Kristie Hilliard opened her new shop, Kristie Kandies, in downtown Rocky Mount, N.C., after getting tired of her factory job at the local Pfizer plant. She’s seen a steady flow of customers, but says she’s doesn’t think either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would change her economic fortunes. (Kevin Hardy/Stateline)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — The signs on the empty historic buildings envision an urban utopia of sorts, complete with street cafes, bustling bike lanes and a grocery co-op.

“IMAGINE What Could Be Here,” gushes one sign outside the empty, Neoclassical post office. “IMAGINE! A Vibrant Downtown,” reads another mounted on the glass front of a long-ago closed drug store.

In a place like Rocky Mount, North Carolina, it’s not such a stretch: Just across the street, white-collar workers peck away at laptops and sip lattes at a bright coffee bar lined with dozens of potted tropical plants. A few blocks away, a mammoth events center routinely brings in thousands of visitors from across the country. And alongside a quiet river nearby, a meticulously redeveloped cotton mill would be the envy of any American city, with its modern breweries, restaurants and loft living.

An industrial community long in decline, Rocky Mount is slowly building itself back. But in this city of about 54,000, sharply divided by race and class, many residents struggle to cover the basic costs of groceries, housing and child care.

North Carolina reflects the duality of the American economy: Unemployment is low, jobs are increasing and businesses are opening new factories. But high housing and food costs have squeezed middle-class residents despite the gains of rising wages.

“The economy stinks,” said Tameika Horne, who owns an ice cream and dessert shop in Rocky Mount.

Her ingredient prices have skyrocketed, she said, but she can’t continuously raise prices on ice cream cones or funnel cakes. She said last month was her slowest ever, with only $2,000 in sales.

It’s not just the slow sales at her store: Only a few years ago, she paid $700 a month to rent a three-bedroom apartment. Now, her similarly sized rental home costs her $1,350 a month.

Aside from the ice cream shop, Horne also runs a cleaning business with her family and just started a job delivering packages for FedEx.

“It’s just hard right now,” she said.

The economy, a top issue for voters during any election, is particularly important this presidential cycle: Prices of necessities such as groceries aren’t rising as fast as they were, but years of post-pandemic inflation have soured voter attitudes.

And across the country, millions of families are struggling with rising housing costs. In four of the seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — more than half of tenant families spend 30% or more of their income on rent and utilities, according to the 2023 American Community Survey.

In North Carolina, voter anxiety about the soaring rents and grocery bills could tip the scales.

“In terms of its political influence, it’s not actually your personal financial situation that is important, it’s your vision of the national economy,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “So if I get a raise, I tend to credit myself. If I see higher prices, I tend to blame the government or the current situation.”

Around the corner from Horne’s ice cream store in downtown Rocky Mount, Kristie Hilliard greets a steady flow of customers to her new shop, Kristie Kandies. An armed cop, a nurse in scrubs and waist-high kids trickle in to grab a sweet treat.

After getting tired of her manufacturing job at the local Pfizer plant, Hilliard started making confections at home. As her following grew, she got a concession trailer and now has a storefront selling candied grapes, plums, kiwis and pickles.

Hilliard’s treats have attracted attention on social media, causing some buyers to drive in from as far away as Pennsylvania, she said.

A Democrat, she said she still hadn’t made up her mind on the presidential race. But she doesn’t believe either a Harris or a Trump administration would drastically change much for her business.

“They ain’t doing nothing for me now,” she said. “So, what would change?”

A community divided looks to the future

About 60 miles northeast of the state capital, Rocky Mount lies between the prosperous Research Triangle area and North Carolina’s scenic beach communities.

Railroad tracks and a county line slice through the middle of downtown. On the one side is the majority Black and lower-income Edgecombe County. On the other, the more prosperous and whiter Nash County.

While some officials say long-standing attitudes centered on division are fading, the county line has for decades provided a clear delineation of class, race and politics.

Edgecombe County is a Democratic stronghold, but the more populous Nash County is a bellwether of sorts. It was among the 10 closest of North Carolina’s 100 counties in the last presidential election, and one being closely watched this cycle. With 51,774 ballots cast, President Joe Biden took Nash County by 120 votes.

Around Rocky Mount’s downtown area, stately red brick churches and banks line the wide streets. But just a few blocks away, weeds overtake vacant lots, glass is smashed out of abandoned buildings, and razor wire tops the fencing of no-credit-needed car lots and used tire shops.

While the nearby Raleigh metro area has experienced explosive suburban growth, Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson said his community has seen an erosion of its middle class with the loss of corporate headquarters and factory jobs.

But he’s optimistic.

Young business owners are investing in downtown. Industries with operations in the Raleigh area are moving east. And both Republicans and Democrats just celebrated the news that Natron Energy plans to build a $1.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant nearby that will employ more than 1,000 people.

“We’ve got a lot of great things that are happening,” the mayor said. “But the key is, how do you build and retain a middle class? Because that’s who does the living and the dying and the investing in a community.”

The mayor’s position is nonpartisan, but Roberson is a Republican who in 2022 ran in the Republican primary for a congressional seat here. This election, however, is a difficult one for him.

Roberson said the economy and his financial position were unquestionably better during Trump’s term, but the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and the chaos of the last Trump presidency make him hard to support. At the same time, Roberson worries about Harris’ economic policies; he believes the current administration has accelerated inflation by pumping too much money into the economy.

“At some levels, it feels like I’m voting for somebody who wants to either be a dictator or somebody who wants to create a socialist state,” Roberson said. “And I’m not in either place.”

‘Nobody is immune’

In North Carolina and other swing states, Trump’s television ads hammer the vice president over high prices and “Bidenomics.”

Nash County Republican Party volunteer Yvonne McLeod said the economy, along with immigration, are the top concerns locally. Businesses still struggle to hire, rents have soared and food prices are still up, she said.

“Economically, we’re hurting,” she said.

Democrats must be honest about the financial pressures facing voters, said Cassandra Conover, a former Virginia prosecutor who now leads the Nash County Democratic Party. She noted that Harris ads running in North Carolina speak directly to middle-class concerns.

“Nobody is immune from what’s going on,” Conover said. “She’s telling all of us who are hurting, ‘I know, and we’re working for you.’”

Low-wage states with cheap housing dominated the post-pandemic jobs boom

Polling has shown voters are sour on the economy, with 63% saying the economy was on the wrong track in a Harvard-CAPS-Harris poll released this month. Republicans take a far dimmer view than Democrats.

“From past experience, we would expect Harris to inherit some of the blame or credit for the current economy, but so far in the polls, I would say there has been a surprising willingness of voters to not extend the blame for inflation that they had for Joe Biden onto Kamala Harris,” said Grossmann, the Michigan State University professor.

Housing anxiety

Housing costs have outstripped income gains in the past two decades, but those challenges have intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand increased, construction costs soared and interest rates spiked.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a buyer or a renter,” said Molly Boesel, an economist at CoreLogic, a financial services information company. “You’re seeing your housing costs increase.”

Affordability is “the No. 1 issue” among voters in Nevada this year, said Mario Arias, the Nevada director of the Forward Party, a centrist political party founded by former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang.

A resident of the Las Vegas area, 30-year-old Arias said housing is his biggest financial concern. Throngs of Californians have moved into Nevada to lower their housing costs, but it’s driven up costs for everyone else, he said.

“If you want to get out of being a renter, you have to be in not just a good financial situation, but in a very stable financial situation,” he said.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week for the first time in four years, whichcouldopen the housing market to more homebuyers as mortgage rates ease in the coming months.

The Biden administration has proposed several housing-related policies, including incentives to loosen zoning regulations and capping rent increases from corporate landlords. Harris has announced a proposal to provide up to $25,000 in housing assistance for a down payment to some potential first-time homeowners and promised tax incentives that she say’s would lead to 3 million more housing units by the end of her first term, if she’s elected.

Trump has not waded far into the details of how he would address the affordability issue in a second term. He has said he plans to bring down prices by barring immigrants in the country without legal authorization from getting mortgages. But his proposed immigration policies could further reduce the labor force for building homes. Previously, Trump’s administration talked about trying to cut state and local housing regulations, and it suspended federal regulations on fair housing.

In North Carolina, more than a quarter of the state’s households are cost burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. It’s particularly challenging for renters, nearly half of which are cost burdened, according to the North Carolina Housing Coalition, a nonprofit affordable housing organization.

Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, housing policy director at the coalition, noted that the federal government’s calculation of fair market rent in North Carolina has shot up 14% in just one year — and 38% over the past five years.

“So unless everybody and their mama’s getting 14 to 20 to 38% raises, the math begins to not math,” she said.

It’s a familiar challenge in every swing state.

Rent is eating up a greater share of tenants’ income in almost every state

Wendy Winston, a middle school math teacher in Grand Rapids Michigan, said that though no one political candidate is responsible for the state of the economy, the cost of groceries and housing is hard to ignore.

“I don’t think the economy is terrible. It is sometimes difficult to make ends meet,” Winston said. “I don’t believe that it’s the fault of the government or policies of the government. I feel like it’s the individual corporations trying to make profit off the backs of the middle class.”

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Grand Rapids is about $1,550 a month, according to rental site Apartments.com. Though Michigan ranks fairly average compared with other states for rent prices, the state saw some of the steepest rent increases in the country in recent years, and wages have not kept up. Residents unable to rent new, “luxury” apartments find themselves short of options for places they can afford.

“It’s not just cost, it’s availability,” Winston said. “There are a lot of new housing developments. Apartments and condos and things are being built, but I’m priced out of them. And I have a college degree, so I don’t think that’s helping our families.”

Hoping for revival

Back in North Carolina, near the banks of the Tar River, Rocky Mount Mills has a healthy waiting list for the apartments and the revamped homes it rents.

A former cotton mill built and once operated by slave labor, the campus closed in 1996, reopened in 2015 after a $75 million renovation, and is now home to breweries, restaurants and dozens of high-end apartments.

Chapel Hill native and entrepreneur Cameron Schulz never had Rocky Mount on his radar. But the development’s brewery incubator helped him launch HopFly Brewing Co., now one of the state’s largest self-distributing breweries.

After outgrowing its original space, HopFly relocated to Charlotte, but still operates a taproom in Rocky Mount. The Mills project has reinvigorated the city, Schulz said.

“Rocky Mount’s got one of the most beautiful, quintessential downtown strips that I’ve ever seen anywhere,” he said. “We’ve just got to fill it up with cool places to go, and people to go into those places.”

Main Street suffered for decades after the arrival of malls and a highway bypass. Over at Davis Furniture Company, two employees keep watch over an empty storeroom of sofas, beds and home decor.

Co-owner Melanie Davis said business has been good, though she believes customers are anxious about the presidential election. Pointing down the sidewalk to new restaurants and some loft apartments overlooking the railroad tracks, Davis said she’s bullish on the trajectory of downtown.

“I do feel like we’re on an upswing,” she said.

Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols contributed reporting.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris debate for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia. A handful of issues and groups of voters in battleground states could decide the race. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.

It’s been a wild few months in the presidential race: President Joe Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris captured the Democratic nomination. Former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and was targeted again at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Despite the historic lead-up to Election Day, the race has now settled into familiar territory: Much like 2020’s contest, top political strategists on both sides of the aisle expect control of the White House could come down to just a few thousand votes in a handful of battleground states.

“This is not going to be an election where you will see a landslide. It’s going to be won in the margins in six to seven swing states,” Democratic strategist Donna Brazile told a crowd of state lawmakers from across the country last month.

Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, shared the stage with Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trump’s 2016 campaign and advised him in the White House.

Unsurprisingly, the pair disagreed on much.

But while speaking at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Kentucky, the two senior strategists framed the race similarly to the 2020 contest, when fewer than 50,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from an Electoral College tie.

“It is a different race. It has turned in very short time, but the issue set hasn’t changed at all,” Conway said. “And I think that’s what’s important here.”

Like last cycle, the two campaigns are pouring millions into Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In “The Deciders” series, States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, explores the political issues and groups of voters that could make the difference in those seven states and, consequentially, in the race for the White House.

Unsurprisingly, economic issues — namely, stubbornly high prices — are proving central for many voters across the swing states. But voters also are concerned about immigration, abortion access and the future of the Supreme Court.

Swing states prepare for a showdown over certifying votes in November

In states such as Michigan and Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, labor unions could prove instrumental for Harris after years of significant gains by organized labor.

In Georgia and North Carolina, Black voter turnout could make the difference, while Latino voters are closely divided in Nevada after helping propel Biden to victory there four years ago. In every swing state, campaigns are focused on all-important suburban voters.

The election’s outcome also could be shaped by the work of officials who have been debating who can vote and which votes should count since the mayhem of the last presidential contest.

Four years ago, a false narrative that questioned the security and integrity of elections took hold in some legislatures. New laws changed ballot-counting practices and made it more difficult to vote in many states, including swing states. In states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, there is broad concern that despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, local Republicans tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their duties if Trump loses again.

Fears that these efforts could sow chaos and delay results is not unfounded: Over the past four years, county officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania have refused to certify certain local elections.

With such a close race, voter turnout and motivation will be key in all the battleground states.

As in other swing states, North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes could hinge on how political independents vote, said Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican strategist who has worked on many campaigns.

And those independents can be unpredictable in North Carolina: Their votes helped both Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Trump carry the state in the last two general elections.

“It’s the independents that are up for grabs, and they don’t mind splitting a ticket at all,” Wrenn said. “Ultimately, in the general election, that’s the key group.”

The economy

In every state this year, the economy is a central issue.

As Trump tries to fault Harris and Biden for the high costs of everyday living, polling shows voters blame Harris less for the situation than they did Biden — though likely voters profess more confidence in Trump’s ability to manage the economy.

For her part, Harris has unveiled plans to lower prices of rent, homebuying and groceries, arguing she will remain focused on the middle class from Day One, contrasting her ideas with what she characterizes as Trump’s catering to billionaires.

In Georgia, Republicans and Democrats alike have found success in recent statewide campaigns by highlighting similar kitchen table issues. After attending a Harris rally in Savannah last month, Georgia voter Sarah Damato said she doesn’t believe Trump will fight for the middle class.

At the event, the vice president told listeners she would lower costs by fighting corporate price-fixing and touted her proposal for a “care economy,” a set of progressive proposals including benefits for parents of newborns and credits for first-time homebuyers.

“Kamala Harris made it very evident today that the American family is the most important thing on her mind these days, and she’s going to make it easier for each one of us to have a brighter future,” Damato said.

Harris unveils plan to curb price gouging, boost child tax credit, tackle rent hikes

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican Party volunteer Sharon Buege said she supports the GOP ticket because she sees the race as a matter of “good versus evil.” Speaking outside a news conference by Trump running mate J.D. Vance, Buege said she opposed “the whole left agenda,” adding that her top issues in the race were border security, the economy, human trafficking, homelessness and “indoctrination” in public schools.

At that same news conference, a man who would only give his name as “John” said the economy and inflation mattered most: “I don’t need a reminder of why to support Trump. I can get that every time I go to the gas station or grocery store.”

Groups of voters

With Republicans looking to run up margins in rural parts of the battleground states and Democrats banking on big leads in cities, the suburbs remain pivotal.

In Georgia, diverse and growing suburbs have helped move the state from reliably red to purple.

In the state’s two largest suburban counties of Cobb and Gwinnett, Biden picked up more than 137,000 votes in 2020 over 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. The same year, Trump boosted his total by just under 32,000 votes over his 2016 performance.

The Trump campaign boasts a mighty in-state operation: nearly 15,000 volunteers signing up between mid-July and the end of August, nearly 300 events scheduled for September, and 4,000 neighborhood organizers and canvassers — known as Trump Force Captains — joining the cause in July and August.

But Team Harris says they are running the largest Georgia operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with more than 200 campaign staff in 28 offices. Harris’ recent visit to the more conservative south side of the state marked her 16th trip to Georgia since becoming vice president and her seventh trip this year.

Harris is hoping to fire up the young, diverse Democratic base, but her team also is hoping she can hang onto or expand on Biden’s coalition of older, affluent, educated and largely white suburbanites.

“Those are the people who are actually kind of pivotal and who will modify or change their behavior,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

“These people are largely Republicans, but they can’t bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump or for Republicans who are closely associated with him,” Bullock said.

Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs executive and political analyst, said the four suburban Philadelphia counties surrounding Pennsylvania’s largest city are key to winning that state. Once a Republican bastion, the so-called collar counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery have swung strongly in the other direction since 2016.

That complicates messaging for both campaigns, Ceisler said. Trump’s anti-abortion stance and Harris’ effort to back away from her earlier statements against fracking — both positions that appeal to rural and western Pennsylvania voters — are potential liabilities in suburbs.

Democrats have a 343,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania. But the state has been decided by narrow margins in the last two presidential elections.

“One of the weaknesses that Biden had as a candidate was he had weakening support among African American voters. And then Trump has actually done fairly well, particularly in some other states, like in Florida, with Latino voters,” Mallinson said, adding that Harris’ nomination changes the equation somewhat.

After Democrats seemingly all but wrote off Arizona for Biden, the contest there is proving more winnable for Harris. Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020, but he had been hemorrhaging Latino support this year.

In the manufacturing-heavy upper Midwest, labor unions could prove consequential in not only persuading voters but also motivating them to the polls.

Biden was the first sitting president to visit a picket line when the United Auto Workers last year took on the “Big Three” Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — by going on strike. That effort led to significant increases in pay and benefits for workers.

The UAW, which in August announced a national campaign to motivate its 1 million active and retired members to vote for Harris, says its membership accounted for 9.2% of Biden’s 2020 votes in Michigan alone.

“To me, this election is real simple,” UAW president Shawn Fain told a crowd of about 15,000 people last month at a rally in Detroit for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “It’s about one question. It’s a question we made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?”

Political weaknesses

While Democrats are more motivated than when Biden was the presumptive nominee, they still face internal conflicts, the most high-profile of which has been about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Dee Sull, a Las Vegas attorney who works in immigration and family law, is a registered Democrat who said she would never vote for Trump. Yet she doesn’t really want to vote for Harris, leaving her “very torn” this election.

“I believe our foreign policy in Gaza is completely ridiculous. I’m very disturbed,” she said of U.S. military aid to Israel. “If we’re going to spend money, I want it spent on my kids here — on my neighbors’ kids here.”

Sull said both parties have silenced the voices of those who protest the death and destruction in Gaza. And she was irritated that Palestinian American activists were not allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention last month.

Sull won’t sit out the election, but said she would prefer to vote for a third candidate with a viable shot at winning.

“Probably like a lot of Americans would if they had that opportunity,” she said.

For Trump, voters’ overwhelming support for abortion rights could prove a huge liability in swing states.

While Trump has wobbled in recent months on whether he would veto a national abortion ban, the Supreme Court justices he appointed dismantled abortion access across the country in 2022 — an unpopular position even in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio that since have voted to expand abortion rights.

In Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood stopped offering abortions at its health clinics after the court’s Dobbs decision because of an 1849 “trigger” state law that immediately took effect. Wisconsin women lost all abortion services there for a year and a half, until a court re-interpreted the state law.

