State and Local Policy Publications

Below is a list of our reports related to state and local publications, in descending order by year published. Explore other topics here and all High Road Strategy Center reports here.

  • Rogers, J. “Foreword: Federalism Bound”. Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol. 10, no. 2, 2016, pp. 281-97.

    Essays gathered in this symposium of the Harvard Law & Policy Review consider state policy treatment of four issues of national, and even international, importance: global warming, elementary and secondary schooling, gun violence, and mass criminalization

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  • This report analyzes paid family leave insurance could look like in Wisconsin. Paid leave insurance allows workers to take short-term paid leave in order to care for their families without fear of losing their jobs or significant loss of income. This is a policy that helps workers balance both work and family, and programs are already well established in California and New Jersey. Building off the experience in those two states, we estimate utilization and financing for a Paid Leave Insurance program for the state. Such a program would likely grow to support some 100,000 working Wisconsinites each year and could be supported by a premium on wages of 0.4 percent.

    Paid leave is especially critical for the nearly three-in-ten working families in the state who have low income (below twice the poverty line) in spite of their strong commitment to work. For these families, sick and vacation leave is stingy or nonexistent, reliable day care for children or adults is prohibitively expensive, and workers themselves are more likely to have health challenges.
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  • Dresser, L., S. Fu, J. Rodriguez, and J. Rogers. The State of Working Wisconsin 2015: Facts & Figures. COWS, 2015.

    Over Labor Day weekend, COWS released The State of Working Wisconsin 2015 Facts & Figures, an overview of the critical issues facing working people in the state. From the perspective of working Wisconsin, the news this weekend is not good. Wisconsin faces slow growth, extreme racial disparity in unemployment, long-term stagnation in wages, and one-fourth of workers struggling in poverty-wage jobs.

    Since 1996, COWS has released The State of Working Wisconsin every two years on Labor Day. It provides use the best and most recent data available to help build a comprehensive understanding of how working people in the state are doing. The full report comes out in even years. In odd years, like this one, 2015, the report is abbreviated and more focused.

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  • Rhodes-Conway, S., P. Bailon, S. Munger, and C. Reynolds. A District That Works: Policies to Promote Equity and Job Quality in Our Nation’s Capital. COWS, 2015.

    The District of Columbia is going through a period of great transformation. While it has successfully strengthened its fiscal health and its economy and population have grown, its prosperity has not been evenly distributed. However, it is not too late for the District to adopt measures that strengthen low income communities and communities of color and push back against the trend of growing inequality. The new administration has a fresh opportunity to tackle these challenges. It will be essential that key leaders in the administration are driven by a strong vision for how to make the District work for all of its residents.

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  • For Wisconsin workers and employers to thrive in the 21st Century, this critical progress in skills and talent infrastructure must be supported, connected, amplified and extended. Wisconsin is a national leader – in career pathways, in tech college training for displaced and other workers, and in industry/employer driven training investments in the “Fast Forward” grant program for demand-driven training). This infrastructure can help connect the unemployed to work, the underemployed to the skills they need to move toward self-sufficiency, and the state’s employers to relevant strategies for developing their own workers’ skills as well. This infrastructure is critical for advancing Wisconsin’s competitive position and for providing low-wage workers a stronger pathway to self-sustaining jobs.
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  • In 2013, Wisconsin launched Fast Forward, a $15 million state investment in demand driven worker training. By mid-December 2014, the Wisconsin Fast Forward (WFF) worker training program planned to distribute approximately $10.4 million in worker training grants and was preparing to announce additional grants for the remaining nearly $3.6 million. Fast Forward is an unprecedented investment in Wisconsin and skills. It is an exciting step forward to build the skills that both workers and employers need in this state. Direct employer engagement in all stages of the WFF process helps ensure the relevance of the skills training delivered.
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  • McCahill, C., and S. Rhodes-Conway. Urban Parking: Rational Policy Approaches for Cities and Towns. COWS, 2015.

    Parking has been a contentious policy focus in cities and towns around the United States for decades. Residents, visitors, and business owners often lament what they see as parking shortages or unfair prices. Meanwhile, surface lots and parking garages have chipped away at once vibrant urban centers, taking up what is often the most valuable land in the region. Undoubtedly, parking is an important asset to many American cities and, as such, should be viewed as an integral piece of the each city’s transportation and land use system. However, like any land use or any piece of transportation infrastructure, it must be managed properly to ensure it works efficiently and adds value to the community. City officials can accomplish this by leveraging municipally owned parking—both on-street and off—and by regulating and taxing privately owned parking.

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  • Rogers, J. To Support Wisconsin’s Middle Class, Change Our State Government. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2015, pp. 1-2J.
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  • Ebeling, M., B. Forman, R. Parr, and M. Aki. Going for Growth: Enhancing the Economic Impact of Public Transit in Gateway Cities With Comprehensive Service Planning. MassINC Gateway Cities Innovation Institute, 2014.

    From the Gateway Cities Innovation Institute, in collaboration with State Smart Transportation Initiative, this report examines how best practices in transit planning can benefit Massachusetts’s Regional Transit Authorities.

    As part of 2013’s landmark transportation finance legislation, the state legislature mandated that the RTAs conduct comprehensive service plans. If done well, the report argues, these assessments could help make the case for more funding from the state going forward.

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  • Nearly one in four Boston families lives in poverty and incomes in the Greater Boston area are more unequally distributed than in the vast majority of other metro areas around the country. The good news is that the City has a number of important tools that can be engaged to address these problems. However, in order to maximize its effectiveness, the City will have to re-focus and re-organize its approach to economic development. Critically, the City must make combatting poverty and inequality a core priority in all of its programs. Moreover, the City should adopt a broader and more proactive vision of economic development and reorganize programs and structures accordingly. This COWS report, co-written with SEIU 32BJ, identifies five key ways in which the City can re-focus and re-organize its programs and provides a number of specific recommendations of steps the City should take.
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