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Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Capitolbeat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capitolbeat. Show all posts

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Melissa Maynard Stateline: Short-staffed and budget-bare, overwhelmed state agencies are unable to keep up

Backlogged
After years of budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and hiring freezes, the everyday work of state government is piling up. This Stateline series examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig themselves out.


  1. Today: Agencies overwhelmed

  2. Wednesday: Anatomy of a backlog

  3. Thursday: How one agency overcame its backlog

  4. Have your own backlog story? Tell us about it 
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2011

http://www.stateline.org/live/



By Melissa Maynard, Stateline Staff Writer

After years of budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and hiring freezes, the everyday work of state government is piling up. This Stateline series examines what causes backlogs, who is hurt by them and how states can dig themselves out.

Today: Agencies overwhelmed


Thursday: How one agency overcame its backlog

Have your own backlog story? Tell us about it.

On the face of it, the backlog the Hawaii Public Housing Authority is experiencing seems a simple matter of supply and demand. Some 11,000 families are on the authority’s waiting list, hoping against the odds that they can get one of only 6,295 public housing units. In a state where housing is notoriously expensive, the only people with a real shot at getting a unit are the homeless and survivors of domestic abuse. Even for them, the waiting can take years. “The waitlist is so extensive and the homeless problem is so great that a lot of people are getting preference over working families,” explains Nicholas Birck, chief planner for the Hawaii Public Housing Authority. “They never make it to the top.”

BACKLOGGED Part 1: Agencies overwhelmed

But there’s another, hidden problem at play in Hawaii’s housing backlog. Lately, the authority hasn’t had enough employees to manage turnover in vacant units. As a result, 310 homes have been sitting empty, even with all the people languishing in waitlist limbo. For many of the vacant units, all it would take is a few simple repairs and a little bit of administrative work to give a family a home — and get the authority’s backlog shrinking rather than growing.

The situation is a byproduct of big budget cuts in Hawaii and a hiring freeze that wasn’t lifted until earlier this year. A handful of employees in the housing authority’s property management office retired, and the hiring freeze made it impossible to fill the vacant positions. For a while, there was only one person overseeing the office’s far-flung portfolio spanning four islands. “It was a very difficult position for her to be in,” Birck says. Today, the office’s ranks are back up to six employees, but both the number of vacant units and the size of the waiting list have continued to grow since a state audit first brought attention to the issue in June.

Hawaii isn’t the only place where the everyday tasks of state government are piling up. A Stateline investigation found that agencies across the country are seeing growing backlogs of work, as increased demand for state services in a weak economy bumps up against the states’ efforts to cut their payroll costs. From public housing to crime labs, restaurant inspections to court systems, four years of layoffs, furloughs, hiring freezes and unfilled vacancies are beginning to take their toll. At its most benign, the result for taxpayers is a longer wait for things like marriage licenses or birth certificates. At its most dangerous, growing backlogs are threatening the lives of vulnerable children, elders and disabled persons, as overwhelmed protective services agencies face delays investigating reports of abuse and neglect.


[20111213 Melissa Maynard Stateline Short staffed and budget bare]

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Spokesman-Review - by Betsy Z. Russell: Unusual bills come to statehouses after shift toward tea party

May 22, 2011

From my Capitolbeat colleague, Betsy Z. Russell, at The Spokesman-Review:

Unusual bills come to statehouses after shift toward tea party

Betsy Z. Russell
The Spokesman-Review
In Washington
The trend toward unusual state legislation bypassed Washington this year, which is having a dreary session focused on deep budget shortfalls. About the oddest bill proposed this year was one to designate a state rock, but it was killed.
BOISE – It wasn’t just in Idaho that state lawmakers ventured onto unusual ground this year, attempting to unilaterally nullify a federal law, debating allowing guns on college campuses and nearly cutting off unemployed Idahoans from receiving extended unemployment benefits on grounds that the benefits will make them lazy.
Montana lawmakers backed a bill to let local sheriffs stop federal law enforcement officers from making arrests in their counties, though the governor vetoed it. They also debated measures to legalize hunting with a hand-thrown spear and declare global warming “beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana.”
Florida legislators outlawed droopy pants on schoolkids that show their underwear. Illinois made it legal to pick up road-killed animals for food or fur, saying it’ll clean up the roads...

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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

The Republican Farm Team

December 1, 2010

Kevin E. Dayhoff
In the days following the November 2 state and national midterm elections, pundits have superficially opined at great length as to the depth and meaning of the phoenix-like resurgence of the Republican Party on the national level.

Beyond the media bright lights and glamour focused on the national contests, the number of Republicans voted into local and state offices lends us a better fundamental nuts and bolts gauge for the future of the GOP.