This summer’s shakeup has reset the race, said Amy Walter, publisher of The Cook Political Report, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections. So far, likely voters in the swing states view Harris more favorably than Biden, she said. But with Trump benefiting from an electorate skeptical of the state of the economy, the newsletter characterized the race as “a battle of inches.”

The campaigns both face a lot of voters who are disenchanted with politics altogether, or else unhappy with their options.

Amy Tarkanian, a conservative television commentator who once lauded Trump to national audiences and was chair of the Nevada State Republican Party in 2011-12, said she’s at “a complete loss” this year. She remains a Republican, even after the state party heavily criticized her when, two years ago, she endorsed a pair of Democratic candidates for state offices.

“I’m not happy, or necessarily sold on Kamala,” Tarkanian said. “… But I absolutely do not want to vote for Donald Trump.”

Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small, Michigan Advance’s Anna Liz Nichols and Jon King, Nevada Current’s Hugh Jackson, NC Newsline’s Galen Bacharier, Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s Peter Hall and John Cole, Georgia Recorder’s Ross Williams, and Wisconsin Examiner’s Ruth Conniff and Henry Redman contributed reporting.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

The welcome screen for the OpenAI “ChatGPT” app is displayed on a laptop screen in a photo illustration (Leon Neal/Getty Images).

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Inside a white-walled conference room, a speaker surveyed hundreds of state lawmakers and policy influencers, asking whether artificial intelligence poses a threat to the elections in their states.

The results were unambiguous: 80% of those who answered a live poll said yes. In a follow-up question, nearly 90% said their state laws weren’t adequate to deter those threats.

It was among the many exchanges on artificial intelligence that dominated sessions at this week’s meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the largest annual gathering of lawmakers, in Louisville.

“It’s the topic du jour,” Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, told lawmakers as he kicked off one of many panels centering on AI. “There are a lot of discussions happening in all of our state legislatures across the country.”

While some experts and lawmakers celebrated the promise of AI to advance services in health care and education, others lamented its potential to disrupt the democratic process with just months to go before November’s elections. And lawmakers compared the many types of legislation they’re proposing to tackle the issue.

This presidential election cycle is the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new images, audio and video — became widely available. That’s raised alarms over deepfakes, remarkably convincing but fake videos or images that can portray anyone, including candidates, in situations that didn’t occur or saying things they didn’t.

“We need to do something to make sure the voters understand what they’re doing,” said Kentucky state Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe.

The Republican lawmaker, who chairs a special legislative task force on AI, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill this year aimed at limiting the use of deepfakes to influence elections. The bill would have allowed candidates whose appearance, action or speech was altered through “synthetic media” in an election communication to take its sponsor to court. The state Senate unanimously approved the proposal but it stalled in the House.

While Bledsoe expects to bring the bill up again next session, she acknowledged how complex the issue is: Lawmakers are trying to balance the risks of the evolving technology against their desire to promote innovation and protect free speech.

“You don’t want to go too fast,” she said in an interview, “but you also don’t want to be too behind.”

Rhode Island state Sen. Dawn Euer, a Democrat, told Stateline she’s concerned about AI’s potential to amplify disinformation, particularly across social media.

“Election propaganda and disinformation has been part of the zeitgeist for the existence of humanity,” said Euer, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Now, we have high-tech tools to do it.”

Connecticut state Sen. James Maroney, a Democrat, agreed that concerns about AI’s effects on elections are legitimate. But he emphasized that most deepfakes target women with digitally generated nonconsensual intimate images or revenge porn. Research firm Sensity AI has tracked online deepfake videos for years, finding 90% of them are nonconsensual porn, mostly targeting women.

Maroney sponsored legislation this year that would have regulated artificial intelligence and criminalized deepfake porn and false political messaging. That bill passed the state Senate, but not the House. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont opposed the measure, saying it was premature and potentially harmful to the state’s technology industry.

While Maroney has concerns about AI, he said the upsides far outweigh the risks. For example, AI can help lawmakers communicate with constituents through chatbots or translate messaging into other languages.

Top election officials on AI

During one session in Louisville, New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan said AI could improve election administration by making it easier to organize election statistics or get official messaging out to the public.

Still, New Hampshire experienced firsthand some of the downside of the new technology earlier this year when voters received robocalls that used artificial intelligence to imitate President Joe Biden’s voice to discourage participation in a January primary.

Prosecutors charged the political operative who allegedly organized the fake calls with more than a dozen crimes, including voter suppression, and the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $6 million fine against him.

While the technology may be new, Scanlan said election officials have always had to keep a close eye on misinformation about elections and extreme tactics by candidates or their supporters and opponents.

“You might call them dirty tricks, but it has always been in candidates’ arsenals, and this really was a form of that as well,” he said. “It’s just more complex.”

The way state officials responded, by quickly identifying the calls as fake and investigating their origins, serves as a playbook for other states ahead of November’s elections, said Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency focused on election security.

“What we saw New Hampshire do is best practice,” she said during the presentation. “They came out quickly and clearly and provided guidance, and they really just checked the disinformation that was out there.”

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told Stateline that AI could prove challenging for swing states in the presidential election. But he said it may still be too new of a technology to cause widespread problems for most states.

“Of the 99 things that we chew our nails over, it’s not in the top 10 or 20,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know that it’s at a maturity level that it’ll be utilized everywhere.”

Adams this year received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for championing the integrity of elections despite pushback from fellow Republicans. He said AI is yet another obstacle facing election officials who already must combat challenges including disinformation and foreign influence.

More bills coming

With an absence of congressional action, states have increasingly sought to regulate the quickly evolving world of AI on their own.

NCSL this year tracked AI bills in at least 40 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C.

As states examine the issue, many are looking at Colorado, which this year became the first state to create a sweeping regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. Technology companies opposed the measure, worried it will stifle innovation in a new industry.

Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers modeled much of their language on European Union regulations to avoid creating mismatched rules for companies using AI. Still, the law will be examined by a legislative task force before going into effect in 2026.

“It’s a first-in-the nation bill, and I’m under no illusion that it’s perfect and ready to go,” he said. “We’ve got two years.”

When Texas lawmakers reconvene next January, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione expects to see many AI bills flying.

A Republican and co-chair of a state artificial intelligence advisory council, Capriglione said he’s worried about how generative AI may influence how people vote — or even if they vote — in both local and national elections.

“Without a doubt, artificial intelligence is being used to sow disinformation and misinformation,” he said, “and I think as we get closer to the election, we’ll see a lot more cases of it being used.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

A general view of pre-game ceremonies for the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sept. 7, 2023 in Kansas City (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

For decades, academic research has been clear: Taxpayers almost never get their money back on subsidized sports stadiums.

And yet, over and over again, U.S. cities and states find themselves locked in lopsided negotiations with beloved football, baseball and basketball teams, hoping to keep them from jumping to a new market.

In the newest bidding war, Kansas aims to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs or MLB’s Royals from their side-by-side stadiums in Missouri just a few miles away. It could be one of the most expensive stadium deals yet, according to Victor Matheson, a researcher who studies stadium subsidies.

“This is wildly destructive,” he said. “This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition, because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another.”

Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, watched closely in June as lawmakers in Topeka, Kansas, approved an expansion of an often-criticized tax incentive program with the aim of subsidizing a new stadium for one or both teams.

The bidding war for the teams is being viewed as particularly irresponsible by those who hailed a 2019 compact between Kansas and Missouri that some had hoped would set a new model for states across the country to curb corporate tax incentives.

Five years ago, the Democratic governor of Kansas and the Republican governor of Missouri celebrated an end to the so-called economic Border War, a long-standing practice in which governments would offer lucrative subsidies to lure companies back and forth across state lines in the Kansas City area. People saw the practice as wasteful, since it paid companies to relocate without spurring new growth for the regional economy.

The truce was momentous for Kansas and Missouri, two states whose rivalry traces back to bloody Civil War days. But it also garnered national acclaim from both liberals and conservatives who saw the move as a blow to corporate welfare and the cynical practice of companies pitting governments against each other.

But more powerful than the bipartisan cross-border cease-fire, apparently, is the allure of a new professional sports venue.

“Literally every piece of public policy that people said was bad before is being seen here,” said Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Across the country, professional sports teams are playing various local and state governments against each other — a trend that will likely accelerate as a wave of existing stadium leases begin to expire across the country.

It’s a page from the pro sports playbook: Teams often threaten to move to other markets — one without an NFL or NBA franchise, for example. But when those efforts don’t work, team owners often seek to spark competition among local jurisdictions, Matheson said.

New Jersey officials are currently in talks with the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers to get that NBA franchise to hop over to Camden, New Jersey. And the NFL’s Washington Commanders, whose current stadium is in Maryland, are in talks with officials in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia as they look to build a new facility.

“If there’s not a credible threat to relocate,” Matheson said, “the only way to really get the money out of people’s hands is to play localities against one another.”

Lucas said the bidding war between Kansas and Missouri — and local governments in each — gives more leverage to the Chiefs and Royals in negotiations. But it’s up to elected officials to keep from being outmatched.

“I do think some support is important,” Lucas said. “Giving away the farm is not.”

In Topeka, the GOP-controlled legislature expanded Kansas’ Sales Tax and Revenue Bond program, known as STAR, which would redirect sales tax generated at the stadiums and surrounding areas to pay off construction debt. If the teams were to hop the state line, they could benefit from an unprecedented level of taxpayer support: as much as 70% of the costs of two stadiums, which could amount to billions.

The law allows the state to strike stadium deals with little to no public involvement, doubles down on a state incentive program with a spotty track record of success and potentially puts the state’s finances at risk — all for the prospect of luring a sports team a few miles away.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”

In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.

“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.

Reigniting the Border War

On a hot summer day in 2019, hundreds of people gathered to celebrate an end to Missouri’s and Kansas’ practice of offering tax incentives to move companies and jobs from one state to the other.

By one estimate, the practice cost taxpayers more than $300 million over a decade and created almost no new jobs for the Kansas City metro area, which straddles both states.

“Sometimes common sense does prevail,” Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson said at the time. “Because you don’t have to be a scientist to figure out this was a bad deal for both states.”

Parson’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But in July, the governor said he was confident the NFL team would stay put at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

This spring, voters’ rejection of a 40-year sales tax to help finance a new Royals stadium — and upgrades for Arrowhead — sparked a fear that the teams might leave if they don’t get new facilities. Claiming voters in the Chiefs’ and Royals’ home county had “dropped the ball,” Republican leaders in Kansas pushed to offer the teams a deal, worried they could leave the region altogether.

That fear was enough to reignite the dormant competition between officials in the two states.

“And then they said, ‘Oh, but this is sports, that doesn’t count,’” Matheson said. “Bad economics with sports teams seems to have few boundaries.”

While some Missouri officials have criticized Kansas’ overtures to the teams, Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said in June she made no promises about leaving the teams alone when she signed the Border War truce.

This week, Kelly’s office declined to comment on the legislation, referring questions to the Kansas Department of Commerce, which would oversee any stadium deals. That agency did not answer questions but provided a statement saying such projects “require discretion and confidentiality.”

“The department will not disclose any details regarding the activity surrounding negotiations or future agreements,” department spokesperson Patrick Lowry wrote in an email.

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit in suburban Kansas City, likewise said the truce wasn’t meant to cover sports teams — and he wants his state to keep the teams. He expects the state to respond with an offer of its own.

“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” Patterson said of the truce.

Kansas’ offer to the Chiefs and Royals enhances an often-criticized program meant to bring major tourist attractions to the state.

But in most cases, the STAR bond program, according to a state audit, failed at its goal of increasing tourism. There may have been some cases, the audit said, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri.

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit said.

Prairiefire, a sprawling development in the Kansas suburb of Overland Park, defaulted on its STAR construction bonds earlier this year because sales tax revenues from its restaurants, movie theater and museum came in far below projections.

The proposal for the stadiums would allow the Chiefs or Royals to pay off construction loans using the increased sales and liquor tax collections at the stadium. In pushing for the legislation, lawmakers noted that the money for the stadium would come from spending in and around the stadiums, not general taxpayers.

And they claimed that bond investors would be on the hook — not the state — if sales tax collections come up short.

But Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, said it’s unclear how interested investors will be in loaning huge sums for stadium projects, which typically do not create enough revenue to cover costs.

And if those state-issued bonds were ever at risk of failure, he said, lawmakers would feel implicit pressure to bail out the stadium.

“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”

‘Zero-sum’ game between states

Experts viewed the Kansas-Missouri truce as a model that other states and cities could emulate.

“We were very interested in the Kansas and Missouri situation, because it gives a test as to whether this will work,” said Marc Joffe, a state policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank. “And there have been some encouraging results since 2019 … but I think sports teams are just too big of a war, and they weren’t able to avoid the temptation.”

The institute is studying the Kansas-Missouri truce, in its larger effort to end bidding wars for factories and other major employers.

Joffe criticized such competition as wasteful, and said bidding for stadiums was no exception.

“It is at best a zero-sum game,” Joffe said, “and because of all the waste involved, it’s a really negative-sum game.”

Joffe pointed to the Coalition to Phase Out Corporate Tax Giveaways, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers that sponsored bills in more than a dozen legislatures between 2019 and 2021.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher Rabb, a Democrat, has twice introduced legislation in Harrisburg to end corporate subsidies. He said he was motivated by Amazon’s 2018 announcement that it was seeking a new corporate headquarters, a move that set off a national bidding war among cities.

He broadly believes corporate incentives are wasteful, especially for professional sports teams. Rabb views the Philadelphia 76ers talks of moving across the Delaware River to New Jersey as a ploy for public subsidies.

He noted most average people can’t afford to attend pro games and likened chasing the purported economic benefits of stadiums and arenas to hunting for “fool’s gold.”

“How does this really change the collective quality of opportunity for regular Philadelphians? It doesn’t,” he said. “Let’s be honest: This is the sandbox of billionaires.”

Rabb said elected leaders should be focused on policies that help marginalized people, not the “excessively wealthy,” such as team owners.

After talks stalled over a new arena for the 76ers in Philadelphia, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he proposed the team relocate just a few miles to Camden.

Murphy’s office declined to comment, but the Democratic governor told a local television station last week that the team’s interest was “legitimate.”

“We think we got an angle here. We’re taking it seriously. Where it lands? I can’t promise you,” he said. “I think they are taking it seriously as well — we shall see. I say this as a Boston Celtics fan — don’t get mad at me.”

But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.

“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”

Sprinklers irrigate a field in Hamilton County, Kansas, where some farmers have petitioned to be removed from a local groundwater management district. State lawmakers are pressuring the district to do more to conserve water in the Ogallala Aquifer. (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector)

JETMORE, Kan. — An inch or two of corn peeks out of the dirt, just enough to reveal long rows forming over the horizon.

Sprinkler engines roar as they force water from underground to pour life into dusty fields.

Thunder cracks. The wind whips up dirt as a trail of dark storms looms. The crashing hot and cold fronts would probably set off tornado sirens — if there were any in this remote part of the state.

It’s spring in southwest Kansas, a hub for the nation’s crop, dairy and beef industries.

As the familiar seasonal rhythm plays out, some farmers are bracing for major changes in how they use the long-depleting Ogallala Aquifer. The nation’s largest underground store of fresh water, the Ogallala transformed this arid region into an agricultural powerhouse.

After 50 years of studies, discussions and hand-wringing about the aquifer’s decline, the state is demanding that local groundwater managers finally enforce conservation. But in this region where water is everything, they’ll have to overcome entrenched attitudes and practices that led to decades of overpumping.

“It scares the hell out of me,” farmer Hugh Brownlee said at a recent public meeting in the district on the changes to come.

Last year, Kansas lawmakers passed legislation squarely targeting the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District, which spans a dozen counties. Unlike the two other Kansas districts that sit atop the crucial aquifer, this one has done little to enact formal conservation programs that could help prolong the life of the aquifer. The new law aims to force action.

The district has come under fire from legislators increasingly incensed by its substantial travel expenses, its lack of formal conservation policies and its alienation of farmers who are trying to save water. At a hearing in February on a bill meant to help farmers in one county leave the district, a Kansas House member floated the idea of doing away with the organization, also known as Groundwater Management District 3, altogether.

“Maybe that’s something that we need to consider — just dissolve GMD 3 so that these other boards that are doing good work are not affected,” said state Rep. Cyndi Howerton, a Republican from Wichita.

District leaders think the criticism is unfair. But even they acknowledge that painful change is brewing. Change that will force farmers to cut back.

Clay Scott, a farmer and rancher who has served on the district’s board for more than two decades, said most local farmers are ready to change. That’s partly because they don’t want to give the state a reason to impose its own restrictions, he said.

Scott said the problem of overuse has been generations in the making and can’t be reversed overnight.

“It’s going to take us time to turn this ship around,” he said.

But critics say the organization has already had plenty of time. Decades.

Agriculture built these High Plains towns. Now, it might run them dry.

“My biggest disappointment with GMD 3 is they’ve had 50 years to build a consensus on conservation and they failed to do it,” said Frank Mercurio, who works for a dairy with facilities across southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado.

The discussions here mirror those occurring not just across the eight Ogallala states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming) but also across the country. The dual threat of climate change and overpumping of groundwater threatens farming and agricultural communities coast to coast.

Outside the town of Syracuse, Kansas, Brownlee runs a small farm with dryland and irrigated fields divided by a curvy two-lane blacktop. More than 200 years ago, Mexican and American traders following the Santa Fe Trail crossed this part of the plains on ox-pulled wagons.

Brownlee, who farms part time and drives a propane truck, said he understands the shrinking water supply. But he thinks the state is to blame — not farmers. Decades ago, Kansas officials issued more water rights than the aquifer can sustain.

The state should fix that, rather than punishing farmers with across-the-board cuts, he said.

“They want to be able to flip the switch and just stop it,” Brownlee said. “That’s not going to do anybody no good.”

‘Should have been done 40 years ago’ 

In a community center on Main Street in Lakin, Kansas, a few dozen farmers in feed and seed hats last month pulled folding chairs off a big metal rack.

Just below the stained drop ceiling panels, a tilted projector shone onto a bare beige wall the district’s plans to comply with the new law. The first step: identifying priority areas for its conservation efforts.

An expert from the Kansas Geological Survey pointed to maps of the district. Blood red blots showed where aquifer conditions were most severe. In some parts of the district, the aquifer is already all but gone. Other areas have more than 60 years of water left even if they don’t cut back their usage.

But at this and a series of meetings across southwest Kansas, district leaders outlined plans to declare its entire territory a priority area. Some critics viewed the move as a stall tactic, but district leaders say it leaves all options available to them. The district in 2026 will have to present an action plan, which it says will reflect the huge variations in aquifer conditions.

Kansas’ chief engineer, Earl Lewis, who will evaluate the board’s plan and future conservation efforts, said the board likely can designate the whole region a priority, though he’s not sure it meets “the spirit” of the law.

In the series of meetings, farmers ran through familiar questions, concerns and excuses.

What about the farms pumping the aquifer down in Oklahoma?

What about all the new dairies and feedlots coming in?

What about city drinking water wells?

Crop irrigation accounts for 85% of all water use in Kansas — even more in western Kansas.

The group also discussed the possibility of paying growers to shut down their wells.

