HIGHLIGHTS
- Iowa nixes privatizing prison healthcare
- Texas county to upgrade public infrastructure
- ITPI on cuts to healthcare research
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) California: “Let’s get to the bad news first: Your insanely expensive electric bill is unlikely to dive much in the near future, even if the state adopts a slew of reforms,” the Orange County Register reports. “But the state’s Little Hoover Commission, California’s good-government watchdog, has laid out a plan to keep them from spiking much further—and to offer relief to inland dwellers whose very lives often depend on summer air conditioning. Its recommendations would shrink the utilities’ profits and cap benefits for rooftop solar owners and limit how long they get them. Also, the commission would increase fixed charges to keep in step with income.”
2) Iowa: The state will not privatize its prison healthcare system. “After reviewing proposals and evaluating options for privatizing and improving health services, the Iowa Department of Corrections has decided not to move forward with a vendor,’ the department said in its statement. ‘This exploratory process reinforced that the department is better positioned to evaluate opportunities to strengthen the current system and, by retaining management of these services, will ensure any changes to the health care delivery model meet operational needs, support staff and incarcerated individual safety and align with our long-term direction.’”
3) Maine: A new solar production facility comes along with a community benefits agreement that “will also pay the city $650,000 over time to support training for clean-energy jobs. The funding will go toward programs at York County Community College and the Sanford Regional Technical Center. Walden Renewables has several other renewable energy projects in the New England area, including solar farms in Wells and Leeds.”
4) Maryland: Baltimore Beat’s Logan Hullinger reports that Baltimore is installing overdose reversal medication boxes in every metro station. “The expansion of naloxone has been a crucial tool in combating the city’s overdose crisis, and a recent spate of overdoses in the Penn North area underscored the importance of continuing to make it easier to obtain, Mayor Brandon Scott said. Although fatal overdose rates in Baltimore have dropped significantly over the past year, there have been three separate mass overdose events in Penn North since July. Most recently, 11 people overdosed on October 8.”
5) Utah: We need conservation as well as new water sources, The Salt Lake Tribune says, “In that vein, there is good news from Washington County. The dry and rapidly growing corner of a dry and rapidly growing state has instituted new rules for larger water users, requiring extra levels of approval for potential water hogs such as data centers and, notably for the recreation mecca, golf courses. That makes good sense because, as with the rest of the state, a tiny fraction of large water guzzlers use the lion’s share of the supply.”
Education
6) National: The promised break up of the Department of Education is beginning with a series of breakoffs–some offices and responsibilities within the department are being transferred to other departments, such as Labor and Interior. According to AP, “Education officials say the moves won’t affect the money Congress gives states, schools and colleges. They didn’t say whether current department staff would keep their jobs.”
7) Florida: WLRN reports that “a coalition of parents, educators, and community leaders is protesting what it calls an ‘unfunded mandate’ and the ‘unprecedented surge of “Schools of Hope” charter operators” who seek to open programs inside hundreds of South Florida’s public schools. The groups—including the United Teachers of Dade, NAACP Miami-Dade Branch, the Miami-Dade County Council of PTA/PTSA, and others—oppose the ‘co-location’ efforts, which they argue threaten the financial stability and local control of the public education system.”
8) Louisiana: The Louisiana Department of Education has released its 2025 charter school ratings. “The state grades carry extra weight in New Orleans’ decentralized, nearly all-charter school system,” says The Lens. “Though most New Orleans schools received a C or above overall, more than half of city schools received an F in assessment portion of the review — the actual test scores. That means students are testing below grade level. Another 16 schools received a D, when rated purely on test scores.”
9) Michigan: Michigan Public reports that 68 Michigan schools have been released from state support after academic improvement. “Schools that are identified as needing comprehensive support and improvement are in the bottom 5%, have a graduation rate of 67% or less, or were previously identified as in need of ‘Comprehensive Support and Improvement’ and didn’t exit the program. There’s another category for schools performing below the 25% level. These schools receive financial and programming support through a multi-tiered system based on the state’s school index calculations.”