Writing for the Oregon Statesman, my Capitolbeat reporters’ association colleague, Peter Wong, called the November midterm elections a political hurricane when he recently reported on a presentation by Tim Storey, a senior fellow with the National Conference of State Legislatures...  

[...]

Besides, I have never been a fan of the “great person” theory of history.

In Ms. Bykowicz’ article she quotes Mr. Murphy to wisely note: “We turned a pretty good election into a defeat,” Murphy said, describing how Ehrlich's loss overshadowed the local gains. “It's our own fault. We focused all our attention like a laser on one person, one position. And we've got to stop doing that.”

In Carroll and Frederick counties, Republican leadership appears to be much more public policy fundamentals-driven than that of the cult of personality.

According to Ms. Bykowicz, “When … officials are sworn in next month, 15 of the state's 23 counties will be run at the local level by Republicans. Nine of those won't have a single Democrat in their governing body – a phenomenon Republican blogger Richard Cross described as ‘Maryland's red underbelly.’ ”

Or what I refer to as the Republican farm team.

However, to paraphrase my McDaniel College political science professor, Dr. Herb Smith, “Now comes the hard part – governing.”



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Monday, November 22, 2010

Congrats to our Capitolbeat 2010 Cappie Winners

Congrats to our Capitolbeat 2010 Cappie Winners BY Laura L

NOVEMBER 16, 2010 


Thanks very much to everyone who entered Capitolbeat’s 2010 statehouse reporting contest.  Here’s the full list of winners announced Saturday at our awards dinner in Phoenix…: 


20101116 Congrats to our 2010 Cappie Winners

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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Capitolbeat the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, annual conference

Capitolbeat the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, annual conference



What: Capitolbeat, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, annual conference

When: Thursday, Nov. 11 through Saturday Nov. 13

Where: Wyndham Phoenix (50 East Adams Street)

Capitolbeat: Who we are and how we got started

Who we are and how we got started

Retrieved November 10, 2010


Welcome to Capitolbeat, the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, an organization for reporters covering state and local governments. We formed in late 1999, following a Denver conference of statehouse reporters sponsored by the Pew Center on the States and Stateline.org

Why it’s important

Big-money corporate lobbyists flooded the July 2000 meeting of the National Governors’ Association because they knew that power was flowing from Washington back to state capitals for several years, and it has reached critical mass. But while that’s been happening, budgets for coverage of state government have been on a starvation diet. A 1998 study published by the American Journalism Review found that “Coverage of state government is in steep decline … Bureaus are shrinking, reporters are younger and less experienced, stories get less space and poorer play…”

Reversing that decline and bolstering the skills and resources in state government reporting are Capitolbeat’s goals.

Or, from our mission statement, “This Association exists to advance public understanding of state government and the issues before state government, and to educate and share information with its members and the public on best practices, tools and techniques in state government reporting.”

Join us and become a part of Capitolbeat. Help us grow, and help us to help you.

How we got started

It would be just like a bunch of statehouse reporters to make history in a former bordello, and that’s just where Capitolbeat got its start. Mattie’s House of Mirrors, now a respectable restaurant in the warehouse section of Denver, was the site of the first meeting to form a national association.

It happened during Power to the States, the first national conference for journalists who cover state government, which was held over three days in October 1999.

More than 100 reporters, editors and broadcasters from 34 different states and the District of Columbia attended, along with a handful of academics and members of public policy institutes.

The conference was sponsored by Stateline.org, The Colorado Springs Gazette, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the National Conference of State Legislatures, The Associated Press Managing Editors and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The event itself – along with the secondary goal of creating a national organization for our profession – was largely in response to recently aired concerns over the state of statehouse reporting. Both scholarly studies and journalism publications were pointing to a decline in the resources and amount of coverage dedicated to state government. Statehouse journalists also sensed what they do carries less weight these days and that their jobs have become more difficult and less appreciated.

About 25 journalists interested in networking with others who cover state government to share techniques, along basic policy and political information, across state lines met to plant the seeds for a national organization. They selected the name Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors (later changed to Capitolbeat), approved a graphic logo and elected Genevieve Anton as founding president and asked her to appoint an interim board.

The concept was given a warm reception by the entire conference, which gave its approval for a board to commence making Capitolbeat a reality. By the time the board of directors met a month later in Chicago, more than 140 journalists had signed up to become members. The board spent a weekend hammering out a framework, a philosophy and ground rules. It also elected officers and decided what Capitolbeat should offer to its members in its first year.

Throughout 2008 and beyond, Capitolbeat will continue to gather members and momentum, seek financial sponsors, and develop valuable resources to improve the quality of reporting on state government.

20101111 capbeatprogram4

20101110 Capitolbeat Phoenix Conference

Capitolbeat, Phoenix, Arizona, conference, reporters, statehouse, writing,journalism


Capitolbeat the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, annual conference                                                                                                                               

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