But one farmer said he can’t farm his sandy soil without irrigation. After the meeting, he declined to be named, saying he could get in big trouble for sharing his real feelings.

Local farmer Steve Sterling interjected at the first meeting in Garden City to say conservation planning “should have been done 40 years ago.” Some of his neighbors abandoned their farm when he was 12, he said. They were out of water.

Katie Durham, who manages Groundwater Management District 1 in western Kansas, drove south to attend some of the meetings in GMD 3. She said she hoped the farmers in attendance understood that change is coming under the new law.

“This is happening,” Durham said. “I just hope that urgency and sense of wanting to be involved and kind of taking ownership of the future on a local level — I just hope people are understanding that.”

‘This is a cultural thing’

Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Kansas created the fundamental problem that allows aquifer depletion by granting farmers the right to pump more water out of the aquifer each year than returns to it via rainfall. But the state has largely left it up to locals to find solutions to the problem.

The state charged the three groundwater management districts over the Ogallala with protecting both the agricultural economy and aquifer water. But their five-decade histories primarily have been marked by further decline of the Ogallala Aquifer. Two districts have made progress in recent years and helped farmers to slow, or even stop, the decline.

GMD 3 is different.

Burke Griggs, a water attorney who previously worked for the state, argues the southwest Kansas district isn’t doing much compared with the other two.

“The law is the same. The regs are basically the same,” he said. “This is a cultural thing.”

He argues the state should take a firmer stance in aquifer management.

“I think it’s time for a reckoning,” Griggs said.

District officials say farmers in GMD 3 have used 13% less water in the past 10 years compared with the decade before. But it’s unclear how much of that change is intentional — from conservation — or a reflection of the limited water available in the declining aquifer.

Though its territory is twice the size of the other two districts’ combined, the southwest Kansas district hasn’t accomplished as much. The other districts have offered financial assistance to farmers investing in water-efficient irrigation systems and championed large-scale restrictions on pumping.

GMD 3 has done none of that. Between 2010 and 2022, financial records show, the district spent, on average, only 13% of the money it budgeted for conservation. In most years, it didn’t spend anything on conservation.

Mark Rude, who has been the organization’s executive director for nearly two decades, said the district’s entire budget supports water conservation. The district takes in more than $1 million per year and spends 70% of that on salaries and benefits, according to financial documents received through a records request. The rest goes largely to office equipment, travel and other administrative costs.

“I mean, ultimately, that’s why we’re here,” Rude said, “and if you look at the $600,000-plus we (spend) on staff, why is the staff here?”

This summer, the district board will consider a 38% increase in the fee it imposes on water users, which is expected to raise more than $200,000 each year. Rude said that money would primarily be used to hire two new employees to help with grant projects offering technical assistance to farmers trying to conserve water.

Between 2010 and 2022, GMD 3 spent about four times as much on travel for Rude and staff as on water conservation. On average, the GMD pays more than $20,000 each year for Rude’s travel — plus another $20,000 for the rest of its staff members — compared with $10,000 for water conservation.

Last year, the district changed its financial statements, reporting fewer, broader categories. The new financial structure did not distinguish travel costs from other expenses.

Rude defends the spending by saying it’s necessary to build the partnerships and relationships needed to achieve district goals, including its aim of piping in water from out of state.

“How else do you do it?” Rude said. “Really, please show us: How else do you do it?”

House bill calls for western Kansas to create plans to save the Ogallala Aquifer

Last year, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle questioned Rude during a committee hearing on why the district wasn’t doing more to conserve groundwater.

State Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, an Overland Park Democrat, said during a legislative hearing that the district had 50 years to act but made no progress on addressing aquifer decline.

“The issue is only becoming more urgent,” Vaughn said, “and I am discouraged to see that there aren’t any real efforts right now to get the ball rolling and coming up with a long-term plan.”

The district’s lack of action also has drawn the attention of farmers who mounted a campaign to secede.

In 2022, Hamilton County farmers submitted a petition to withdraw from the groundwater district.

They characterized the organization as a bureaucratic mess with a ballooning budget that spends little on conservation, obstructs programs meant to slow groundwater decline and provides no benefits for dryland farmers who also pay assessments.

The petition criticized groundwater district leaders’ fixation on building an aqueduct across the state. The organization twice has trucked water 400 miles from the Missouri River to western Kansas in an effort to sell the idea.

In their petition, Hamilton County farmers said the project only managed to move and dump water with “no tangible benefit to anyone.”

Richard Geven, owner of the 10,000-head Southwest Plains Dairy, was among those who signed the petition to leave.

Geven, a native of the Netherlands who has been farming here for nearly 20 years, said he sees little reason for the groundwater district. When he has issues with his wells or needs clarity on water rights, he works with state regulators.

But he pays assessments every year to the district.

“We don’t know what the purpose is,” he said. “We think, ‘What are they doing? We don’t need them.’”

‘They will face the same choices’

Across most of the Ogallala states, governments have preferred to encourage voluntary conservation rather than mandating steep cutbacks, said Kevin Wagner, director of the Oklahoma Water Resource Center at Oklahoma State University.

Oklahoma allows farmers to use up to 2 feet of water each year on every acre they own. But usage is not monitored. Farmers report annual estimates of water usage.

And the state has not banned the drilling of new irrigation wells.

Researchers have closely monitored the decline of the aquifer across the Oklahoma Panhandle — it’s dropping about half a foot per year, he said.

But there’s no telling how much individual farmers are using or conserving.

“When I talk to producers in Oklahoma, there’s a lot of feeling that Oklahoma producers are doing just as good at conserving as their neighbors in Texas and in Kansas,” Wagner said. “And honestly there’s no data out there right now.”

Oklahoma state Rep. Carl Newton, a Republican, introduced legislation this year that would require irrigators to meter their water use.

The measure passed, but amid steep opposition from agriculture trade groups, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed it. He called it government overreach and a violation of private property rights.

Newton said he plans to reintroduce the bill, which he described as “a starting point” for conservation efforts.

“You’ve got to find out where your problem is to get an idea of where to go,” he said. “That was my whole goal.”

Kansas started requiring irrigators to install meters and report water usage in the early 1990s.

Formal conservation efforts have been underway in other parts of the region for years.

In Nebraska’s Republican River Basin, groundwater regulators have helped producers install soil moisture probes and more accurate meters that use telemetry to conserve. And Colorado offers a master irrigator course to help farmers grow crops more efficiently.

In Wichita County, Kansas, just beyond the bounds of GMD 3, farmers created a conservation program that launched in 2021. Called a local enhanced management area, farmers committed to cutting water use by at least 25%.

Farmer Don Smith said the program provided a chance for locals to act together before the state stepped in.

Smith, his brother and nephews together run Smith Family Farms, which grows corn, wheat and milo against a backdrop of massive wind turbines. Shiny grain bins emblazoned with the family name tower near the office, where a curious Australian shepherd keeps watch, rearing up on hind legs to peer through the door.

The farm is mostly dryland. Its irrigated fields draw upon 38 wells, connected to advanced sprinkler systems that help reduce water use. The farm also has transitioned to no-till methods, which keeps more moisture in the soil.

Smith said the farm shows that growers can save water and still make money. Lower water use does lead to lower yields, he said. But it also makes growing crops less expensive.

Smith knows the groundwater district just to his south has deeper wells and more abundant water. But the declining aquifer eventually will force changes there.

“I guess it’ll be interesting to see if at some point somebody responds before the gun’s to their head,” he said. “They will face the same choices we all north of them have had to face.”

In Wichita County, Smith said, test wells show the changes have slowed or even reversed aquifer decline. But even so, he doesn’t think irrigated farming will last forever. He expects the day will come when pumping small amounts of water won’t be worth the cost.

“We all understand that we are sucking water out of a bathtub,” he said. “And the rate we’re taking it out of the bathtub exceeds the rate Mother Nature can put it back in.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

GM workers with the UAW Local 2250 Union strike outside the General Motors Wentzville Assembly Plant on September 15, 2023 (Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images).

Just days before workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama began voting last week on whether to unionize, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions.

Alabama’s move follows similar efforts in Georgia and Tennessee, where GOP leaders also have passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement.

The laws require that unions be formed only by secret ballots rather than the so-called card check process, in which employers can voluntarily recognize a union without a protracted election process. And under the laws, companies that voluntarily recognize unions risk losing state incentives, which amount to billions of dollars invested by governments to bring automakers to the region.

These new laws speak to the growing push of labor unions into Southern states — and the fierce opposition of pro-business GOP leaders there. For decades, the region has attracted investments from foreign automakers with lucrative tax breaks, low-cost labor and a lack of labor unions. Labor leaders hope that is changing now that workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly endorsed a union in April, becoming the first foreign auto plant in the South ever organized by the United Auto Workers.

Unions such as the UAW argue their involvement can help boost wages and improve the work environment at auto plants. But GOP forces in the South view unions as an existential threat to their manufacturing economies — of even more importance now that states are increasingly competing for electric vehicle and battery plants.

Mercedes-Benz workers outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Friday voted against joining a union at their plant, in a setback for the labor movement. But more organizing drives are underway in Alabama and South Carolina, as well as in California.

Many Southern states where unions have begun to focus already are less friendly to organizing. They are so-called right-to-work states, where each employee in a workplace can decide whether to join and pay union dues, though all workers are represented by the union.

Seeking to capitalize on major contract wins it secured for workers last year at the nation’s Big Three automakers (GM, Ford and Stellantis), the United Auto Workers union announced plans to spend $40 million through 2026 to help organize workers at auto and battery plants across the country, with a particular focus on the South. The union did not respond to multiple Stateline requests for comment.

A week before April’s monumental vote at the Tennessee Volkswagen plant, six Southern Republican governors warned that unionization would jeopardize the region’s auto jobs. In addition to Ivey in Alabama, the governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas also signed on.

And Ivey continued to rally against organized labor in auto plants last week, as she announced she had signed the state’s bill regarding secret ballots.

“Alabama is not Michigan,” Ivey said at a chamber of commerce event last week. “ … We want to ensure that Alabama values, not Detroit values, continue to define the future of this great state.”

It’s unclear how much impact the new laws will have. The vote in Chattanooga was conducted by secret ballot with nearly three-quarters of all workers who voted in the election choosing to join the UAW. Tennessee awarded Volkswagen more than $500 million in incentives to build its plant there in 2008.

To Tennessee state Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, the 2023 law regarding union elections passed in his state was yet another GOP effort to “blockade” union power in the South.

“It’s typical, in my view, for Southern states to have that kind of a mindset: to have less of a voice for workers as opposed to having an exchange between workers and employer,” said Hakeem, a Democrat.

Hakeem said the UAW’s landslide win in his hometown of Chattanooga exposed a political miscalculation on the part of Republicans who view economic development prospects and union organizing as mutually exclusive.

“I thought it was huge,” he said. “They thought that scare tactics would be the winning thing for them … and the union workers demonstrated that they have a backbone.”

‘Right-to-work’ states

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group known as ALEC that works with lawmakers across the country, introduced model legislation similar to the laws already passed in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.

ALEC did not respond to a request for comment, but the organization’s involvement could further push the legislative concept across red states, particularly in the South.

That expansion is likely to happen, said Vincent Vernuccio, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that worked with Tennessee Republican lawmakers on their legislation.

“We’re seeing a snowball effect,” he said of the legislation. “It is getting noticed and I fully expect it to spread.”

Vernuccio said most Southern employers had been “protecting their employees” by calling for secret ballot elections rather than the signing of union cards in the open.

“There could be peer pressure, there can be coercion and intimidation,” he said, “and probably even more common is the union’s trying to make sure that employees … are not receiving both sides of the story on what would happen if a union organized them.”

Billy Dycus, president of the Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council, viewed fierce GOP opposition to Chattanooga’s union effort as a boon to the cause.

“I think that helped more than it hurt,” he said. “People say, ‘You know what, we’re kind of tired of the government telling us how we should run our lives.’”

Dycus, whose organization represents more than 60,000 union workers in the state, including teachers, steelworkers and nurses, said labor leaders have little incentive to mislead or pressure employees to join unions, especially in right-to-work states. Dycus said that because workers can choose whether to join unions, organizers must continually prove their worth to maintain membership and dues.

“They think that card check means we go in and twist arms and force people to sign cards. That doesn’t make any sense because you’re in a right-to-work state,” he said.

Opponents of the new union voting laws argue that pushing for elections through secret ballot run by the National Labor Relations Board — as opposed to card check — can subject workers to anti-union messaging from management. Such elections also might delay the inevitable, they argue, in cases where the union has identified a clear majority of support.

But pro-business Republicans portray the new laws as ways to protect the privacy of individual workers, who might feel peer pressure to sign union authorization cards in a card-check scenario.

“There’s absolutely nothing in this bill that would stop anybody from being able to unionize,” Georgia state Sen. Mike Hodges, a Republican who carried his state’s bill on the floor for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said in an interview.

Hodges said the new law aims to ensure a “level playing field” in union decisions. He noted that his father, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Georgia, raised him and three siblings on union wages and benefits.

“We didn’t say we don’t want unions,” Hodges said. “Bless your heart, if you want to unionize, unionize.”

Alabama state Sen. Arthur Orr, a Republican who sponsored the legislation in his state, said the secret ballot process protects workers from both management and union leadership.

“Employees are caught in a tug of war, if you will,” Orr said. “Having the secret ballot provides the employees the ability to say what they want to, one side or the other. But when it comes to the ultimate voting, they can do it privately.”

Union expansion could hurt economic development prospects, Orr said, but workers always have the right to unionize.

“If companies are not taking care of their workers — and you can define that as you will, whether it’s pay or whether it’s time, job flexibility, safety, whatever — then that makes them vulnerable to an organization effort,” he said.

Legal challenges

While some labor advocates have argued the state bills could be preempted by federal labor law, Orr said he consulted with several attorneys on Alabama’s legislation. He noted that Tennessee’s law had not been challenged in court.

Still, it’s a “close question” as to whether these laws would hold up to a legal challenge since federal laws govern most labor issues in the private sector, said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. Some labor advocates expect courts could strike down the state laws, finding them preempted by federal labor law.

“What I can say for sure is that if it’s not preempted, then we are really opening up the landscape to dramatically more state and city intervention into labor relations and the rules of union organizing,” he said in an interview.

In his blog, OnLabor, Sachs warned anti-union forces to be careful what they wished for: If the Southern GOP laws stand, he wrote, it could open the door to blue states passing a litany of bills with opposite aims.

“If red states are entitled to tie economic incentives to a ban on card check, then blue states presumably are entitled to tie economic incentives on a requirement for card check,” he added in the interview.

While the recent labor win in Tennessee shows unions in the South can still succeed with a secret ballot process, Sachs said the legislation could have a “chilling effect” on companies that would otherwise prefer to voluntarily recognize unions.

“If it weren’t a big deal, they wouldn’t have enacted these laws,” he said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

High-voltage transmission lines provide electricity to data centers in Loudon County, Va., home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers. Lawmakers in Virginia and other states are rethinking how incentive programs for data centers may impact the electric grid, clean energy goals and utility rates for other consumers (Ted Shaffrey/The Associated Press)

State Sen. Norm Needleman championed the 2021 legislation designed to lure major data centers to Connecticut.

The Democratic lawmaker hoped to better compete with nearby states, bring in a growing industry, and provide paychecks for workers tasked with building the sprawling server farms.

But this legislative session, he’s wondering if those tax breaks are appropriate for all data centers, especially those with the potential to disrupt the state’s clean energy supply.

Particularly concerning to him are plans for a mega data center on the site of the state’s only nuclear power plant. The developer is proposing an arrangement that would give it priority access to electricity generated at the plant, which would mean less carbon-free power for other users.

“That affects our climate goals,” he said. “It’s additional demand of renewable energy that we would have to replace.”

Needleman, co-chair of the Senate Energy and Technology Committee, is now reconsidering details of the state incentive program as he works on legislation to study the impact of data centers on the state’s electric grid. Mistakes now, he said, could lead to “a real crisis.”

Compared with other employers that states compete for, such as automotive plants, data centers hire relatively few workers. Still, states have offered massive subsidies to lure data centers — both for their enormous up-front capital investment and the cachet of bringing in big tech names such as Apple and Facebook. But as the cost of these subsidy programs balloons and data centers proliferate coast to coast, lawmakers in several states are rethinking their posture as they consider how to cope with the growing electricity demand.

From the outside, data centers can resemble ordinary warehouses. But inside, the windowless structures can house acres of computer servers used to power everything from social media to banking. The centers suck up massive amounts of energy to keep data moving and water to keep servers from overheating.

Data centers are the backbone of the increasingly digital world, and they consume a growing share of the nation’s electricity, with no signs of slowing down. The global consultancy McKinsey & Company predicts these operations will double their U.S. electric demands from 17 gigawatts in 2022 to 35 gigawatts by 2030 — enough electricity to power more than 26 million average homes.

Some states, including Maryland and Mississippi, continue to pursue incentives to land new data centers. But in other states, the growth of the industry is raising alarms over the reliability and affordability of local electric grids, and fears that utilities will meet the demand by leaning more heavily on fossil fuel generation rather than renewables.

In South Carolina, lawmakers have started to question whether these massive power users should continue to receive tax breaks and preferential electric rates.

In Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, a legislative study is underway to learn more about how those operations are affecting electric reliability and affordability.

And Georgia lawmakers just passed legislation that would halt the state’s tax incentives for new data centers for two years. Georgia is home to more than 50 data centers, including those supporting AT&T, Google and UPS, according to the state commerce department.

Georgia Republican state Sen. John Albers, a sponsor of the Senate bill, said the significant growth of data centers in his state has helped communities and schools by boosting property tax revenues. But, considering factors such as water and electric use, he said the return on the state’s investment “is not there” and that “initial findings do not support credits from the state level.”

Nationwide, data center subsidies were costing state and local governments about $2 million per job created, according to a 2016 study by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks economic development incentives. That figure has certainly ballooned in recent years, said Kasia Tarczynska, the organization’s senior research analyst, who authored the report.

The Georgia bill now sits on the desk of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whose office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing tech giants including Amazon, Google and Meta, is urging a veto.

Josh Levi, president of the organization, said data center companies are investing billions in new Georgia data centers, making metro Atlanta one of the nation’s biggest industry hubs.

Levi noted that lawmakers in 2022 extended the state’s tax credit program through 2031.

“The abrupt suspension of an incentive that not only has been on the books, but that was extended two years ago, I think signals tremendous uncertainty, not just for the data center industry, but more broadly,” he said.

Levi said the data center industry has been at the forefront of pushing clean energy. As of last year, data center providers and customers accounted for two-thirds of American wind and solar contracts, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence report.

“Fundamentally, data is now the lifeblood of our modern economy,” he said. “Everything that we do in our personal and professional lives really points back to data generation, processing and storage.”

‘Electricity hogs’

In fast-growing South Carolina, lawmakers have pointed to data centers as a major factor in rising electricity demand.

As part of a broader energy bill, the legislature considered a measure that would prevent data centers from receiving discounted power rates.

Republican state Rep. Jay West said inducements such as reduced power rates are appropriate for major, transformational endeavors. He pointed to the BMW factory in Spartanburg, which employs 11,000 people, draws in major suppliers and pumps millions into the state economy.