10) Tennessee: A legal pushback against Tennessee’s statewide school voucher law has emerged. “A group of public school students’ parents and taxpayers has filed a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s new statewide school voucher program, saying that allocating nearly $150 million in state funding to help parents send their kids to private schools is unconstitutional. (…) The lawsuit argues that the Tennessee Constitution includes an obligation to provide a system of free public schools and does not allow for the state to maintain and support K-12 schools outside of the public school system. It says schools that participate ‘may deny admission or otherwise discriminate based on race, disability, religion, English proficiency, LGBTQ+ status, academic ability, or other criteria.’”
11) Florida: Florida ranchers are wary of a data center. “There’s a trillion-dollar arms race among Big Tech firms to build larger, more robust data centers to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. St. Lucie County is one of many rural communities nationwide where proposals have drawn concerns. Lucero Marquez, associate director for federal climate policy at the Center for American Progress, told USA Today in October that with the rise of AI, data centers are ‘coming online at an unprecedented rate,’ powering everything from Google searches to AI-assisted job letters.”
12) North Carolina: Port City Daily reports that a debate is taking place on the pros and cons of state-run v. public-private tolls for funding the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge Memorial Bridge. “While both have upsides and downfalls, it will ultimately be up to the [Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization] to decide between a public-private partnership or facility run by the state—if it chooses to implement a toll at all.”
13) Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania American Water has completed its purchase “of the Corner Water Supply and Service Corporation (Corner Water) water system for $250,000. The newly acquired water system serves approximately 450 customer connections in Shippenville, Clarion County. Pennsylvania American Water already provides wastewater service to nearly all of these customers.”
14) Pennsylvania/New Jersey/Think Tanks: 12 billion gallons. Underground Infrastructure reports that “despite decades of progress toward cleaner water, the Philadelphia-Camden region still faces widespread sewage pollution that frequently renders rivers and creeks unsafe for recreation, according to a new report from Environment New Jersey Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group.” The report, authored by John Rumpler of Environment America and Elizabeth Ridlington of the Frontier Group, says, “Despite significant efforts over the past decade, wastewater systems still pour billions of gallons of pollution into local waterways. Roughly 60% of Philadelphia is served by a combined sewer system, where stormwater and sewage flow through the same pipes beneath city streets and are sent to wastewater treatment plants. Similarly, the cities of Camden and Gloucester are served by a combined sewer system through the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA), though the cities manage parts of the system.”
15) Texas: Hays County is planning a $100 million, publicly financed infrastructure upgrade, financed by certificates of obligation. “The ambitious package seeks to address a diverse set of needs. The list of proposed projects includes remodeling current government buildings and adding entirely new facilities, such as a Precinct 4 office building and an East Side Campus administration hub. Additional plans to significantly upgrade their animal shelter capabilities show the county’s commitment not only to serve its human residents, but also to better care for its animal population. In an era where infrastructure developments are often regarded as engines for economic growth, Hays County seems determined to potentially invest heavily in its future — even if that means having to walk a fiscal tightrope for years to come.”
16) Virginia: Northern Virginia gets new Transurban-operated Lexus Lanes.
17) National: Using data from KFF, CNN charts who will be hardest hit as “millions of consumers are now seeing just how expensive their health insurance policies will be without the enhanced premium subsidies that have been in place since 2021.”
18) National: In the Public Interest’s Jeff Hagan reports on the savage federal cuts to basic research in healthcare. “‘Some of these studies were longitudinal studies that have been conducted over years,’ Mandi Pratt-Chapman, PhD, an associate professor at George Washington University and associate center director of Patient-Centered Initiatives and Health Equity at the GW Cancer Center in Washington, DC, told Cancer Therapy Advisor. ‘For studies following up with people over time to test a specific hypothesis, you can never get that data again once a study is interrupted.’ According to a report published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers estimated the NIH funding cuts interrupted nearly 1 in 30 NIH clinical trials involving more than 74,000 individuals who were enrolled in them.”
19) National: NOTUS reports that “Trump’s privatization of science research is underway. The EPA’s scientists that helped in the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, disaster, are now in the private sector. What does that mean for future crises?” NOTUS “identified 16 researchers, all with doctoral or master’s degrees, many of them experts in using machine learning to speed up the identification and analysis of toxic chemicals, who have left the EPA for the private lab UL Research Institutes. Most of these scientists worked for the EPA’s much-vaunted Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure, tasked with developing ways to quickly figure out chemical toxicity.”
