By: Keri Anderson

This weekly round-up shares the latest news about what the Network is doing to promote state-based solutions that will improve the lives of families, workers, and local communities. If you are an SPN member and have an update you’d like us to include in next week’s round-up, please email us at updates@spn.org (all submissions are subject to SPN approval).

Success Stories

  • Prior to the start of Alabama’s 2019 Legislative Session, an orchestrated campaign to slander the Alabama Accountability Act (AAA)—Alabama’s tax-credit scholarship program—began. In response, Alabama Policy Institute launched a comprehensive campaign to change the narrative concerning the Act and formed the Alabama Accountability Act Coalition, a group of sixteen state and national organizations dedicated to the preservation and advancement of the Act’s programs. As a result of the Institute’s work, the AAA Coalition’s activism, and strong partnerships within the State House, not one single attempt to repeal the Accountability Act was made in the 2019 Legislative Session.
  • After publication of the Alaska Policy Forum’s report (prepared in partnership with The Buckeye Institute) Unsustainable: The State of Alaska’s Budget and Economy, the Alaska governor moved forward with broad vetoes. The Forum’s report recommended budget reductions instead of new taxes, and while the legislature made slight reductions, the governor’s vetoes represent significant progress toward a balanced budget.
  • When all the Idaho’s regulations came up for review, the Idaho Freedom Foundation sprang into action and engaged hundreds of Gem State residents who turned in enough petitions to force the Idaho State Board of Education to hold Common Core repeal hearings in at least nine counties across the state. This will give Idahoans the chance to re-litigate the controversial Common Core standards, which haven’t lived up to education reformers’ claims. 
  • Libertas Institute is celebrating the implementation of an innovative 2018 bill it proposed to limit late fees and interest that government entities can impose on individuals. The new law limits the late fees Utah government entities can assess to only 25 percent of the initial fine amount. This is particularly significant for low-income individuals who could be arrested if they fail to keep up with the required payments.

Research & Initiatives

  • The Badger Institute released “Ex-offenders under watch,” a combined qualitative study and quantitative analysis that looked at ways to reform community supervision and identified trends and ways to bring down Wisconsin’s high revocation rate.
  • Bluegrass Institute President and CEO Jim Waters took the Institute’s new public-pension paradigm across Kentucky, speaking to a full house at the Southern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in Corbin, which was attended by several local elected leaders, including Mayor Suzie Razmus.
  • Caesar Rodney Institute launched a new website providing a range of Delaware-related updates, from the latest House bill being introduced to finding out who citizens’ legislators are. The new website also provides Delaware state employees free access to view the state’s pension data in an easy-to-read format.
  • EdChoice released the results of their survey of military families. They surveyed 1,295 active-duty military servicemembers and their spouses on military life, school choice, schooling preferences to gain a better understanding of the experiences and views of military families in America toward K–12 education.
  • On behalf of a group of California home care providers the Freedom Foundation filed a class action lawsuit in federal court Thursday seeking to bar the state from withholding union dues from Medicaid payments to providers who no longer want representation. In the lawsuit, the Foundation argues “since it’s impossible for a worker to have knowingly waived a right that wasn’t articulated by the court until the Janus ruling was issued, it follows that all union membership cards signed prior to June 27, 2018, are invalid.”
  • The Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge awarded their prestigious Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education to eight teachers from across the country whose innovative classroom initiatives promote free enterprise. This year’s honorees ranged from elementary school teachers to college professors.
  • The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has filed three separate lawsuits on behalf of New Jersey public employees who face barriers to exercising their First Amendment rights to opt out of paying their government union.
  • A new Manhattan Institute report suggests that de-municipalization, an innovative yet underutilized approach, should be more broadly applied in struggling cities. Instead of taking over entire city governments on an emergency basis, de-municipalization allows a state or county to take over a large city agency, such as a police department, on a presumptively permanent basis.
  • Palmetto Promise Institute does some digging to look at how South Carolina really stacks up to neighboring states on education innovation and performance.
  • The R Street Institute’s Harm Reduction department has published a policy paper on the nation’s worsening opioid crisis highlighting creative, state-based means to reduce the harms associated with the opioid epidemic.
  • Another benefit of giving families more education options: less crime. The Reason Foundation examines the results of six rigorous studies on the impact school choice has on crime — all of which find school choice programs reduce crime.
  • The Show-Me Institute is holding the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) accountable for how it evaluates Missouri schools and districts. To shine a light on DESE’s poor reporting, the Institute is creating a report card to grade the department on each of the Every Student Succeeds Act requirements, which will help highlight spots where DESE falls short in meeting its obligation to Missouri parents.
  • How well funded are the pension plans in your state? The Tax Foundation‘s recent map illustrates the strain on state retirement systems nationwide as state pension funds strive to keep pace with benefits owed to public employees.
  • The Tax Foundation of Iowa (TEF Iowa) and Americans for Prosperity hosted a two-day policy summit at the end of June bringing together state think tanks to discuss critical initiatives that are taking place throughout the Midwest. The Center for Economic Accountability (tax incentives), Center of the American Experiment (energy policy), Platte Institute (occupational licensing), and Show-Me Institute (local government transparency) were among the participants.
  • Which Department of Defense (DoD) leaders serve as examples for good financial reporting? Truth in Accounting released a ranking of 21 DoD component entities based on their performance in recent financial statement audits identifying relative strengths and weaknesses in DoD components’ financial reporting.
  • The Washington Policy Center published a study examining Washington’s new public option health insurance, which serves to push the state towards socialized health care–and how this may serve as a template for policy template for other left-leaning states or for the federal government.
  • The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has entered a fight for school choice in a rural Wisconsin community where a local public school district tried to prevent the sale of a closed elementary school building to Shepherd’s Watch, a local Christian community group, because the organization has plans to ultimately establish a private choice school in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program. 

Think Tanks in the News

Events & Opportunities