While data centers boost local property taxes receipts, they don’t do much for the state, he said, and shouldn’t receive preferential rates. And they are being built faster than new energy generation can be added.

“I do not speak for my caucus or the [legislative] body in saying this,” he said, “but I don’t think South Carolina can handle more data centers.”

The House provision on data center utility rates was quickly struck in a Senate committee, the South Carolina Daily Gazette reported.

Lynn Teague, vice president of the League of Women Voters of South Carolina, said that change was made with no public discussion.

Teague, who lobbies the legislature, said South Carolinians, including more than 700,000 people living in poverty, shouldn’t have to pick up the tab for tax or utility breaks for major data center firms.

“We have companies like Google with over $300 billion in revenues a year wanting these folks to subsidize their profit margin at the same time that they’re putting intense pressure on not just our energy, but our water,” she said.

Lawmakers saw data centers as a possible successor to South Carolina’s declining textile industry when they approved the data center incentives in 2012, The State reported at the time. One Republican bill sponsor, then-state Rep. Phyllis Henderson, also cited North Carolina’s success with data center incentives, saying South Carolina was “just losing projects right and left to them.”

But on the Senate floor earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, a Republican, described data centers as “electricity hogs that aren’t really providing a whole lot of jobs.”

‘Rippling effects’

Virginia has been a hub for data centers for decades, touting its proximity to the nation’s capital, inexpensive energy, a robust fiber network and low risk of natural disasters. Now, Virginia lawmakers are increasingly scrutinizing the industry.

That’s in part because data centers have moved into traditionally residential areas, said Republican state Del. Ian Lovejoy, who represents a Northern Virginia district.

He sponsored two pieces of legislation this year affecting data center land use issues. One would have prevented data centers from building too close to parks, schools or neighborhoods; another would have altered land use disclosure rules for developers.

“There’s no way to power the data center inventory that’s being proposed and is likely to be built without substantial increases to the power infrastructure and power generation,” he said. “And that’s going to have rippling effects far away from where the data centers are being sited.”

Aaron Ruby, spokesperson for Dominion Energy in Virginia, the state’s predominant electric provider, said data centers, like other classes of customers, pay for the costs of their electric generation and transmission.

He said the company forecasts consumers’ monthly bills to grow by less than 3% annually over the next 15 years. That increase, he said, is due to the company’s significant investment in renewable energy projects. While Dominion is “all in” on renewables, Ruby said it doesn’t foresee being able to meet increasing demand with only renewables.

“That’s just not physically possible,” he said.

Dominion has pointed to data center growth as a key driver of its increasing electricity demand. In one state filing, the company said Virginia’s data centers had a peak load of almost 2.8 gigawatts in 2022.That was 1.5 times the capacity of the company’s North Anna nuclear plant, which powers about 450,000 homes.

“It is heart-stopping — just the scale at which these things are growing and the power they’re sucking up,” said Kendl Kobbervig, the advocacy and communications director at Clean Virginia, a well-funded advocacy group pushing for renewable energy, campaign finance reform and greater oversight of utilities.

She said the state must address how data centers could undercut its clean energy goals and how the industry is affecting the utility bills of everyday households and small businesses.

Over the past two years, Clean Virginia has tracked more than 40 proposed bills related to data centers.

Most of those efforts stalled this session as some lawmakers elected to wait on the results of a study announced in December by the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

The lack of action frustrated many lawmakers and residents.

“I don’t know exactly what the study is going to say that we don’t already know,” said Democratic state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, who sponsored a bill that would have required data centers to meet certain energy efficiency and clean energy standards to be eligible for the state’s lucrative sales tax exemptions.

“I think we already know that data centers take up a lot of power and present a lot of challenges to our grid.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A woman displays a city-provided debit card she receives monthly through a trial program in Stockton, Calif., in 2019. That year, Stockton launched a basic income experiment that has set off a major expansion of such programs across the country. Research has shown basic income programs can boost employment and health, but GOP lawmakers in some states are pushing back on the concept of free cash (Rich Pedroncelli/The Associated Press).

South Dakota state Sen. John Wiik likes to think of himself as a lookout of sorts — keeping an eye on new laws, programs and ideas brewing across the states.

“I don’t bring a ton of legislation,” said Wiik, a Republican. “The main thing I like to do is try and stay ahead of trends and try and prevent bad things from coming into our state.”

This session, that meant sponsoring successful legislation banning cities or counties from creating basic income programs, which provide direct, regular cash payments to low-income residents to help alleviate poverty.

While Wiik isn’t aware of any local governments publicly floating the idea in South Dakota, he describes such programs as “bureaucrats trying to hand out checks to make sure that your party registration matches whoever signed the checks for the rest of your life.”

The economic gut punch of the pandemic and related assistance efforts such as the expanded child tax credit popularized the idea of directly handing cash to people in need. Advocates say the programs can be administered more efficiently than traditional government assistance programs, and research suggests they increase not only financial stability but also mental and physical health.

Still, Wiik and other Republicans argue handing out no-strings-attached cash disincentivizes work — and having fewer workers available is especially worrisome in a state with the nation’s second-lowest unemployment rate.

South Dakota is among at least six states where GOP officials have looked to ban basic income programs.

The basic income concept has been around for decades, but a 2019 experiment in Stockton, California, set off a major expansion. There, 125 individuals received $500 per month with no strings attached for two years. Independent researchers found the program improved financial stability and health, but concluded that the pandemic dampened those effects.

GOP lawmakers like Wiik fear that even experimental programs could set a dangerous precedent.

“What did Ronald Reagan say, ‘The closest thing to eternal life on this planet is a government program’?” Wiik said. “So, if you get people addicted to just getting a check from the government, it’s going to be really hard to take that away.”

The debate over basic income programs is likely to intensify as blue state lawmakers seek to expand pilot programs. Minnesota, for example, could become the nation’s first to fund a statewide program. But elected officials in red states are working to thwart such efforts — not only by fighting statewide efforts but also by preventing local communities from starting their own basic income programs.

Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin recently vetoed Republican legislation banning basic income programs.

Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Harris County to block a pilot program that would provide $500 per month to 1,900 low-income people in the state’s largest county, home to Houston.

Paxton, a Republican, argued the program is illegal because it violates a state constitutional provision that says local governments cannot grant public money to individuals.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, called Paxton’s move “nothing more than an attack on local government and an attempt to make headlines.”

Meanwhile, several blue states are pushing to expand these programs.

Washington state lawmakers debated a statewide basic income bill during this year’s short session. And Minnesota lawmakers are debating whether to spend $100 million to roll out one of the nation’s first statewide pilot programs.

“We’re definitely seeing that shift from pilot to policy,” said Sukhi Samra, the director of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, which formed after the Stockton experiment.

So far, that organization has helped launch about 60 pilot programs across the country that will provide $250 million in unconditional aid, she said.

Despite pushback in some states, Samra said recent polling commissioned by the group shows broad support of basic income programs. And the programs have shown success in supplementing — not replacing — social safety net programs, she said.

The extra cash gives recipients freedom of choice. People can fix a flat tire, cover school supplies or celebrate a child’s birthday for the first time.

“There’s no social safety net program that allows you to do that.” she said. “ … This is an effective policy that helps our families, and this can radically change the way that we address poverty in this country.”

Basic income experiments

The proliferation of basic income projects has been closely studied by researchers.

Though many feared that free cash would dissuade people from working, that hasn’t been the case, said Sara Kimberlin, the executive director and senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Stanford’s Basic Income Lab has tracked more than 150 basic income pilots across the country. Generally, those offer $500 or $1,000 per month over a short period.

“There isn’t anywhere in the United States where you can live off of $500 a month,” she said. “At the same time, $500 a month really makes a tremendous difference for someone who is living really close to the edge.”

Kimberlin said the research on basic income programs has so far been promising, though it’s unclear how long the benefits may persist once programs conclude. Still, she said, plenty of research shows how critical economic stability in childhood is to stability in adulthood — something both the basic income programs and the pandemic-era child tax credit can address.

Over the past five years, basic income experiments have varied across the country.

Last year, California launched the nation’s first state-funded pilot programs targeting former foster youth.

In Colorado, the Denver Basic Income Project aimed to help homeless individuals. After early successes, the Denver City Council awarded funding late last year to extend that program, which provides up to $1,000 per month to hundreds of participants.

A 2021 pilot launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provided $500 a month over 18 months to 130 single caregivers. Research from the University of Pennsylvania found the Cambridge program increased employment, the ability to cover a $400 emergency expense, and food and housing security among participants.

Children in participating families were more likely to enroll in Advanced Placement courses, earned higher grades and had reduced absenteeism.

“It was really reaffirming to hear that when families are not stressed out, they are able to actually do much better,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, which worked on the project.

Pradhan said basic income programs are part of a national trend in “trust-based philanthropy,” which empowers individuals rather than imposing top-down solutions to fight poverty.

“There is something that I think it does to people’s sense of empowerment, a sense of agency, the freedom that you feel,” she said. “I think that there’s some very important aspects of humanity that are built into these programs.”

While the pilot concluded, the Cambridge City Council committed $22 million in federal pandemic aid toward a second round of funding. Now, nearly 2,000 families earning at or below 250% of the federal poverty level are receiving $500 monthly payments, said Sumbul Siddiqui, a city council member.

Siddiqui, a Democrat, pushed for the original pilot when she was mayor during the pandemic. While she said the program has proven successful, it’s unclear whether the city can find a sustainable source of funding to keep it going long term.

States look to expand pilots

Tomas Vargas Jr. was among the 125 people who benefited from the Stockton, California, basic income program that launched in 2019.

At the time, he heard plenty of criticism from people who said beneficiaries would blow their funds on drugs and alcohol or quit their jobs.

“Off of $500 a month, which amazed me,” said Vargas, who worked part time at UPS.

But he said the cash gave him breathing room. He had felt stuck at his job, but the extra money gave him the freedom to take time off to interview for better jobs.

Unlike other social service programs like food stamps, he didn’t have to worry about losing out if his income went up incrementally. The cash allowed him to be a better father, he said, as well as improved his confidence and mental health.

The experience prompted him to get into the nonprofit sector. Financially stable, he now works at Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

“The person I was five years ago is not the person that I am now,” he said.

Washington state Sen. Claire Wilson, a Democrat, said basic income is a proactive way to disrupt the status quo maintained by other anti-poverty efforts.

“I have a belief that our systems in our country have never been put in place to get people out of them,” she said. “They kept people right where they are.”

Wilson chairs the Human Services Committee, which considered a basic income bill this session that would have created a pilot program to offer 7,500 people a monthly amount equivalent to the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in their area.

The basic income bill didn’t progress during Washington’s short legislative session this year, but Wilson said lawmakers would reconsider the idea next year. While she champions the concept, she said there’s a lot of work to be done convincing skeptics.

In Minnesota, where lawmakers are considering a $100 million statewide basic income pilot program, some Republicans balked at the concept of free cash and its cost to taxpayers.

“Just the cost alone should be a concern,” Republican state Rep. Jon Koznick said during a committee meeting this month.

State Rep. Athena Hollins, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation, acknowledged the hefty request, but said backers would support a scaled-down version and “thought it was really important to get this conversation started.”

Much of the conversation in committee centered on local programs in cities such as Minneapolis and St. Paul. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, a Democrat, told lawmakers the city’s 2020 pilot saw “groundbreaking” results.

After scraping by for years, some families were able to put money into savings for the first time, he said. Families experienced less anxiety and depression. And the pilot disproved the “disparaging tropes” from critics about people living in poverty, the mayor said.

Carter told lawmakers that the complex issue of economic insecurity demands statewide solutions.

“I am well aware that the policy we’re proposing today is a departure from what we’re all used to,” he said. “In fact, that’s one of my favorite things about it.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Nicholas Costanzo, 31, works at the ice cream counter at the Golden Scoop in Overland Park, Kan. While the nonprofit shop could have sought permission to pay its workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities below the federal minimum wage of $7.25, everyone is paid at least $15 per hour. Some states are moving to end subminimum wage pay (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — High-fives, fist-bumps and hugs come with the ice cream at the Golden Scoop.

Tucked into a shopping center in suburban Kansas City, the shop employs 15 people with developmental disabilities. While customers first come for the sweet treats, many are drawn in by the Golden Scoop’s mission and friendly environment.

“It just brings you so much joy,” said Lindsay Krumbholz, who opened the shop with her sister in 2021. “We’ve even had customers that come in and say, ‘I’ve had a bad day, I just had to come to the Golden Scoop.’”

The nonprofit shop could have sought federal approval to pay workers below the $7.25 federal minimum wage. But each of the store’s “Super Scoopers” earns at least $15 per hour plus tips.

They include 32-year-old Jack Murphy, whom customers know by his nickname of “Mayor.” He enjoys connecting with them, the managers and the job coaches who support him during his shifts.

“I love coming to work,” he said. “If I wasn’t working, I would be crying.”

Everything at the Golden Scoop was designed to set workers up for success: The menu has been pared down for simplicity. Employees pre-scoop and package the ice cream to streamline service. Binders with big pictures show step-by-step directions on mixing batches of ice cream. And baked goods are prepared elsewhere.

“They provide customized employment. They’re providing the right accommodations for individuals that work there in order to succeed,” Sara Hart Weir, executive director of the Kansas Council on Developmental Disabilities, said of the shop’s managers.

Weir, who also serves on the board of the Golden Scoop, hopes to see more Kansas employers follow the ice cream shop’s model after a state law this year provided grant money for organizations to pay workers with disabilities above minimum wage. The law, for the first time, also made a special tax credit available only to employers paying at least minimum wage.

Since 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, federal law has allowed some employers to pay people considered less productive because of a physical or mental disability well below the federal minimum wage. While the law was originally intended to provide opportunities for those with little access to work, policymakers in a growing number of states are trying to move away from the practice.

With federal authorization, the employers pay pennies or a few dollars per hour in “sheltered workshops” that contract with companies and hire workers to perform menial tasks such as shredding paper, attaching product labels or packaging consumer goods in group settings that are segregated from mainstream employees.

While most workers have intellectual disabilities that can include cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, federal regulations list blindness, alcoholism and drug addiction as qualifying disabilities for lower pay.

At least 16 states, not including Missouri, have eliminated the subminimum wage, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Others, including Kansas and Minnesota, have agreed on a middle ground: creating funds to help employers make the change themselves.

The move comes at a time of increased scrutiny of Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law authorizing the lower pay, and follows decades of efforts to fully integrate people with developmental disabilities into their communities.

Congress has failed multiple times to ban the practice: A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress introduced such legislation last year, but it has not advanced. It followed the U.S. Department of Labor announcement of a “comprehensive review” of the federal program. In a 2020 report, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found “persistent failures in regulation and oversight” of employers by the federal Labor and Justice departments.

While many disability advocates see moving away from subminimum wage as a basic issue of fairness, others worry that raising pay could affect social service benefits for disabled workers or put some operations employing disabled workers out of business altogether.

A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year found about 120,000 workers were employed under the program, with half earning less than $3.50 an hour.

But the program’s use has been declining for years, as more disabled employees have moved away from sheltered workshops into mainstream work settings such as the Golden Scoop.

In 2010, more than 3,100 employers across the country participated in the federal subminimum wage program. By 2019, that number had dropped by nearly half, with 1,567 employers participating, according to the GAO.

“What this program has become over the decades is a very niche program for individuals with significant intellectual disabilities and mental health issues,” said Kit Brewer, executive director of Project CU, a sheltered workshop in St. Louis that employs about 100 people with developmental disabilities.

Brewer said many workers don’t have the capacity to produce at the rate needed to compete in mainstream work environments, meaning subminimum wage work might be their only option. And, he said, the economics just don’t bear higher pay. Like other workshops, Project CU competes with for-profit companies.

A large share of those who work on shrink-wrapping, labeling and packaging materials at his facility, Brewer said, would struggle with mainstream employment — even those who have the right skill sets.

“They don’t have the comfort level, because of their anxiety, because of their disability, possibly because of some of their behavioral needs,” he said. “And throwing money at a changeover doesn’t fix any of that.”

‘Everything is about choice’

In Minnesota, disability advocates have been working for years to phase out the subminimum wage. Last year, lawmakers embraced most of the recommendations from a state task force. In an omnibus spending bill, they provided funds for technical assistance, case management and training for those employers transitioning to the minimum wage.

Last week, a House committee approved a bill that would abolish the subminimum wage.

Sheltered workshops are as antiquated as the state institutions that formerly housed many people with disabilities, argued Jillian Nelson, a member of the task force and the community resource and policy advocate at the Autism Society of Minnesota.

“We would never do that now,” she said. “We saw when we brought people out of institutions, they thrive. When we brought people out of institutions, our communities became more diverse. … And this is very much the same thing.”

Nelson, who has autism, said she struggled for years with mainstream employment. She said she was not attuned to office politics and bounced around among entry-level jobs, but then found an employer that supported her.

“It’s changed my sense of self-worth. It’s changed my value of myself,” she said. “It’s hard to want more for your life when you’re making $4 an hour. It’s hard to see value in yourself when you’re being told you’re worth $3 an hour.”

But ending the subminimum wage could remove options for some families by causing the closure of workshops, said Minnesota Republican state Sen. Jim Abeler.

“For me, everything is about choice,” said Abeler, who opposes abolishing the subminimum wage. “Nobody should be trapped, and so if they want to be independent, we should try to support them in that.”

Abeler said he supports efforts to help workers with disabilities move to competitive employment — if they choose. But, he said, that’s not an option for everyone.

Of the 3,200 Minnesotans who work for subminimum wages, he said, a few hundred may be able to find mainstream work.

“So at least 2,500 people would find themselves sitting at home, trying to work on a puzzle or watch TV or something,” he said.

Impacts of closures

In the fall of 2021, Colleen Stuart said a change in Pennsylvania state reimbursement rates for job coaching services pushed her to close a sheltered workshop where rural workers had prepared mailings and packaged goods for 25 years.

Employees lost their friendships and paychecks, but the closure also rippled through their families: Some parents said they would need to quit their jobs to take care of their newly unemployed adult children.

“The individuals said, ‘Colleen, you’re breaking up our family,’” she said. “It broke my heart.”

Stuart is the president of the national Coalition for the Preservation of Employment Choice, which advocates for the federal program allowing employers to pay below minimum wage.

She’s also the chief executive of Venango Training and Development Center, which provides mental health and employment services in Northwest Pennsylvania.

While her training center’s 2021 closure of a sheltered workshop was not related to wage issues, she said its effects show what could happen to employees of other workshops if they’re forced to pay above minimum wage.

“To this day, there’s one person out of all the individuals that got employment,” she said. “The rest still don’t have services and are sitting at home. And that is our biggest concern.”

Similar concerns this January helped sink Utah legislation that would have abolished the subminimum wage, said Nate Crippes, the public affairs supervising attorney at the Disability Law Center of Utah. Utah’s 45-day legislative session made it hard to have a substantive debate on the issue, he said.

“I think it needs to be a longer discussion than just, ‘Oh, these places would go out of business and people would have nowhere to go,’” he said. “Because I don’t think that would happen.”

