, prohibiting forced arbitration of discrimination claims, and authorizing punitive damages for employment discrimination actions (NEW YORK GOVERNOR’S OFFICE).
OREGON Gov. Kate Brown (D) signs SB 1019, which mandates that by 2024 commercial farms with 3,000 or more chickens give their birds room to move around and stretch their wings and that all eggs produced or sold in the state must come from cage-free hens (PORTLAND OREGONIAN).
NORTH CAROLINA Gov. Roy Cooper (D) issued an executive directive ordering that state Bureau of Investigation and other state agencies to take more action against gun violence. The order directs the BOI to conduct more threat assessment training for local police and provide more public education on “domestic terrorism indicators,” and order the state Department of Health to better educate people about properly storing guns. (RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER, ABC11 [RALEIGH])
Saying “too many Pennsylvanians are losing their lives to gun violence,” PENNSYLVANIA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued a wide-ranging executive order aimed at reducing gun violence in the Keystone State. The order implements two dozen separate initiatives under four major categories: more sharing of information between government agencies, reducing community gun violence, stemming domestic violence and suicides that involve a gun, and forestalling mass shootings. (MORNING CALL [ALLENTOWN], PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)
NEW HAMPSHIRE Gov. Chris Sununu (R) signed a measure that gives the New Hampshire Charitable Trusts Unit the power to question whether mergers of health care organizations will affect the community’s “access to quality and affordable physical and mental health care services.” In a statement, Sununu said “House Bill 552 provides the State with the ability to examine these arrangements to ensure that they result in lower costs to patients with a higher quality of care.” (CONCORD MONITOR)
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) and legislative leaders joined with state law enforcement officials to announce they will work together on several initiatives to improve the state’s ability to prevent hate crimes and domestic terrorism. Some of the proposals already under consideration include tougher penalties for hate crimes, improving mental health care, proposing additional gun safety legislation and creating a state counterterrorism unit. (SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN)
Two weeks after a white man looking to kill Hispanics murdered 22 people and injured dozens more in El Paso, TEXAS Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced the creation of task force aimed at stopping domestic terrorism. In a statement, Abbott said the group will be comprised of federal, state and local officials, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and El Paso police Chief Greg Allen. The members will analyze current and emerging state threats and form prevention and response strategies. (TEXAS TRIBUNE, TEXAS GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed a pair of bills aimed at expanding the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology in the Garden State.
The first measure, SB 2297, creates the New Jersey Blockchain Initiative Task Force, which will study both public and private types of blockchain, and how the cutting-edge technology can be implemented in state government. It is expected to study case histories and developing uses from other states and around the globe.
The group will have 180 days from its start date to report on its findings, which will be expected to include a cost-benefit analysis and recommendations on implementing it into current government systems.
Murphy also signed AB 5111, which will create the Innovation District Designation Program, and effort intended to promote development or redevelopment in a way that fosters collaboration between businesses, government and higher education. (NJSPOTLIGHT [NEWARK], NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)
A recall effort against Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) got off to a huge start, garnering over 18,000 signatures in the first week. That is more than two-thirds of the number needed for the initial round of a recall campaign in the Last Frontier.
Much of the criticism of Dunleavy is centered on the $440 million he axed from the state budget, mostly from spending on higher education and public programs. This included a $135 million cut to the three-campus University of Alaska, a reduction that spurred the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities to warn lawmakers that the system could lose its accreditation.
While recall campaigns are nothing new – the Alaska campaign is just one of a handful underway in states like Colorado, Oregon and New Jersey – many observers say the effort to oust Dunleavy has more legs than most.
In a statement, the group Recall Dunleavy listed several complaints about the governor’s performance, including “neglect of duties, incompetence, and lack of fitness.”
The recall effort got a boost last week when the board of Cook Region Inlet Inc., one of the state’s largest Native Alaskan tribes, announced its support. In a message to its members, the tribe said recalling Dunleavy was necessary “to protect the health, education and well-being of our shareholders and all Alaskans.”
If the campaign reaches the 28,501 signatures needed for the initial effort to move forward, organizers will then need to gather over 71,000 to place the issue before voters.
A Dunleavy spokesperson said he doubts the campaign will qualify for the ballot, but its strong start appears to have not gone unnoticed. He has already announced he would rescind almost $9 million in early education cuts as well as millions more in cuts to senior programs. And last Tuesday the governor announced he would restore roughly half the funding he cut from the U of A budget and spread the remaining cuts out over three years.
