On Thursday, National League of Cities (NLC) Board Member Patrick Wojahn, mayor of College Park, Maryland, testified before the new Bipartisan Task Force on Intergovernmental Relations created by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Speaker Ryan opened the hearing, stating “There’s no question that we can work better, as partners, with state,
Through new approaches, community outreach and education, and even legal action, municipal governments are continuing to lead the most comprehensive efforts to date in the battle against widespread opioid addiction. The increasing presence of the synthetic opioid fentanyl at the scene of a drug overdose is putting the lives of first responders at great risk.
If the deciding justice finds that there is no clear way to determine constitutionality — and thus no clear way to establish laws against the practice — then the issue will continue to affect politics for the foreseeable future. In Gill v. Whitford the Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether and when it is
Working with NLC through the CHAMPS initiative, a cohort of small cities in Alabama is showing the rest of the country how they are successfully increasing access to out-of-school time meals for children. Cities across the country, large and small, face the same challenge with many of their low-income children losing access to nutritious meals
At an uncertain time for federal transportation policy, local elected officials across the country are rolling up their sleeves and adopting a “do it yourself” ethos — and the result is often surprising. This is a guest post by Hayley Richardson. Despite the importance of transportation to their constituents, many local elected officials feel there’s
The next phase in this NLC initiative can help your city better allocate scarce resources as well as improve public safety and overall outcomes for young adults. Close to home in cities, jails open up the “front door of mass incarceration” by placing five times as many people behind bars each year compared with prisons.
Our annual analysis of mayoral State of the City addresses shows that cities are increasingly focusing on workforce and small business development through an equity lens. Here’s how several mayors from around the country are making equity a priority. This post was co-authored by Emily Robbins and Dana D’Orazio. The recent release of NLC’s 2017
With a booming population representative of a wide variety of cultures, the town of Morrisville, North Carolina, has found that its East Meets West festival not only celebrates its diverse residents but serves as a critical means of connecting with the public as well. This is a guest post by Sarah Williamson-Baker and Sarah Gaskill. Every
This is a guest post by Eric West. For Small Cities Month, NLC asked its member cities what they were most proud of. The city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is proud of its heritage as the oldest capital city in North America; it was established by Europeans thirteen years prior to the settlement of
This post originally appeared in Fast Company. Read the full article here. Mayors are leading the country forward with a positive agenda for America. While most of our eyes are glued to investigations and scurrilous revelations at the federal level, mayors are still hard at work solving the biggest issues facing their communities. In cities,