Crippes said day programs and other services for those with disabilities will persist even if sheltered workshops are required to pay minimum wage.

“My struggle is that our minimum wage is pretty low and it is not a living wage to begin with,” he said. “Just getting people to $7.25 shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.”

Georgia state Rep. Scott Hilton views the issue through the lens of his 14-year-old son, who has Down syndrome.

“My goal for my child is for him to be a taxpayer and in return be a net positive, a net benefit back to that system that’s paid so much into his life to make him a happy, healthy, productive citizen,” he said.

Hilton, a Republican, co-sponsored a bill this session that would force the state’s eight remaining workshops to pay the federal minimum wage. The bill was approved by the state House and is pending in the state Senate.

“Work brings joy to a lot of us,” Hilton said. “And that’s what we’d want for any of our kids — meaningful work and a fair wage.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

General Manager Brian Horak walks down an aisle at Post 60 Market in Emerson, Nebraska. Locals opened the market as a cooperative in 2022 after the tiny town lost its only grocery store. Lawmakers in Nebraska and other states are seeking to provide loans and grants to keep small rural markets open (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

EMERSON, Neb. — Corliss Hassler rushes in the front door of Post 60 Market and heads straight for the produce case.

“I’m back,” she announces.

It’s around lunchtime, but it’s already her second trip in today — this time, she’s picking up a few items for the Friday fish fry at the local Catholic church.

Hassler is a regular customer and investor in the small grocery store, opened in 2022 as a cooperative. The store provides convenience, sure: It’s the only place in town to buy fresh fruits, vegetables and meats. But it’s also a social hub for the northeast Nebraska town of Emerson, population 891.

“The store is the lifeblood of the community,” Hassler said. “We have to keep our store, we have to keep our schools, we have to keep our churches — and it’s all a struggle right now.”

The market opened four years after the closure of the town’s only grocery store. Some 110 community members bought shares, which funded the transformation of a shuttered American Legion post into a brightly lit store packed with fresh and packaged foods.

Preserving grocery stores has been a perennial challenge for rural communities. Small, often declining populations make it tough to turn a profit in an industry known for its razor-thin margins. Increased competition from online retailers, the onslaught of chains such as Dollar General stores and an aging lineup of independent grocers have only made things tougher.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has tracked the decline of rural grocery stores.

By 2015, USDA research showed a total of 44 counties had no grocery store at all — all but four of the counties were rural.

In Kansas, 1 in 5 rural stores closed between 2008 and 2018, according to the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University. No new store has opened in half of the 105 communities that lost grocers over that time.

Proposed legislation at Nebraska’s capitol in Lincoln could provide some relief for stores like Post 60 Market.

If passed, the new law would provide grants and loans for small grocers. It’s among several legislative efforts in the region that aim to tackle the complex problem. In neighboring Kansas and Iowa, lawmakers have introduced bills with similar goals, following the lead of states — including Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota and Oklahoma — that have enacted laws setting up special funds to boost rural grocery stores.

“We’re in a global economy and Amazon’s dominating, but that doesn’t mean we should surrender,” said Kansas state Sen. Rob Olson, a Republican.

For two years in a row, Olson has introduced bills that would provide tax incentives for the development of rural grocery stores. A native of rural Kansas who now represents a suburban Kansas City district, Olson said lawmakers should be investing in grocery stores, broadband and housing to improve rural communities.

“If we think about it and we’re smart about it, there’s plenty of opportunities — all throughout the Midwest especially — to grow these economies,” he said.

The pandemic underscored both the importance and fragility of rural grocery stores, said Jillian Linster, interim policy director at the nonprofit Center for Rural Affairs.

“After the pandemic, we have seen a lot of these local grocery stores just struggling to keep the doors open with all the economic and workforce challenges we face in the current economy and the competition from the big-box retailers,” she said.

Based in Lyons, Nebraska, the center has backed bills in both Nebraska and Iowa this session to provide small grants or loans to grocery stores with fewer than 25 employees in underserved communities. The hope is that providing money to replace a broken freezer or leaky roof could make the difference in keeping stores open.

Aside from preserving fresh food access, Linster said, grocery stores serve a wider social role.

“It’s a place where you see your neighbors, where your teenagers get their first job, where there’s a bulletin board with help wanted and things for sale,” she said. “So it’s a really important part of the social infrastructure in our small rural towns.”

‘A service to the community’

Brian Horak knows his customers.

The general manager of Post 60 Market, he knows the busy mom who runs to the frozen foods aisle to find something for dinner that night. He knows the families that only load up their carts on paydays. And he knows when he should check up on someone who hasn’t been in for an unusually long stretch.

Emerson sits at the convergence of three counties, including one of Nebraska’s poorest.

The market can’t compete with the prices of mega retailers like Walmart. But Horak tries to at least beat the costs found at the regional grocery store chain 20 miles away and loads the shelves with plenty of generic options.

Still, some customers will pay with loose change. Others drop in to rummage through the bin of discounted items nearing their expiration dates.

Remote stores like this can struggle to secure vendors. No bakers will deliver fresh bread here, so all the sandwich bread, buns and cupcakes come in frozen. And the store only gets one delivery of fresh food every Wednesday.

“By Tuesday, the bananas start to look pretty sketchy,” Horak said.

But whatever it lacks in variety, the store makes up for in service. Horak will special order just about anything if customers ask.

On a back shelf, he’s set aside a case of Rice-A-Roni for one man, a pack of small Pepsi bottles for a woman in a nursing home and a case of wet cat food for a woman who feeds strays. One man has a standing order for a case of pickled beets every week.

There have been some months when Horak wasn’t sure Post 60 Market’s doors would remain open.

But things changed for the better in January, when a storm blanketed the region with record snow. The two-lane roads connecting Emerson to Sioux City were impassable for days, pushing many locals to try or rediscover Post 60 Market.

“It was kind of a wake-up call,” he said. “People were so happy the grocery store was here.”

The pending legislation could help with a litany of items on the market’s to-do list: a leaky basement, the rubber gaskets that need replacing on the produce cooler — not to mention the dream of a room to butcher fresh cuts of meat.

Named after the town’s former legion post, the co-op sold common shares for $500 and preferred shares for $1,000. While shareholders could one day see dividends, their investments were in reality more like contributions.

Nathan Mueller, who leads the co-op board, said the store just aims to break even.

“At its heart, this is a business,” he said. “But really, the business is being a service to the community.”

Nebraska state Sen. Teresa Ibach said rural grocery stores, whether they’re for-profit, cooperatives or nonprofits, deserve the state’s support.

“I think the trade-off is, if you’re willing to invest in small local communities, we are willing to invest in you.”

A Republican, Ibach sponsored the legislation that would set aside $4 million over two fiscal years for rural grocers. While the legislation got favorable reviews during its January hearing, Ibach was unsure whether it would advance out of committee.

“It’s got legs and it’s got substance and I hope it does, but we’re halfway through the session already,” she said. “And so who knows what will make it to the floor.”

If approved, the measure could help Greg’s Market in Exeter, Nebraska, about 50 miles west of Lincoln. The store has “a honey-do list a mile long,” said Mitchell Schlegelmilch, who leads the board overseeing its operation.

Just before he heard about the legislation, Schlegelmilch said, a freezer sensor failed, costing some $2,500 in spoiled inventory.

“It was a real punch in the gut,” he told lawmakers at the January hearing. “It just took our breath away.”

Investors aren’t looking to make money or even get their money back, Schlegelmilch said in an interview. Greg’s Market just aims to break even. So something as seemingly small as the failed sensor could pose an existential threat.

The legislation “gave me a sense of relief that maybe there is hope,” he said.

Investing in grocery stores

Kathryn Draeger says rural communities need more than just dollar stores and gas stations.

“We need places where you can buy a kiwi, an onion, potato, beets,” she said.

The director of regional sustainable development partnerships at the University of Minnesota, Draeger works with grocery stores across the state. Aside from the health benefits of fresh food, she said, rural stores are key to building more resilient supply chains since they can procure products from a variety of small vendors.

Draeger advocated for a state program to improve healthy food access that began offering grants to rural and urban stores in 2017. Last year, the state agriculture department funded 15 projects at a cost of $426,862 — though nearly five times as much was requested.

“I believe every rural grocery store we lose is at our own peril,” Draeger said. “There’s so much public good in these small private businesses. That is why this public investment in this private sector is really important. “

Draeger recalled one Minnesota grocer who had to choose between fixing her broken front tooth or her store’s leaky roof.

“She chose the roof,” Draeger said. “So she worked at the cash register at the store she owned without a tooth for over a year.”

Just as important as money, though, is leadership, said North Dakota Democratic state Sen. Kathy Hogan. She co-sponsored a new law last year that made $1 million available to help preserve rural grocery stores. That money will only help if communities have strong leaders willing to work together, she said.

“Sometimes people think money is the answer to everything,” she said. “The secret of the success of this is not so much money but local organization.”

Republican state Sen. Janne Myrdal, another co-sponsor, said the legislation was inspired by the work of grocery stores, communities and schools in the northeast corner of the state. After struggling to find vendors willing to make small deliveries to remote areas, three stores formed a cooperative that can demand more inventory and better prices from suppliers — benefiting consumers, schools and businesses.

“As a conservative, I love seeing that happen,” Myrdal said.

The legislation required a local match from organizers and aims to pull multiple retailers and community organizations together to help stabilize deliveries and costs.

“I don’t believe in just handing out money from the government,” Myrdal said. “It has to rise from the bottom up.”

A town missing its ‘centerpiece’

People like to say the town of Malvern, Iowa, punches above its weight.

Though it’s home to fewer than 1,300 people, the town touts miles of bicycle trails, a community garden and public art sculptures. On Main Street: two restaurants, medical clinics, a bank, a pharmacy and even a fitness center.

But a fenced-in gaping hole is an obvious reminder of what’s missing: the town’s staple grocery store, lost in a 2021 fire.

Tom Mulholland was the fourth-generation owner of Mulholland Grocery, which traces its history to the 1870s.

Since the fire, the community has rallied around him. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, funded a documentary short film about the effort to rebuild the grocery store last year.

But even with an Oscar-winning documentarian as the director and scores of headlines, Mulholland has struggled. He’s faced problems with insurance, finances and construction headaches that set the rebuild back.

When the store was open, it was a hub of activity. People would drive long distances to buy from his meat counter. And in times of crisis, such as a recent flood in the area, customers would hand him cash, knowing he’d get it to the folks who needed it most.

“It’s those little things about being human and caring about your community and others that add up,” he said.

Mulholland, 63, could have walked away from the store. But he said it’s too important to the community — and his family. The morning after the fire, he wrote an apology to his ancestors on Facebook.

In an interview, he said: “My great-grandfather and my grandfather, everybody put in so many decades of sweat and tears and frustration and joy. And on my watch, it disappeared.”

After two years, people around town have grown weary of waiting for a store.

“In here it’s a big topic of conversation,” said Janella May, who owns C&M’s Cafe with her husband.

It’s a Main Street institution known for its ice cream and Cheeseburger Saturdays — $4.99 for a burger and fries. Weekday mornings, the place is home to a coffee klatch — a few older men around town have their own key to get in before the place opens.

“We need it here,” she said of the grocery store. “It’s important.”

Without Mulholland Grocery, Malvern residents must drive 15 minutes to reach another small-town grocery store or a half-hour to reach supermarket chains over near Omaha.

The absence of the grocery store is a sharp contrast to Malvern’s otherwise encouraging trajectory.

Some $40 million worth of new projects are in the works in the town, including public school renovations, a new subdivision and a new early education center.

“We’re a growing town,” said Jay Burdic, the president of Malvern Bank.

The third generation of his family to own the bank, Burdic is bullish on the community’s future.

But every day brings a reminder of what’s missing: His desk overlooks Main Street, directly across from the empty grocery store lot.

“It was the centerpiece of our Main Street,” he said. “And now it’s just a hole in the ground.”

This story was produced by Stateline, a States Newsroom affiliate.

A rendering of the Royals proposed downtown ballpark (image submitted).

As sports stadiums built in the 1990s show their age, many professional sports teams are looking for new facilities — and public money to pay for them.

“We are just in the heating up phase of the next stadium construction wave,” said J.C. Bradbury, a Kennesaw State University economics professor who has researched the issue. “That’s part of the reason why you’re seeing a lot more stadiums happen.”

Across the country, pro sports teams are gearing up to improve or build new stadiums and arenas.

In Chicago, both the NFL’s Bears and the MLB’s White Sox are exploring moves. Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Oakland Athletics are all working toward new or improved stadiums. So are the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Clippers.

In Missouri, an April 2 ballot measure in Jackson County would authorize a new 3/8th-cent sales for 40 years to subsidize construction costs for a ballpark in the East Crossroads district of greater downtown Kansas City and improvements at Arrowhead Stadium in Independence.

Elected leaders continue to shower tax revenues on stadium and arena projects with the aim of recruiting or keeping teams and boosting local economies. But public debate is growing, as decades of research shows that taxpayers don’t see a positive return on their investment.

“This is without exception,” Bradbury said. “It’s really across the board that these are really poor public investments.”

That hasn’t stopped the deals from getting larger. Adjusted for inflation, stadium subsidies have risen to a median of about $500 million from a 2010 median of $350 million, Bradbury said.

In 2022, New York officials approved a record $850 million subsidy to finance a new stadium for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

Then, last April, the Tennessee Titans landed more than $1.2 billion in state and local funding for a new professional football stadium in Nashville.

The momentum is only growing, with governments benefiting from pandemic aid and strong economies, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written extensively about stadium subsidies.

“Stadium deals tend to beget other stadium deals,” he said. “When the Bills got their money from New York, that made it easier for the Titans to get their money from Tennessee.”

Super Bowl and schools

Las Vegas just hosted Nevada’s first Super Bowl at Allegiant Stadium, which was supported by a $750 million public subsidy in 2016 to lure the Raiders from Oakland, California. Now, Oakland’s baseball team, commonly called the A’s, is seeking its own stadium on the Las Vegas Strip.

But Nevada teachers are challenging a 2023 law authorizing up to $380 million of public funds to relocate the A’s to Las Vegas.

A political action committee backed by the Nevada State Education Association filed a lawsuit earlier this month challenging the law’s constitutionality. The group also is pushing for a ballot initiative that would allow voters to veto a portion of the public funding.

“These are billionaires, right? They could do it themselves if they wanted to,” said Alexander Marks, director of strategy for the teachers union.

“There’s a lot of folks who at the end of the day want to see their government dollars going towards responsible things like public education, roads and hospitals,” he said. “And any dollar we take away from that and put into a stadium is a misguided use of that dollar.”

Nevada ranked 48th in per-pupil education funding, according to the National Education Association’s 2022 rankings. The same report ranks the state’s student-to-teacher ratio as the largest in the nation.

Marks said state leaders frequently tell educators there isn’t enough funding available to tackle issues such as classroom sizes. He pointed out that Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed legislation last year that would have continued funding a universal free lunch program in schools.

“Where are our state’s priorities?” Marks said. “The stadium is great but the school lunch bill has to get vetoed? We don’t quite understand that.”

Jeremy Aguero, a Nevada consultant hired by the Raiders and the A’s to work on the football and baseball stadium projects, said the NFL stadium already is a mathematical winner. A 2023 audit of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority showed a dedicated hotel tax was collecting more money than was needed for debt payments on Allegiant Stadium.

And he said bringing in major sports events has boosted state revenues.

Aguero noted that Nevada’s legislature last year passed a record budget for K-12 education for fiscal year 2025, increasing per-pupil funding by more than 25%.

“So from that standpoint, our schools have more money because of Allegiant Stadium,” Aguero said. “Our police and firefighters have more money because of Allegiant Stadium. Our state and local governments — for everything from social service to higher education — have more because of major events that are taking place in major event centers.”

A matter of economics, identity

While public subsidy amounts are growing larger in terms of dollars, they are actually growing smaller as a share of overall stadium and arena costs, said Judith Grant Long, an associate professor of sports management and urban planning at the University of Michigan who has studied the issue.

Team owners and developers are increasingly pitching stadiums and arenas as wider developments that include entertainment, apartments and hotels. And elected officials are increasingly dedicating public funding toward expenses such as infrastructure and transportation, which theoretically can deliver a larger community benefit than just a venue.

That dynamic, though, can put wealthy team owners in the powerful position of holding some of the most valuable real estate in their markets.

Long said professional sports remain a small sliver of the overall economy. And mounds of peer-reviewed academic research shows that stadium and arena investments cost more than their economic benefits.

“The prevailing economic wisdom is that, generally speaking, the economic impact, measured in jobs and taxes, does not cover the average public investment,” Long said.

But these decisions aren’t always about pure arithmetic.

Maintaining a major sports franchise is a point of civic pride for many leaders, particularly in smaller markets.

Oklahoma City Republican Mayor David Holt said the city’s economy and identity has transformed since the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics relocated there in 2008 and changed the team name to the Thunder.

“Oklahoma City was nowhere on anybody’s radar until we got the Thunder,” Holt said. “Our identity as a big-league city has become so intrinsic to how we see ourselves and so much a part of our momentum these last few decades.”

Oklahoma City is among only a few cities outside of the nation’s top 40 media markets with an NBA, MLB or NFL team, Holt said.

That’s why he strongly supported an initiative last year to extend a one-cent sales tax to fund a new publicly owned, $900 million arena for the Thunder. The arena will cost taxpayers about $1 billion once interest costs are factored in, the mayor said. The team has committed $50 million to the project, about 5% of the public commitment.

The NBA franchise is worth more than $3 billion, according to Forbes. Its seven-member ownership group is led by Clay Bennett, a wealthy venture capitalist.

In December, more than 70% of voters approved the tax extension, ensuring the team’s presence in Oklahoma City until 2050.

Holt said not building the new arena — and potentially having the Thunder leave the city — would have been a gut punch not seen in the area since the oil bust of the 1980s.

Wisconsin state Rep. Rob Brooks, a Republican, acknowledged the difficulty in assessing the true value of a pro sports team.

Last year, as lawmakers considered legislation to fund upgrades at the Milwaukee Brewers’ American Family Field, he focused on the tangibles, particularly how much the team and visiting teams contribute to state income taxes.

“I really just tied it to the tangible stuff … because everything else is hard to measure,” he said.

Legislation sponsored by Brooks made about $500 million in state funds available to the stadium project, which aims to keep the team put until 2050. But that cost will be funded specifically by the team’s income tax collections, Brooks said.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed the legislation in December.

“It just made sense that as long as we have a facility that has more than half of its useful life left, let’s maximize our investment that we’ve already made,” Brooks said. “Had we been making an entirely new investment, that would have been a whole different argument.”

A flurry of stadium deals

Justin Wilson, the Democratic mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, is well aware of the studies criticizing stadium and arena deals.

But he thinks local taxpayers are well protected in the proposed legislative deal to move the NBA’s Wizards and the NHL’s Capitals to his city from downtown Washington, D.C.

A plan championed by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin calls for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns both teams, to invest $400 million upfront and pay ongoing lease payments to a new stadium authority. Wilson noted that the public portion of the funding will come from user fees and taxes collected within the new arena development — not from taxpayers across the city or state.