Whether the university agreement holds up remains to be seen because Dunleavy actually does not have the constitutional authority to make the deal. That power resides with lawmakers, who are under no obligation to honor its tenets. (ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, ANCHORAGE PRESS, FORBES, INSIDE HIGHER ED)
Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who narrowly lost a bid for GEORGIA governor in 2018 in a defeat some of her supporters blamed on voter suppression, will expand her voting rights group and work on reducing obstacles to voting in 2020. Abrams was considering a run for president in 2020, but this week said she would focus on voter enfranchisement instead. Several observers believe she likely will take another shot at the Georgia governorship in a rematch with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022. Abrams’ 2020 effort will be called Fair Fight 2020 and will focus mostly on battleground states. Since her loss, Abrams has twice testified before Congress on voting rights and encouraged allegations that Kemp won through voter suppression, a charge the governor denies. (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, NEW YORK TIMES)
NEW HAMPSHIRE Gov. Chris Sununu (R) vetoed a measure to give an independent commission the main role in redistricting rather than lawmakers. Sununu said the bipartisan bill was well-intentioned, but that the commission members would end up being picked by party bosses and would be unaccountable to the electorate. The proposal would have created a 15-member commission to draw the district maps for legislative and congressional seats, but the maps drawn by the commission would have to be approved by lawmakers. “Legislators should not abrogate their responsibility to the voters and delegate authority to an unelected and unaccountable commission selected by political party bosses,” Sununu said. Lawmakers will get a chance to override the veto. (NEW HAMPSHIRE UNION LEADER)
-- Compiled by Dave Royse
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wants the state’s Supreme Court to rule on whether convicted felons should have to pay off fines and fees before they can get their voting rights restored under a new constitutional requirement approved by voters.
Florida voters last year voted to allow felons to automatically have their voting rights restored after serving their sentence. Lawmakers then passed a bill implementing the requirement, but that measure also requires felons to first pay off all fees and fines before they may have their rights restored. Backers of the amendment have since sued in federal court, saying that condition thwarts the intent of the voters by continuing to make it difficult for felons to reclaim their voting rights. That lawsuit remains pending.
A University of Florida study has suggested that fewer than 20 percent of felons released in the state have paid off their fines.
DeSantis has asked the Florida Supreme Court for an opinion on whether the phrase “completion of all terms of sentence” includes payment of financial obligations. If the state’s justices say criminals must pay off financial obligations to pay their debt to society then it could bolster the state’s defense of its new law in federal court. The DeSantis administration has asked the federal court to dismiss the lawsuit. (SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
More than 15 million Americans in eight states will likely vote in 2020 on voting machines without any paper backup, despite calls from elections efforts for auditable paper trails in light of known efforts by foreign governments to tinker with U.S. elections.
A just released report from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice said voters in 48 percent of the country are in jurisdictions with contracts with two major vendors that still sell paperless voting machines. The two companies are Dominion Voting Systems, which covers about 37 percent of voters, and Hart InterCivic, whose machines are used by about 11 percent of voters.
The Brennan Center cited this summer’s U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Russian interference in U.S. elections that recommended that states should, at a minimum, have voting systems that have a “voter-verified paper trail,” as well as statistically sound audits.
Earlier this year, the country’s largest voting machine company, Election Systems & Software, said it would stop selling machines without a paper audit trail, and the company has urged the rest of the industry to follow its lead.
“We believe that requiring a paper record for every voter would be a valuable step in securing America’s elections,” ES&S Spokeswoman Katina Granger told MIT Technology Review. About 44 percent of the country’s voters will vote on ES&S machines in 2020.
As of now, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey are set to use completely paperless voting systems next year.
The Brennan Center acknowledged there has been some progress on replacing the paperless machines, reporting that nearly half of states that had such voting systems in 2016 will have replaced them by 2020. Ohio, California and North Dakota are among those that have recently moved to replace old voting machines by early in the election year.
According to the Brennan Center report, much of the nation has moved away from completely electronic voting machines with no paper audit trail in the last several years. While 16 million voters will cast ballots on paperless machines next year, that number in 2016 was more than 27 million.
Money is a big issue. Last year, Congress provided $380 million to states to help with upgrades, a substantial sum but, the Brennan Center noted, “it wasn’t enough.”
They are not the only ones who feel that way.
“I don't know where, for instance, the state of New Jersey is going to get their money to update their systems,” Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, said at a cybersecurity conference. “I don't know where some of these other states that have (paperless machines) without a paper trail associated with it — I don't know where they're going to get the money, but they need it.” (BRENNAN CENTER, MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW, CNN)
MICHIGAN Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) may propose a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, but says she will continue to push for the infrastructure spending that has led to a budget impasse in the state. Whitmer proposed a gas tax increase of 45 cents per gallon, but the Republican-led legislature has refused to go along with the hike. The state remains without a budget for the fiscal year that begins in October, with lawmakers not scheduled to return to Lansing until later this month. Whitmer said this past week that she believes legislative leaders are also “desperate” to avoid a government shutdown, and said if there isn’t progress on a budget bill by mid-September, she’ll likely propose a short-term stopgap measure. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
In NEW HAMPSHIRE, children’s protective work is being slowed by lack of staffing, the guardian ad litem office will soon run out of money and the state may be unable to process some permits as the state continues to operate on a stopgap budget following the June budget veto by Gov. Chris Sununu (R). The Granite State’s government is operating on a 90-day continuing resolution that allows agency heads to spend only a quarter of their budget. (NEW HAMPSHIRE UNION LEADER)
Responding to an order from Gov. Brian Kemp (R) for state agencies to cut their budgets by 4 percent this year and 6 percent next, GEORGIA House Speaker David Ralston (R) said the chamber will hold rare fall hearings to get a jump on the 2020 budget. “Looking for cuts in an already lean state budget will not be an easy task and will require some difficult decisions regarding service delivery and personnel levels in each state agency,” Ralston said. (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION)
-- Compiled by DAVE ROYSE