20) National: Trump will argue in final Schedule F regulations that civil service protections are unconstitutional, Government Executive reports. “One agency official asked how Schedule Policy/Career might affect bargaining unit employees, which could trigger management’s duty to bargain over the change in removal procedures. Peters suggested that the final rule’s issuance could open a new front in the Trump administration’s war with most federal employee unions.” See below also.
21) National: Will federal Bureau of Prisons workers get back their union rights? “A federal union representing over 30,000 Bureau of Prisons employees is suing the agency over its recent cancellation of the BOP’s collective bargaining agreement. The lawsuit, filed last week by the American Federation of Government Employees’ Council of Prisons Locals 33, alleged that the agency’s decision to cancel the union contract violated First Amendment rights, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act.”
All is not well at BOP: “A hundred days into his tenure as Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Josh Smith delivered a speech that struck a familiar chord, a promise to restore transparency and accountability to an agency he called ‘in shambles.’ Speaking candidly about staffing shortfalls, decaying infrastructure, and the mismanagement of federal prison reform programs, Smith positioned himself and BOP Director William Marshall III as reformers empowered by President Donald Trump to fix decades of dysfunction.”
“We’re broken and we’re being poached by ICE,” one official with the prison workers union told ProPublica. ‘It’s unbelievable. People are leaving in droves.’”
22) National: Federal workers have asked a judge to “to block the Trump administration from encouraging job applicants to demonstrate their loyalty to the president’s agenda. In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, a group of federal labor unions argues that the White House’s “merit hiring plan” violates applicants’ First Amendment rights. The plan, put forth by the Office of Personnel Management, includes the following short essay question: ‘How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.’”
23) Idaho: A Medicaid contractor is to cut critical services for people with severe mental illness. “The latest round of cuts by Magellan of Idaho would affect peer support specialists who help people navigate mental health treatment, and specialized mobile teams that treat patients with severe mental illness who have struggled in routine treatment settings. The cuts, which call to end the services on Dec. 1, stem from the state’s attempts to avoid a projected budget shortfall. Mental health providers worry the cuts could spur more violent critical incidents as people with severe mental health issues lose accessible treatment, said Laura Scuri, who co-owns Access Behavioral Health Services in Boise and leads the Idaho Association of Community Providers’ behavioral health subgroup.”
24) National: FedScoop reports that Trump has prepared a draft executive order to weaponize federal preemption of state actions to regulate artificial intelligence in the public interest. “A draft order viewed by FedScoop includes plans to establish an AI litigation task force to challenge state AI statutes, restrict funding for states with AI laws that the administration views as ‘onerous,’ and launch efforts to preempt state laws via the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and legislation. In response to a FedScoop inquiry about the six-page draft order, which was also marked ‘deliberative’ and ‘predecisional,’ a White House official said that until announced officially, ‘discussion about potential executive orders is speculation.’ Reuters, which reported on the draft earlier, got the same response.”
25) National/Think Tanks: Exposed by CMD has release its latest report on the dark money group DonorsTrust, including information on funds received by the pro-privatization Reason Foundation. “DonorsTrust distributed more than $26.5 million in grants to 36 right-leaning media outlets in 2024, CMD calculated. The Koch-connected, libertarian Reason Foundation received $5 million, the largest grant.”
26) International/United Kingdom: In a new report, the National Audit Office declares that the British government lacks a clear picture on how much it spends on private consultants. “The lack of consistent data prevents HM Treasury from making effective decisions on how to reduce spending on consultants and from understanding the roles for which consultants are repeatedly hired. As a result, it does not have a clear picture of where money could be saved by hiring full-time workers or by promoting internally. In 2023, the previous government withdrew centrally-directed spending controls on consultants in an effort to cut administrative workloads within departments. Instead, departments were encouraged to develop their own internal controls on consultancy spending. But an NAO survey found that this led to discrepancies in how stringently these controls were being applied.” [Read the 55-page report]
IMAGE: A breast cancer cell, photographed by a scanning electron microscope. From the National Cancer Institute, NIH.