“That was one of the things that we focused on from the beginning, really learning from the litany of bad sports arena and sports stadium deals that are all around the country,” Wilson said.

But the plan faces political opposition — from leaders in D.C. and some lawmakers in Richmond. While legislation backed by Youngkin made it through the state House last week, it faced a setback in the state Senate, where a key committee leader said the bill was “not ready for prime time,” The Associated Press reported.

The effort also faces organized opposition in Northern Virginia, where residents worry about the subsidy and local complications such as traffic and mass transit.

Indiana Democratic state Rep. Earl Harris Jr. wants to lure the NFL’s Chicago Bears, who are aiming to leave longtime home Soldier Field, to northwest Indiana. Harris filed a bill that would create a new taxpayer-funded sports development commission charged with attracting a pro sports team to the area.

“Maybe we can draw them over,” Harris said. “And if we can’t draw them over, maybe we can bring some attention to the area and attract another team.”

The Bears, a team valued at over $6 billion, purchased and demolished hundreds of acres of property in the Illinois suburb of Arlington Heights last year. But recently the team has shifted its focus to lakefront property in Chicago.

“The timeline has to be in 2024,” Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren told WGN-TV last week. “In a perfect world, I would like to have clarity in this legislative session that is coming up.”

In Indiana, the legislation sponsored by Harris didn’t make it out of committee. But he said there’s still interest from state and local leaders in luring a professional team to northwest Indiana.

“I’m actually still having people reach out to me,” he said. “They want to help and support this initiative. So I will bring this back next year.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Brownie Wilson kneels next to a decommissioned irrigation well outside Moscow, Kan., as part of the Kansas Geological Survey’s efforts to measure the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer. Groundwater has been declining for decades because of irrigation in the eight states that rely on the aquifer (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

MOSCOW, Kansas — Brownie Wilson pulls off a remote dirt road right through a steep ditch and onto a farmer’s field.

He hops out of his white Silverado pickup, mud covering nearly all of it except the Kansas Geological Survey logo stuck on the side with electrical tape. Dry cornstalks crunch under his work boots as he makes his way to a decommissioned irrigation well.

He unspools a steel highway tape measure a few feet at a time and feeds it into the well until gravity takes over. He keeps a thumb on it to control the speed.

How much of the tape comes out wet lets him calculate how much water has been lost here.

Wilson crisscrosses western Kansas every January to measure wells and track the rapid decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, which contains the nation’s largest underground store of fresh water.

Last year, some wells had dropped 10 feet or more because of the severe 2022 drought. But this year, they stayed about the same or dropped a couple feet. Some of these wells have dropped more than 100 feet since Wilson started working for the agency in 2001, he said.

“Some of our issues looking forward look gargantuan,” Wilson said. “But I do think we can peck away at it and make some headway.”

The Ogallala Aquifer, the underground rock and sediment formation that spans eight states from South Dakota to the Texas panhandle, is the only reliable water source for some parts of the region. But for decades, states have allowed farmers to overpump groundwater to irrigate corn and other crops that would otherwise struggle on the arid High Plains.

Now, the disappearing water is threatening more than just agriculture. Rural communities are facing dire futures where water is no longer a certainty. Across the Ogallala, small towns and cities built around agriculture are facing a twisted threat: The very industry that made their communities might just eradicate them.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly acknowledges some communities are just a generation away from running out of water. But she said there’s still time to act.

“If they do nothing, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences,” Kelly said in an interview.

Today, the aquifer supports 20% of the nation’s wheat, corn, cotton and cattle production and represents 30% of all water used for irrigation in the United States.

Depletion is forcing aquifer-dependent communities across the region to dig deeper wells, purchase expensive water rights from farmers, build pipelines and recycle their water supplies in new ways to save every drop possible.

Since the mid-20th century, when large-scale irrigation began, water levels in the stretches of the Ogallala underlying Kansas have dropped an average 28.2 feet farther below the surface, far worse than the eight-state average of 16.8 feet.

Water levels in Texas, where the Ogallala runs under the state’s panhandle, have dropped 44 feet. New Mexico has seen a 19.1-foot decline.

In Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming, the water level has declined less than the eight-state average, while in South Dakota it has risen.

While the Ogallala Aquifer presents distinct circumstances, tensions over groundwater are growing across the country, said climate scientist and author Peter Gleick, who founded the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank.

“You’re not alone,” Gleick told Kansas irrigators and policymakers at the Governor’s Conference on Water, held in November in Manhattan, Kansas. “A lot of the issues that you’re dealing with in Kansas, they’re dealing with in Arizona, and the Colorado [River] basin.”

Without drastic measures, some communities may not survive.

“I think, without a doubt, we will see some communities dry up,” Gleick said in an interview. “We’ve seen that historically, where communities outgrow a natural resource or lose a natural resource and people have to move to abandon their homes.”

‘We’re running out of water’

When Micheal Shannon got his start in local government over 40 years ago, water supplies were not top of mind.

Those days are gone.

“We’re running out of water,” said Shannon, the interim city manager in Guymon, Oklahoma. “We’re pumping our maximum. And the water levels keep coming down.”

The largest city in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Guymon relies on 18 wells to draw water from the Ogallala. But dropping water levels have forced the city of about 13,000 to explore new wells outside of town.

The city has already committed some $4.5 million to study and drill new wells, but there’s no guarantee the wells will produce a reliable water supply.

“There’s always that what if,” he said. “There could not be any water.”

The city’s largest water user and employer is a massive pork plant that slaughters and processes more than 20,000 hogs per day. The plant has voluntarily reduced water usage by nearly half during times of shortened supply.

Shannon said the city, industry and agricultural producers must work together.

“We all still want to be here the next 35, 40 years,” he said. “We know farmers are going to have to produce ag products. And the citizens of Guymon are going to have to have water.”

More than 200 miles away, several New Mexico communities are banking on more drastic measures.

A new pipeline, expected to cost more than $800 million, will bring water from the Canadian River’s Ute Reservoir to four municipalities and Cannon Air Force Base.

“This is our future, no doubt about it,” said Orlando Ortega, administrator of the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority. “Without this project, none of these communities could exist for very long.”

The pipeline is being funded largely by the federal government, though four participating communities have been paying dues to the water authority for years. Officials aim to have the pipeline operational by the end of the decade.

Even so, communities will still need to get more aggressive about conserving water, said Michael Morris, who leads the water authority board and is mayor of Clovis, one of its member communities.

Morris is active in agricultural efforts to decrease pumping — such as conservation programs in the region that pay producers to stop pumping. And the city is working to expand water recycling efforts.

But he said the situation is even more dire than locals realize. Few know how close Clovis has come to seeing its water demand outpace the underground supply.

“So is there another option?” he said. “No.”

Decades of state inaction

In Kansas, the Ogallala Aquifer supplies 70% to 80% of the water residents use each day. But for decades, the state’s regulation of water benefited its largest user and its largest industry: agriculture.

The once-abundant water allowed farmers to grow cheap cattle feed, attracting the feedlots, and increasingly, dairy farms, that dot southwest Kansas.

But that feed is cheap, partly because — aside from the fuel costs associated with running a well — the water is free.

A report commissioned by the Kansas legislature in 1955 warned of a future without it.

“Ground-water mining is a serious problem,” the report says.

After the grave 1955 warning, however, the state legislature only made it easier to pump the water, according to Burke Griggs, a water law professor at Washburn University in Topeka.

Griggs, formerly a water lawyer for the state, criticized Kansas lawmakers’ decadeslong posture that depletion would best be solved locally. He said it is a stance held by every governor since the 1980s.

“They want it to be voluntary. And they want it to be cooperative. They want to have local-based solutions,” Griggs said. “These are the catchwords you hear. None of them have achieved much.”

Kelly follows the same line. The second-term governor recently signed a law mandating more reporting and planning from groundwater management districts and created a new subcabinet to coordinate water issues across agencies. But she hasn’t wavered from her position that water conservation efforts are most effective when they are voluntary.

“Things are more likely to work out in the long run and succeed if there is local buy-in, and local commitment and the idea is generated locally — rather than the state wielding that heavy hammer,” Kelly said.

But even some farmers want the state to step in, water policy watchers say.

“Many families who are trying to make a living from farming, and who would like to keep farming on their own land, are just waiting for the state to step in and help them fix this. Most people agree that we need fair, enforceable and transparent rules to get this turned around,” said Lucas Bessire, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma who grew up in southwest Kansas.

Voluntary efforts in action

For the first time since their father dug an irrigation well in the dusty sandhills of southwest Kansas more than 50 years ago, Gina and Marc Gigot’s farm isn’t growing corn.

The sibling farmers are trying to preserve the precious water below their land outside Garden City.

For decades, the Gigot family has benefited from drawing groundwater to the surface to grow bright green circles of crops where the sandy soil is otherwise so dusty it might blow away.

As Marc’s pickup bumps along the farm’s private roads, he and Gina point to the electric systems and water pipes laid by their father. Some of the massive center pivot systems use the same parts he installed 50 years ago.

To extend the life of the aquifer, the siblings are opting for fewer water-intensive crops and grazing cattle. The farm has historically been among Kansas’ largest water users, irrigating 9,000 acres, but they’ve cut their usage in recent years and committed to another 10 years of voluntary water conservation.

In exchange, they get more flexibility in how they use the water. As long as they hit their five-year goal, they can pump more water in drought years.

Beyond that, they’re partnering with Garden City, the largest city in southwest Kansas and a major agricultural hub. Garden City’s municipal water wells sit right next door to the Gigot farm, which can directly impact the city’s ability to supply drinking water.

To keep more water underground, Garden City will soon divert treated wastewater to the Gigot farm — rather than continuing to dump it into the bone-dry bed of the Arkansas River. That will allow the farm to turn off some wells.

“It’s not really a situation where either the city gets what they need or the irrigators get what they need. It is way more symbiotic,” said Fred Jones, who oversees Garden City’s water.

In northwest Kansas, a group of farmers voluntarily cut their water usage by 20% through a five-year conservation program with the state. They switched from corn to wheat or grain sorghum and used irrigation more strategically. Farmers in the area exceeded their goal and cut use, on average, 23.1% over the initial five-year period and slowed the decline of the aquifer from 2 feet per year to less than half a foot.

Still, the Gigots said the state must force other producers to cut back.

Even Kansas Farm Bureau President Joe Newland said he’s fearful that voluntary efforts aren’t enough.

Newland, a former Kansas Republican legislator, offered an amendment in 2022 that effectively sank a massive bill designed to make the aquifer a higher priority in state government, impose more requirements on local groundwater officials, and give communities a greater voice in decisions over water.

In Kansas, the agricultural industry, led in part by Newland, has largely pushed back against aggressive water restrictions, instead calling for voluntary conservation measures. But Newland worries that those voluntary measures haven’t saved enough water, which could eventually push the state to hand down strict mandates.

“I’m always hopeful and prayerful that people realize just how important it is that we’re doing this on a voluntary basis and not ever have to go through a mandatory situation,” he said. “But that’s going to be determined in the near future how this works, because, as I said, we don’t have decades to fix this problem.”

Kansas towns take the lead

Few places evoke the Old West like Dodge City, where Wyatt Earp patrolled the lawless streets rife with gambling, saloons and shootouts.

Today, the city proudly displays remnants of those days at the Boot Hill Museum, which contains a reproduction of the legendary Long Branch Saloon and an Old West photo booth for visitors.

But the former frontier outpost has embraced some of the state’s most progressive water strategies.

“We were recycling before recycling was cool,” said City Manager Nick Hernandez, who highlighted water reuse efforts that began in the 1980s.

Effluent from one of the city’s wastewater treatment plants keeps a golf course green. Another plant sends about 1.8 billion gallons of treated wastewater to irrigate 3,000 acres of crops at a nearby farm, reducing the need for aquifer pumping.

Another project aims to directly recharge the aquifer with treated wastewater. That will not only help protect the city’s quantity of water, but also prevent contamination from agricultural runoff like nitrates by keeping the hydraulic pressure up in city wells, he said.

That project is expected to cost $60 million. Dodge City, home to about 28,000 people, is seeking federal and state assistance for the effort. But even without grants, Hernandez said that would prove cheaper than buying water rights and digging new wells.

All those projects are building toward treating the city’s sewage directly into drinkable water — still an emerging idea in most parts of the country. That would allow the city to decrease demand on groundwater by continually reusing its water.

“We all have a concern about the stability of the aquifer because that’s our lifeline,” said Ray Slattery, the city’s director of engineering services. “But I feel very good about where the city is, and what we’ve done in the past to conserve. We knew it was important and so we took steps way before it became a problem.”

Communities such as Dodge City offer a glimpse into the future of municipal water supplies in the region, said state Rep. Jim Minnix, a Republican who represents part of western Kansas and leads the House Water Committee.

Minnix, who raises cattle and farms both dryland and irrigated crops, said cities and farms alike must adapt. Cities need to continue embracing water recycling efforts, reduce lawn watering and encourage more efficient appliances. Farmers, he said, should embrace new technologies such as more efficient irrigation systems and drought-resistant crops.

“You’d be amazed at the water quantity that’s actually being saved out there from what had been done 40, 50 years ago,” he said. “As a farmer myself, I know a lot of little things add up to something that’s really worthwhile. And to maintain our aquifer and our economy out here is absolutely worthwhile.”

But the way Connie Owen, director of the Kansas Water Office, sees it, change is coming to both agricultural and municipal water users one way or another.

“If we don’t adapt to different behaviors, it will run dry,” she said. “And that will cause the economic devastation that everyone fears with restrictions.”

Wastewater is forced through microscopic holes in tightly wrapped membranes wound in these fiberglass vessels during the reverse osmosis stage of purification at Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System. Other communities around the state and country may soon emulate the Southern California county’s practice of recycling all of its wastewater (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline).

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — After an Orange County resident flushes her toilet, the water flows through the Southern California community’s sewer system, meanders its way to the sanitation plant, has its solids removed, is piped to a wastewater recycling facility next door and undergoes three different purification processes until it is clean enough to drink.

“It tastes like water,” said Mehul Patel, executive director of operations for the Orange County Water District’s project, after taking a gulp from a clear plastic cup at the sampling station, as he stood outside the final purification process facility on a warm afternoon earlier this month.

“It’s just like any other water, but it’s gone through a lot,” he said. “People shouldn’t judge where it came from, but where it is now.”

No large community in the U.S., not even Orange County, is taking water from toilets and transforming it directly into clean drinking water right now. But Patel’s demonstration might offer a glimpse of the future, as states and communities across the country design new plants that will do just that, giving communities more control over their water supply as the climate gets drier.

The idea is still new in many parts of the country. And officials face some pushback from skeptics concerned about the high costs of advanced purification systems and from a public not used to the idea of drinking what was once their own waste.

Every day, Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System, known to the locals as GWRS, purifies 130 million gallons of wastewater coming from 2.5 million residents. It’s the world’s largest wastewater recycling plant, and the first in the United States to recycle every ounce of its county’s wastewater. This system of pipes, purifiers and chemical reactions has become a required visit for any water official looking to adopt a similar program in another state.

Patel expects more visitors now that California’s top water officials are slated to greenlight new rules later this month that would allow counties to purify their wastewater and inject it immediately into the drinking water supply. If approved, as expected, regulations would go into effect in July.

Currently, all of Orange County’s recycled wastewater is used to replenish its groundwater aquifer and protect it from seawater intrusion. The water is later pumped out and purified once again to drinking water standards and distributed throughout the county. There are no plans to change this two-part process anytime soon.

Some Golden State communities do the same; others use their recycled wastewater to irrigate fields, water parks or merely dump it into the Pacific Ocean.

But as the state faces a drier future in which the amount of water coming from the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains may not be reliable, top water officials say the state needs more sources of drinking water.

“We spend a lot of money and energy moving water from different parts of the state to Southern California, where it’s used once and dumped in the ocean,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the California State Water Resources Control Board. “That’s maybe not the smartest way to deal with a resiliency question.”

Communities across the country, even beyond the increasingly arid West, have been using recycled wastewater to shore up water supplies drained by larger populations, over-pumped groundwater aquifers, hotter summers and less precipitation.

Facilities are pumping out millions of gallons of recycled wastewater in Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Regulators in Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Kansas are considering how to use it. In Arizona, for example, some cities use recycled wastewater to replenish dormant rivers and brew beer; others use it to refill underground aquifers, cool factories or keep parks and golf courses green. But rarely has wastewater gone directly into the drinking water supply.

Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, expects that in two decades at least half of states will adopt wastewater recycling to meet the hydrological demands of a hotter, drier climate.

“Places you wouldn’t normally think of as dry or water-stressed at all are starting to build these plants,” he said. “And that’s only going to accelerate.

“Anywhere that’s primarily reliant on groundwater is going to have water reuse in their future.”

How it works

The town of Castle Rock, Colorado, lies in a valley east of the Rocky Mountains.

Directly recycling wastewater into drinking water will eventually allow residents to hold onto more of their precious water supply. Rather than continuing to send treated wastewater into East Plum Creek, where volumes can be lost to evaporation, the town will be able to recycle its municipal water over and over at a water treatment plant that was upgraded in 2021.

“We keep more of a closed loop and we bring that water directly back,” said Mark Marlowe, director of Castle Rock Water, of the incoming system.

While the plant already has the capability, it’s not sending treated wastewater directly to customers yet; Marlowe says it will likely take three to five years to meet new regulations on potable reuse announced by the state in January. The rules include a full year of water quality monitoring and a community awareness campaign before implementation.

While Castle Rock will spend more to comply with those regulations, it also expects to save money on energy costs by reducing the distance water must be moved. And the city’s sewage will actually provide more predictable water quality, Marlowe said. The quality of creek water can vary wildly as salt runs off in the winters or as storms increase sediments in the water.

“There is no new water,” Marlowe said. “It’s really just a question of whether the water is being recycled through natural processes or through manmade engineering solutions.”

In Orange County, the science of turning human waste into clean water is on full display.

After showing a Stateline reporter around the 15-acre wastewater recycling plant southeast of Los Angeles, the air around it heavy with the smell of standing water, Patel stopped at three display sinks designed for the tour frequented by local students and water officials from out of town — one filled with amber-tinted water, another yellowish and the third crystal clear, each showing what the wastewater looks like after the three purification steps.

Starting at microfiltration, wastewater is sucked through microscopic holes in hollow plastic fiber. At reverse osmosis, the water is forced through holes 1,000 times smaller in tightly wound membrane sheets, wrapped in fiberglass tubes. And at advanced oxidation, the water is hit with ultraviolet light combined with hydrogen peroxide.

From sewage to drinkable water, the process takes 20 hours.

In the next decade, Southern California cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego plan to recycle wastewater for direct use as drinking water. Both would add more purification steps than what Orange County uses to ensure pathogens are removed before the water reaches consumers.

“As the drought has gotten worse, the interest has increased,” Patel said.

Where it’s going

Even in the typically water-rich Midwest, unpredictable supplies have some communities considering turning wastewater into drinking water.

In southern Iowa, the town of Osceola could become the first in the state to use treated wastewater as part of its drinking supply. Three years of drought have left the town’s West Lake dangerously low, the Des Moines Register reported.

