Efforts to privatize government services in cities and states do not always save the city money, replace well paid and benefited largely unionized public workers with low paid, lesser benefited and non-unionized private workers, and reduce or even eliminate effective control over this public service by the public. A number of states and cities have established … Read More
Barnstead, New Hampshire, became the first municipal government in the United States to ban corporations from pumping out a drop of water for sale elsewhere. And it became the third municipal government, after Porter and Licking Townships in Pennsylvania, to decree that, within their jurisdictions, corporations may wield neither state nor federal constitutional powers.
Some communities have passed laws that prevent serial law-breaking corporations from doing busines within their community.
Logging communities (or agricultural and mining communities in general) gain little when their principal resource is exported unprocessed. In the case of wood, every million board feet of timber harvested in the United States in 1995 supported about 12 jobs in forestry and wood products manufacturing. In some areas, more than two-thirds of these jobs are … Read More
Initiatives and referendums are one of this country’s forms of direct democracy. There is no national initiative or referendum process in the United States, but they are allowed at the state and local levels. An initiative allows citizens to propose laws, by petition, to be placed on the ballot. A referendum allows citizens to reject laws … Read More
While some reformers believe that campaign finance reform will cure many of the ills of our election process, others feel the key is proportional representation, or other, related reforms. Proportionalrepresentation means electing representatives to our legislatures in proportion to their support in the population. Under our current system of winner-take-all elections in single-member districts, the representative … Read More
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) is leading the charge in encouraging communities around the country to enact some form of a Civil Liberties Safe Zone resolution. As of January 2003, at least 21 cities have passed some form of the resolution and similar efforts were underway in 26 states. The resolutions generally disallow the … Read More
The city recognizes the importance of expanding the opportunities for its citizens to experience public art and other projects resulting from the creative expression of its visual artists in public places of the city. The city further recognizes the substantial economic benefits to be gained in the form of increased tourism through enhancement of public spaces and consequent retail activity throughout the city. A policy is established in this article to include works of art and design services of artists in certain city capital improvement projects.… Read More
Tampa, Florida has gone beyond public spending to require that both city government and private developers of commercial properties allocate funds for art in public places. Developers must invest 1% of the project budget in art or contribute to a city art fund (maximum of $200,000 per project). The code also creates a public arts committee.