The topic came up time and again at a water conference hosted by the Kansas Water Office last month.

In one presentation, Jason Solomon, a technical assistant at the Kansas Rural Water Association, projected a map of the Neosho River pocked with toilet icons marking the dozens of places communities release treated wastewater into the river. Sometimes, those discharges aren’t far from the intake valve of the next town downstream relying on the water.

His point: The current system is only one step removed from directly recycling wastewater. Rivers and reservoirs are as much a mental barrier as a physical one in terms of water quality, said Solomon, whose group assists small water providers across the state.

He thinks direct wastewater recycling is likely a ways off in Kansas given its stigma and costs. But it’s an idea worth considering with recent droughts threatening drinking water supplies even in the traditionally wettest part of the state.

“Why don’t we just take it directly from the wastewater plant?” he said in an interview. “Why would we put it back in the river? It’s going to get dirtier in the river.”

Public perception is key

Although experts say the science is clear, convincing the public has been a challenge, including in Southern California.

Three decades ago, Los Angeles County sought to bring what the local media dubbed “toilet to tap” to the region, but officials were met with fierce resistance by politicians and residents. It stopped the project.

The “yuck” factor can be challenging, said David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

“When you look at some communities where they haven’t done water recycling yet, they have to start building legitimacy from the ground up,” said Sedlak, who recently published a book on water solutions.

“Sometimes that means changing the culture of transparency and openness. And sometimes that means working with the public and bringing them on board to see and understand it.”

Often, people assume the water coming from rivers is cleaner than it really is, Sedlak said; the public may not fully grasp that it can include agricultural runoff or the wastewater from some upstream communities.

A future plant in El Paso, Texas, will include an educational exhibit area so schoolchildren and other visitors can see the science behind the treatment process.

Adjacent to an existing wastewater plant, the $130 million purification facility will send treated wastewater directly back into the drinking water system. Construction is expected to begin next year, but the city has been working to educate and build trust with the public for the past decade, said Christina Montoya-Halter, the communications and marketing director for El Paso Water.

“I don’t want to say it was easy,” she said. “But we are in a different position in El Paso because we’ve been talking about the need to diversify for a long time.”

The city sources water from the Rio Grande and underground aquifers, and runs a desalination plant to treat salty groundwater.

The new treatment plant, which should be running by 2027, is expected to produce up to 10 million gallons per day — or about 6% of the city’s annual needs. But it’s considered a crucial supply since El Paso hasn’t received its full allocation of Rio Grande water in about a decade.

Gilbert Trejo, vice president of engineering, operations and technical services for the utility, said directly treating wastewater will cost roughly double the price of other treatment processes.

Trejo, who serves on the board of a national trade group promoting the use of recycled water, expects directly recycled wastewater will become mainstream as officials increasingly view it as a solution to water shortages.

“It’s not just a solution for arid states and arid regions,” he said. “This also solves a lot of problems in water-rich areas.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Kevin Kirby operates a tractor to begin the sweet potato harvest process by plowing them up from the field on Kirby Farms in Mechanicsville, Virginia, on Sep. 20, 2013. Kirby is a fourth-generation farmer (USDA photo by Lance Cheung).

Andy Gipson gets concerned even when American allies such as the Netherlands and Germany invest in large swaths of Mississippi’s farmland.

“It just bothers me at a gut level,” he said.

For Gipson, Mississippi’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce, the growing trend of foreign ownership could threaten what he views as the state’s most valuable asset: the land that grows its forests, rice and cotton.

“It is our ability as a country, as a state to produce our own food, our own fiber and our own shelter,” he told Stateline. “And I think every acre that’s sold to anybody outside of this country is one less acre that we have to rely on for our own self-interest, our own national food security.”

Gipson has spent recent months studying the growing amount of his state’s farmland being bought up by foreign interests. He chaired a study committee that just issued a 363-page report on the issue requested by the legislature after a lawmaker had offered a bill to completely ban foreign purchases.

Since its constitution was approved in 1890, the state has had provisions restricting land ownership by “nonresident aliens,” the report noted. But the committee concluded current state law “lacks a clear, workable enforcement mechanism.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that foreign interests held some 757,000 acres of Mississippi’s agricultural land, about 2.5% of the total. Gipson hopes the Republican-led legislature will stiffen the law in the upcoming session.

“I think the time is going to be right in 2024 for the legislature to tighten these laws up,” he said.

Limit on foreign ownership of farmland clears Missouri Senate

If the legislature acts, Mississippi will join a growing group of states seeking to ban or further restrict foreign ownership of farmland. Lawmakers are targeting nations considered hostile to U.S. interests, such as China and Russia, and looking for new enforcement measures. Many see Arkansas as leading the latter push; officials there invoked a new law in October that bans certain foreign owners and ordered a Chinese seed company to divest its land.

Nearly half the states have some restrictions on the books, some of them dating back to the 1700s.

In Missouri, momentum stalled during the 2023 session on a bill restricting foreign farmland ownership, as proponents split on how expansive the ban should be. Until 2013, no foreign countries were allowed to purchase Missouri farmland. That was changed to implement a 1% cap on the percentage of Missouri farmland that can be owned by foreign entities.

While the debate is as old as the nation itself, the issue has been reinvigorated in recent years after Chinese firms purchased land near military installments in North Dakota and in Texas, said Micah Brown, an attorney at the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas who tracks the issue.

Brown said lawmakers in 36 states proposed some sort of legislation on the issue this year, ranging from caps to bans to targets on certain countries, with measures passing in about a dozen of them. More bills are expected in upcoming sessions.

Some lawmakers and experts warn that such laws could go too far, making it difficult for some farmers to sell their land, discouraging economic development, or even leading to discrimination against certain groups of people such as Asian Americans.

Foreigners held an interest in about 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land at the end of 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Canadian investors own the largest share of that acreage, followed by investors from the United Kingdom and Europe. Foreign ownership represents only about 3.1% of all privately held U.S. agricultural land. But the number is quickly rising: Foreign ownership has increased more than 50% in the past decade, Brown said.

But USDA data shows Chinese ownership is still relatively rare: Chinese interests own less than 1% of the nation’s foreign-held agricultural acreage.

Federal law currently does not regulate foreign ownership land beyond requiring foreign buyers to register with the USDA. But there is bipartisan interest in Congress in tighter restrictions and reporting on foreign ownership.

At the state level, much of the legislation has been proposed by Republicans, though Brown said it’s largely enjoyed bipartisan support — particularly when bills target ownership by nations considered hostile to American interests.

“It’d be pretty difficult for someone to step out and say, ‘Hey, I don’t think we should restrict North Korea.’ … That’s kind of where some of the politics comes into this. It looks like you’re achieving something. There’s been a lot of bipartisan support on these efforts.”

Arkansas leads on enforcement

In October, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders invoked the war between Israel and Hamas as she announced her state was taking its first action against foreign ownership of agricultural land.

Sanders described America’s “enemies,” naming not just Hamas, but also China, Iran and Russia as “on the march.”

“Yet for too long in the name of tolerance we’ve let these dangerous governments infiltrate our country,” she said. “Arkansas will tolerate them no longer.”

The state ordered seed and pesticide maker Syngenta to sell 160 acres of land it owns in Northeast Arkansas and uses for research. Legislation passed during the 2023 session barred certain foreign countries from owning farmland and enabled the state to seek judicial foreclosure for those found in violation. The attorney general’s office said it was to date the only known property covered by the new law.

Syngenta, which was given two years to sell its property, did not respond to a Stateline request for comment. The company previously criticized the Arkansas action as “shortsighted.”

Last month, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, announced that Syngenta had paid a $280,000 civil penalty for failing to register with the state as required under legislation passed in 2021. 

“This serves as a warning to all other Chinese state-owned companies operating in Arkansas — I am investigating these types of properties throughout the state and will exercise all powers afforded to my office under the law,” he said in a statement last month. 

Based in Switzerland, Syngenta was bought by ChemChina, a state-owned entity, in 2017.

Republican state Sen. Blake Johnson said he was unaware of Syngenta’s acquisition when he sponsored both pieces of legislation. He said the laws were broadly aimed at protecting national security.

“Our food safety is paramount to the national defense, in my opinion: feeding, clothing ourselves and our military if need be in the future,” he said. “That can be done by our own land. We don’t need to outsource that to our enemies.”

Johnson said he was careful to target the legislation at unfriendly nations. It applies to the same countries named in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, federal rules that restrict weapons from certain adversarial nations. He noted that friendly nations are exempt: Canada, for instance, owns large swaths of timberland in southern Arkansas.

“That’s not a problem under this law,” he said.

The Arkansas action was closely watched by officials in neighboring Mississippi.

“To date, Arkansas is the only state that has actually enforced a law like this,” said Gipson, the Mississippi agriculture commissioner. “I like the way they did it.”

But he said there are plenty of complications.

Mississippi doesn’t want to hinder important agricultural research, Gipson said. Nor does it want to dissuade investments such as Japanese-based Nissan’s giant assembly plant in Canton.

“Some of the states have had unintended consequences and we don’t want to have those, obviously,” he said.

Republican state Rep. Bill Pigott, who also served on the study committee, said he’s working on legislation that he thinks will pass in 2024.

A farmer who raises peanuts, corn and cattle, Pigott said he has not heard from other farmers about the issue, though he said many constituents are concerned.

“People who listen to the news and watch TV — they seem to be more concerned about it than actually the farmers themselves,” he said. “I do get people ask if we are doing anything.”

Pigott said the legislation will aim to target hostile nations such as China and Russia. Currently, investors from the Netherlands are the largest foreign owners in Mississippi, followed by Germany.

“Almost nobody has any concern with that,” he said. “It is the hostile nations, and No. 1 on that list is China.”

Striking a balance

In opening a U.S. Senate hearing in September, Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow acknowledged that the nation’s food system is an integral component of national security.

With more foreign entities buying up land, she said, the issue deserves scrutiny. But she offered a warning:

“We must also be cautious of our history of barring immigrants from owning land in our country and ensure efforts to protect our national and economic security do not encourage discrimination,” she said.

During hearings on foreign-owned agricultural land in Topeka, Kansas, state Rep. Rui Xi, a Democrat and the only Chinese American in the state House, in September warned about rhetoric casting suspicion on Asian Americans such as grad students lawfully admitted to the United States.

“If we want to take a look at foreign investment in ag land and it’s narrow, that’s great,” Xi said. “If you try to cast a shadow and it continues to cast suspicion on people who are here innocently who are just trying to learn, who are trying to attend our universities, I think that’s where we really, really need to urge caution.”

While more American agricultural land is being bought up by foreign interests, it’s generally not governments that own it, said David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University. Syngenta garnered plenty of attention in Arkansas, but it’s more common for foreign individuals and firms to buy land as investments, he said.

So far, Ortega said, there’s no evidence that foreign purchases have raised ag prices or pose any threat to American food security.

Ortega said policymakers should consider carefully the potential effects of new laws on the broader agricultural economy. China, for instance, is often targeted by legislators. But it’s also the largest buyer of American agricultural exports and could retaliate against American farmers.

“It’s far easier for China to find a new source to buy [from] than it is for us to find new export markets,” he said in an interview.

Ortega said there are specific, local concerns about foreign ownership worth addressing. And while there are many good-faith debates occurring, he does worry that the conversation could lead to discrimination of groups such as Chinese Americans.

“I don’t think that the root cause of lawmakers’ concerns over this issue is rooted in xenophobia,” he said. “But I am worried that the way this issue is talked about can lead to xenophobia and those types of issues. And that’s why I and others are urging caution.”

Since Congress has not enacted any legislation, state lawmakers say they are willing to act.

“While I would prefer we send one message from our Congress to address this issue, that’s beyond the scope of what I can do,” said Georgia state Rep. Clay Pirkle, a Republican. “What I can do is formulate a state response to this issue.”

Pirkle grows cotton, peanuts, rice and butterbeans on about 1,000 acres in southern Georgia. Earlier this year, he introduced legislation in Atlanta that would prevent nonresident aliens from purchasing farmland near military bases if they were from nations deemed adversarial by the U.S. Department of Commerce — a list that currently includes China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Russia. The bill didn’t progress, but Pirkle plans to pursue it again next session.

He said crafting legislation on the matter is complicated because he does not want Georgia to dissuade purchases from people who have fled other countries for the United States.

“I really made every effort to avoid unintentional consequences of folks from these countries that have come to the United States because they really desire liberty and freedom,” he said. “And I wanted to make sure that I did not unduly burden them.”

But Pirkle believes something needs to be done. American agricultural land is not a renewable resource. And developers continue to encroach on farmland for the development of new housing and industry.

“The land that we have that we grow crops on to feed the world is the land that we have in ag production,” he said. “We’re not making any more, and it is a scarce resource.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Legislation, expected to cost Missouri more than $300 million per year, removed a previous income cap of $85,000 for single filers on pension benefits (Getty Images).

With a $750 million budget surplus on hand, there was little doubt whether North Dakota lawmakers would cut taxes earlier this year — the question was how much.

“The surplus was strong, and we believe it’s going to be sustained into the future,” said state Rep. Craig Headland. “So, it just made sense to cut taxes.”

Headland was among the Republicans who negotiated terms of the legislature’s $515 million tax cut this year — 70% of which came from lowering personal income tax rates. The cuts leave North Dakota with the lowest tax rate among the states that collect income taxes.

In a special session this week, the legislature is considering more tax cuts that would exempt about 50,000 North Dakotans who earn $60,000 or less from income taxes. And Republicans, who control both chambers and the governor’s office in North Dakota, plan to continue their march toward eliminating the state income tax; Headland said he plans to introduce such a bill when the legislature reconvenes in 2025.

“Those revenues are there,” he said. “We certainly could do more tax relief.”

It’s not just red states that are slashing taxes.

In reliably liberal Massachusetts, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey just celebrated passage of the first tax cuts the state has seen in more than 20 years. Estimated to cost about $1 billion over the next four years, the changes will reduce estate taxes and capital gains taxes while expanding child and family tax credits and earned income tax credits.

Signing the legislation in Springfield earlier this month, Healey framed the cuts as a means of combating rising prices that have forced working parents to choose between the benefits of work and the costs of child care. The increasing cost of living in Massachusetts pushes young adults to leave the state, she said, and prevents renters from saving enough for a house down payment.

“Everyone feels the pinch,” Healey said, “and our future starts to shrink.”

Flush after years of thriving economies, states this year have continued a yearslong trend of tax cutting. Strong consumer spending, increasing property values and inflation have boosted state revenues along with an influx of billions from the federal government.

Many lawmakers view tax cuts as a logical response to boom times: returning excess taxpayer dollars to taxpayers. But some experts think states have cut too deep, using short-term revenue trends to justify permanent reductions in state revenue, often through cuts that benefit the wealthiest residents. And they warn that some states already are starting to bring in less money.

So far this year, at least 15 states have cut income taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal tax policy nonprofit. Since 2021, half of all states have cut personal income tax rates, according to the Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning tax policy nonprofit.

State tax cut measures vary wildly. Many have slashed income tax rates across the board. Other states have implemented more targeted measures or relied on so-called revenue triggers, which usher in tax cuts or rebates if state revenues reach certain benchmarks.

Oregon, for instance, will return a record $5.6 billion to taxpayers through the state’s “kicker,” which is triggered when state revenues exceed official projections by at least 2%. The current state windfall means Oregon will credit taxpayers an average of $980 on their 2023 personal income tax returns when they file next year, according to the state Office of Economic Analysis.  

“We really are in the midst of a tax-cut wave right now,” said Wesley Tharpe, senior adviser for state tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute that advocates for left-leaning tax policies.

Tharpe said the wave resembles those that followed economic booms in the 1990s and in the years following the Great Recession of 2008, though states now are cutting deeper than ever before. The current trend may leave states with less money on hand for education and health care, the top drivers of state spending, Tharpe said.

Additionally, many states continue to make regressive tax changes that benefit the wealthiest taxpayers, he said.

“The real risk for states is that they’re being a bit penny wise, pound foolish by thinking that they can afford a tax cut in the short term because of those surpluses, because of reasonably strong revenue growth of late,” he said. “But as collections decline, as the cost of the tax cuts grow, states are really going to be potentially pinched over the next five to 10 years.”

State budgets are strong (for now)

Over the past two years, state spending has ballooned.

A survey from the National Association of State Budget Officers shows state general fund spending increased 12.6% in fiscal year 2023, totaling $1.2 trillion. That was after a 16.8% increase in fiscal year 2022.

Nearly every state saw its tax revenues exceed official estimates over the past two years. And cumulatively, states more than doubled the amount saved in their rainy-day funds since 2019, reaching more than $160 billion in fiscal year 2022, according to the association.

“I’d say overall states remain in a strong fiscal condition,” said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies at the association.

But state revenues already have begun to fall in some states, including Iowa, Kentucky and Mississippi — which all cut taxes in recent years. The association’s spring survey found state revenues have begun to decrease slightly — a trend expected to continue through the fiscal year because of tax cuts, slower economic growth and weaker stock market performance.

“We received record growth there for two years in a row and so now it’s lower growth off that high baseline,” Sigritz said. “In some ways, we’re returning to a normal pattern.”

Huge surpluses over the past few years essentially forced states to decide between major spending projects and tax cuts.

“It’s politically untenable to hold this amount of cash and not do something with it,” said William Glasgall, senior director of public finance at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that works to support public sector workers.

While states have stockpiled billions in reserves, the threat of an economic downturn still looms. After decades of underfunding public pensions, states, cities and other agencies owe more than $1 trillion, Glasgall said, and many states still have numerous deferred maintenance needs.

This month, the federal government said Americans must resume student loan payments after a three-year pandemic pause, leaving some 43 million consumers with less discretionary cash. The Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit policy organization, warned the move could ultimately harm state revenues if borrowers trim their other spending — a particularly troublesome prospect for states that rely heavily on sales taxes.

And states have largely spent or allocated the nearly $200 billion Congress handed out in pandemic relief funds, Glasgall said. Those funds must be spent by the end of 2026. The Volcker Alliance has warned of the potential for a “fiscal cliff” for states that used the one-time funds for recurring costs.

“The big sugar high from all the money that went into the economy during COVID is running down,” Glasgall said.

Helping specific groups

In August, Kentucky’s budget director informed lawmakers that tax revenues weren’t strong enough to meet a fiscal requirement set by the GOP-controlled legislature that would have allowed legislators to continue cutting income taxes.

The left-leaning research group Kentucky Center for Economic Policy framed the news as a “glimpse of future trouble” for the state, particularly since low unemployment and high inflation continue to push up incomes.

But State Senate Appropriations and Revenue Chair Chris McDaniel said including the so-called revenue triggers shows the state is cutting taxes responsibly. He said it’s a stark difference from the failed tax experiment in Kansas, where then-Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, led an effort in 2012 to dramatically slash income taxes in the hopes of spurring an economic boom, but instead was forced to cut education, infrastructure and other spending as revenues tanked.

“That will forever inform the way I think my generation of political leaders looks at the tax issue,” McDaniel said. “I would rather take 10 years to get the reform right than to promise people things I have to walk back in two years.”

The Kentucky General Assembly cut the personal income tax rate from 5% to 4.5% in 2022. Missing this year’s trigger means that rate won’t be going down next session. But McDaniel said he would still like to see the state realize a longtime GOP goal of eliminating the state income tax.

Aside from personal and corporate income taxes, states have made changes aimed at helping specific groups, including older adults, homeowners and families.

This year, 18 states implemented or changed earned income tax credits or child tax credits, said Aidan Davis, the state policy director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“Those really are policies that are going to make a real difference in the economic security of millions of families,” she said. “So that was a really prominent trend this year.”

But many states took what Davis characterized as “steps backward” by making deep, permanent cuts that will not only hold down state revenue for years to come, but mostly benefit upper income residents.

That was the case with a recently approved change in Missouri that eliminated state income taxes on Social Security benefits, said Democratic state Rep. Deb Lavender.

The legislation, expected to cost Missouri more than $300 million per year, removed a previous income cap of $85,000 for single filers on pension benefits. That means high-earning individuals will benefit the most, Lavender said.

“We talked about our poor seniors,” she said. “This didn’t help a single one of those people that has to decide if they’re buying food or paying rent or getting medicine.”

The legislation was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, who said retirees on fixed incomes shouldn’t see their Social Security benefits taxed. The new law, he said in January, “keeps seniors from having to hand over more money to government.”

That legislation came a year after nearly $800 million in tax cuts in 2022. The GOP-controlled legislature hoped to pass a $1 billion reduction in corporate and personal income taxes this year, but was unable to because of ongoing dysfunction in the state Senate.

Lavender said the state has plenty of needs those revenues could address.

Missouri is home to rising maternal mortality rates. And starting teachers in Missouri earn on average the lowest salary of educators in any state. 

“I’m not an advocate for increasing taxes,” she said. “But could we just stop cutting?”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A crew works on plugging an abandoned oil well that North Dakota confiscated in the Little Missouri National Grasslands. States are rushing to spend billions in new federal dollars to plug abandoned oil and gas wells that can leak pollutants into water sources and emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (Erika Bolstad/Stateline)

An infusion of federal money has helped Louisiana plug nearly 500 abandoned oil and gas wells this year.

That number doesn’t come close to the 4,500 abandoned wells that pock the state’s terrain, leaving the potential for groundwater contamination and the near-certainty of greenhouse gas emissions. But the money has allowed the state to nearly double the record number of wells it’s ever plugged in a year.

“Everything helps,” said Patrick Courreges, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. “If we didn’t have the federal help, we’d be over 5,000 [abandoned wells].”

Louisiana is among 24 states that received millions of dollars for well plugging from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which made the largest investment in legacy pollution reduction in American history.

But in many ways, the difficult work is just beginning. Of the $4.7 billion the law set aside for plugging wells that oil and gas companies have abandoned, $560 million has gone out so far. The rest will be spent in the coming years.

During the first round of grants, the feds didn’t require states to calculate the methane emissions each plug prevents. But from now on, states seeking grants will have to measure methane releases at each well. That will require states to develop new methods and spend more time and money. And the workforce shortage only makes it harder for states to use their grants.

Long-standing state programs to tackle the problem, usually backed by fees from oil and gas companies, generally have targeted the most problematic wells, such as those with visible leaks or spills. But countless others remain, allowing methane or carcinogens to escape.

“It’s easy to see a blowout. It’s tougher to see 100 small leaks,” Courreges said. “I think you’re just now seeing regulators figuring out, ‘OK, how do we approach that? How do we do that?’ Obviously, you’re probably going to need more funding for everybody.”

In Louisiana, the state generally has $10 million to $12 million available each year for well site restoration efforts, Courreges said. The state received $25 million in its first round of federal funding from the infrastructure law and is primed to receive some $86 million more.

A well is considered orphaned when the government cannot locate the operator of an idled well or the operator is unable to plug or remediate the well. Beyond blighting property and limiting land use, abandoned wells are a major threat because unseen leaks can allow pollutants into water sources and spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The federal government gave states wide latitude on how to prioritize wells for plugging. Aggressive timelines have pushed qualifying states to quickly allocate their first round of grant funds by hiring contractors to plug abandoned oil and gas wells.

“The timeline was so tight that these guys just went out and started plugging wells without any idea,” said Curtis Shuck, chair of the Well Done Foundation, an environmental nonprofit. “They just knew it was a hole in the ground and they were going to go dump cement in it and call it a party.”

He previously worked in the energy industry and witnessed firsthand the eyesore and danger of wells left unsealed. His nonprofit has plugged 29 wells since 2019. He said without measuring emissions, states are essentially “flying blind,” making it difficult to justify prioritization efforts.

Still, he said the overall effort has been instrumental in raising awareness of the underlying issue of abandoned wells.

“For the longest time, this has just been everybody’s dirty little secret,” he said. “Whether it’s the oil and gas industry, the states or even the federal government, nobody wanted to talk about it.”

But the federal funds won’t come close to addressing the current inventory of orphaned wells, Shuck said. And it won’t prevent new ones from being orphaned by bankrupt operators.

“That’s just the nature of the business. These wells have a lifecycle,” he said. “There’s no silver bullet. There’s no magic wand to make it go away. It’s just a matter of rolling up your sleeves and tackling a dirty job.”

‘A significant down payment’

The issue of abandoned wells is nearly as old as the nation’s petroleum industry. Major producers sell off rights to wells, usually those producing only marginal amounts. Those wells can transfer multiple times before ending up under control of companies that can easily go belly up in the notoriously boom-and-bust oil and gas markets, making those abandoned wells a problem for states.

A handful of states are trying to prevent wells from being abandoned in the first place, enacting stricter well transfer regulations and financial assurances from producers.

But for those already orphaned, the federal money is making a dent. By the end of June, more than 4,000 wells had been plugged with the first round of funds, said Winnie Stachelberg, senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Methane leaking from many of these unplugged wells is a serious safety hazard,” she told Stateline. “It’s been a significant cause of climate change.”

Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere, Stachelberg said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated abandoned oil and gas wells are releasing 280,000 metric tons of methane each year. That’s equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1.7 million gas-powered passenger vehicles driven for a year, according to an online EPA calculator. The federal government expects the next round of grant money to help quantify the effects of sealing wells.

“That will give us and the states a more full picture of the impact of these wells and how much methane we’re removing by cleaning them up,” Stachelberg said.

But most states haven’t begun methane measuring.

Oklahoma only performs methane testing on select wells close to buildings or as part of explosive testing, said Matt Skinner, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry. The state is preparing a methane monitoring program for the next round of federal grant funding.

Like many energy regulators, Oklahoma charges fees on active well operators for well remediation efforts. That means the state’s fund varies wildly depending on the health of the industry — and the price of energy.

Traditionally, the agency has sought to maintain a healthy reserve fund so it can tackle emergency well repairs, Skinner said. But conserving its funds for the most serious problems can result in a ballooning inventory of wells that need plugging.

Oklahoma’s $25 million in the first round of federal funding allowed the state to award contracts to tackle 523 wells — far higher than the number of wells the state traditionally is able to remediate, Skinner said. Between the 2017 and 2021 fiscal years, Oklahoma plugged a total of 462 abandoned wells.

“We were able to move aggressively to radically reduce the backlog,” he said.

By the time the infrastructure bill passed in 2021, the country had some 125,000 documented abandoned wells and another estimated 800,000 undocumented ones, said Adam Peltz, a director and senior attorney at the advocacy nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

“Because every state regulates its own industry, it hasn’t been a national issue, despite being a national problem,” he said.

The federal funds won’t come close to fixing all the documented abandoned wells, let alone the undocumented ones. But Peltz said the program represents “a significant down payment on a long-ignored problem.”

The industry says it’s also tackling the problem.

The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade group, said in a statement the industry is constantly working to address the permanent closure and remediation of historic oil and natural gas wells. The institute released new standards in 2021 providing guidance for design, placement and verification of plugs used in wells.

Challenging work

With only about 90 days to form their $25 million grant application last year, Kansas regulators initially focused on addressing “shovel-ready” wells, said Ryan Hoffman, director of conservation at the Kansas Corporation Commission.

Those are wells that already had been scrutinized by the agency. But even then, finding contractors to tackle the work proved challenging.

In the remote stretches of Western Kansas, for example, the state received no bids on plugging two wells near the Colorado border. Crews can spend upward of $1 million plugging the most complex wells, though the Environmental Defense Fund says the average well plugging costs about $75,000.

To make the work more attractive, the state sought to group similarly constructed and nearby wells. In the more populated portions of Northeastern Kansas, the state grouped hundreds of wells in the counties outside of Kansas City under a single project umbrella.

“We prioritize those because of the population growth in those areas,” Hoffman said. “But we also wanted to make sure that we can make this attractive to contractors to bid on, because we’re competing with the [oil and gas] industry for their services.”

In the past, Kansas has never plugged more than 700 wells per year, Hoffman said. Since January, the state has more than doubled that number, filling more than 1,600 of its 11,000 abandoned wells.

Hoffman said the state has increased its compliance efforts, resulting in fewer wells getting abandoned. But the nature of the extraction business makes it difficult, particularly as wells become less profitable.

A handful of states are upping scrutiny of well transfers or increasing financial assurance measures that aim to ensure each operator has the money to seal wells once they’re done pumping.

In September, California legislators passed a bill that would require well owners to set aside more cash to properly seal wells once they are out of use. The bill faced skepticism from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose finance department warned it could unintentionally cause more wells to be abandoned by increasing financial burdens on already at-risk operators, the Los Angeles Times reported. But Newsom signed the legislation on Oct. 7.

In New Mexico, regulators are discussing potential changes with the oil and gas industry. And the state is taking a closer look at well transfer requests.

“We are scrutinizing some of those transactions a little harder,” said Dylan Fuge, general counsel for New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

New Mexico has been measuring methane emissions at the wells it targets before and after filling. So far, the state has found each well on average emits nearly a ton in greenhouse gas emissions per year — roughly the annual equivalent greenhouse emissions of six gas-powered vehicles, the EPA calculator estimates.

Overall, the federal dollars have allowed the state to seal five times as many wells as normal, about 100 of its 1,700 documented abandoned wells.

“I think we’re starting to make meaningful progress on the ground,” Fuge said. But “even at the rate we’re plugging with the resources we can reasonably project out, I still don’t see a certain pathway where we get all 1,700 by any stretch.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

At least 15 states have passed laws regulating animal confinement, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Many of those laws target the care of calves used for veal, hens for eggs and pigs for pork (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

Earlier this year, Oregon Democrats pushed through state legislation that allows local governments to require setbacks between neighbors and factory farming operations. The law prohibits farms from drawing unlimited amounts of free groundwater and requires farmers to apply for a permit before applying manure to their fields.

It’s the kind of state regulation at risk if farm-state Republicans succeed in passing the EATS Act, which stands for Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression, when Congress renews the federal farm bill.

The EATS Act targets state-specific regulations on livestock production — particularly California’s Proposition 12, which requires farms to meet specific standards providing animals freedom of movement, cage-free design and minimum floor space. Crucially, California’s voter initiative also bars retailers from selling meats raised in other states that don’t meet California’s standards — viewed as a major imposition by agriculture interests across the country. After court delays, the Proposition 12 rules will be fully implemented as of Jan. 1, 2024.

The EATS Act would likely spell the end to California’s Proposition 12 rules. But its broad language also would allow companies and individuals to challenge a range of laws regulating agriculture. An analysis by Harvard researchers estimates the provision could void more than 1,000 state and local laws and regulations concerning public health and safety.

“I think it’s galloping in the wrong direction and exacerbates the really destructive imbalance between corporate power and local power,” said Oregon Democratic state Sen. Jeff Golden, who sponsored the farm measure in his state.

“The environments, culture and values across the country vary dramatically,” Golden said. “The relative value different communities put on the environment and so-called free enterprise vary dramatically. So, a rigid, standard regulatory structure makes no sense to me.”

At least 15 states have passed laws regulating animal confinement, according to the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Many of those laws target the care of calves used for veal, hens for eggs and pigs for pork.

Chris Green, executive director of the fund, said farmers would ideally be subject to national standards, but the nation is simply too divided. Green researched the EATS Act in his previous role directing the animal law and policy program at Harvard University. He said it would create a race to the bottom by sanctioning industry challenges to state standards they don’t like.

“I don’t think the answer is that if you can’t get a national standard, the standard has to be zero,” he said. “And that’s basically what the EATS Act is saying.”

But backers of the EATS Act say farmers in their states shouldn’t be beholden to the rules of lawmakers or voters in other states. Congress is still debating its reauthorization of the five-year farm bill, which expires Sept. 30. The legislation, expected to cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years, funds crop, conservation and nutrition programs.

U.S. Sen Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, said American farmers already face protectionist policies from other countries that limit access to new markets.

“The last thing we need is a big state like California imposing its will on ag-heavy states like Kansas with regulations that will also restrict our ability to trade among the states,” Marshall said in a news release introducing the EATS Act. “If California wants to regulate agriculture in its own state, that’s fine, but California’s rules should not apply to Kansas, whose legislatures never approved of these regulations.”

Marshall’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The National Pork Producers Council, an industry group, did not agree to an interview for this story. But the association provided a two-page memo outlining its support for the EATS Act. The organization says California’s livestock rules are not based on science, were crafted by those with “a limited understanding of pork production,” and could cause market volatility and rising prices.

Animal advocates, small farmers and environmentalists view the EATS Act as a desperate attempt by the pork industry to override the will of voters and legislators across the country — and to reverse a recent loss at the U.S. Supreme Court. In May, the court in a 5-4 decision rejected a challenge from the National Pork Producers Council and upheld California’s rules.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said businesses selling across state lines frequently face various state laws and regulations. “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” he wrote.

The implications of the four-page EATS Act go well beyond meat production, threatening environmental protections and state laws on zoonotic diseases and invasive species, according to Patty Lovera, policy adviser for the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment, a coalition of progressive groups fighting factory farming.

Lovera said the bill would clear the way for incessant attacks on state and local regulations. “It’s not a coincidence that there’s a maneuver being attempted to stick it on a must-pass bill, because it is so controversial,” she said.

‘Out of a horror film’

Trish Cook and her husband raise more than 30,000 pigs per year on their Iowa farm. Like most other large-scale farmers, she keeps sows in small confinements where staff can closely monitor their food intake and prevent them from fighting.

Cook, who is president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association, said it would cost her $2 million to $3 million to reconfigure animal housing and comply with California’s livestock rules. Iowa, the nation’s largest pig producer, grows about a third of the nation’s pork supply.

“What the state ballot initiatives are doing is creating a patchwork of rules state by state that make it really challenging as someone who’s trying to raise a delicious, nutritious product to be fed to people across the country and across the world,” she said.

Lee Schulz, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, said laws like California’s create an unfunded mandate: Producers who want to meet specific state standards must invest mightily but can’t expect higher prices in return. And such rules inject uncertainty into an already shaky pork marketplace, which is facing higher input costs but lower pork prices.

“You’re adding higher costs to an industry that was already contracting,” Schulz said. He added that while consumers may say they want crate-free pork, they’re not necessarily willing to pay more for it.

Still, big producers including Hormel, Smithfield and Tyson have publicly said they intend to comply with the California law, Reuters reported.

Animal welfare advocates note that animals raised indoors can display unnatural behaviors and can live their whole lives without seeing blue skies.

Advocates have focused on sow farms, where female pigs are bred. Mother pigs can spend their entire pregnancy inside gestation crates, cages so small the pig can’t even turn around. After giving birth, many are confined in farrowing crates, similar cages that allow the piglets to nurse but don’t allow the sow to move around.

“The way the industry raises pigs in particular and how they treat mother sows is absolutely horrible,” said Alex Cragun, director of government affairs at Mercy For Animals, a nonprofit fighting animal cruelty in farming. “It’s atrocious. It’s something out of a horror film.”

The organization last month released a report on its undercover investigation at a Nebraska pork farm. Mercy For Animals said it witnessed pigs lying in their own waste, sick pigs that went untreated, sows giving birth directly into piles of feces and animal feed infested with maggots.

While he said he would like consumers to leave pork off their plates altogether, Cragun said efforts like Proposition 12 in California go a long way in improving conditions for livestock.

“This is their full existence. Something like the ability to turn around or the ability to lay down is a small piece of some sense of control. It doesn’t completely change all these things, but it is one component, and it is an absolutely critical step towards a more just and stable food system.”

Evolving practices

Niman Ranch is a network of more than 700 family farmers and ranchers committed to sustainable and humane production of cattle and pork. Chris Oliviero, the general manager of Niman Ranch, said other producers have sacrificed humane treatment in their yearslong quest to realize efficiency.

“If it’s such a humane system, I would argue that the industry would be front and center showcasing every single day what this system looks like,” Oliviero said. But “there’s nobody out there who is putting cameras in these operations saying, ‘Look at how great this is’ for the animals that are in their care.”

For nearly 20 years, Pennsylvania-based Clemens Food Group has been moving away from gestation crates to give pigs more space. That’s made it much easier for the company to comply with new state standards. But company president Brad Clemens said the move was “a values-based decision.” When given the choice, he said, sows choose open space over confinement.

“Knowing that the technology is out there to give the sows space, why wouldn’t we do that?” he said.

The family-owned company is the nation’s fifth-largest pork processor. Clemens is vocally opposed to the EATS Act — or any legislation like it. Aside from treating animals better, Clemens said, there’s a business case for change: Customers care more than ever about the sourcing, impact and treatment of their food.

“We’ve had more customer inquiries on sow housing in the last five years than we did the last 50 years before that. Customers are smarter than they’ve ever been,” he said. “They desire more transparency than they ever did before. These are informed buyers who care about how animals are kept and will make buying decisions based on how animals are kept.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Extreme drought rendered a boat dock and ramp useless at Quivira Scout Ranch outside of Sedan, Kan. The lake at the Boy Scout camp provides drinking water for thousands of homes, schools and businesses in Southeast Kansas, but its intake valve has been jeopardized as lake levels continue to drop (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

SEDAN, Kan. — James Rainbolt typically can tackle most problems at his rural water plant with some extra time or money.

But he can’t fix this.

“I just can’t make it rain,” he said.

Like others across Southeast Kansas, Rainbolt remains helpless as he watches a persistent drought dry up the local water supply. He runs a public wholesale water supply district that provides the drinking water for several cities and rural water districts. The lack of rain has been so severe that it’s now threatening the water district’s intake pipe, which brings water from a local lake to the treatment plant.

As lake levels fall, the angle at which the 8-inch pipe meets a floating pump station grows steeper and steeper, stressing the flexible joint. If the joint breaks, the consequences would be catastrophic, instantly cutting the water supply for thousands of people, businesses and schools across three counties.

“If we break it, we have no water. Period,” said Jack Warren, the mayor of Sedan, Kansas, a county seat about 100 miles southeast of Wichita and the largest customer of the water district.

This part of Kansas is suffering what the U.S. Drought Monitor characterizes as exceptional drought, its most severe category. While droughts frequently wreak havoc on agriculture here, residents are facing unprecedented challenges with drinking water supplies. This corner of the state, which lacks the vast underground aquifers that sit below much of Kansas, is overly reliant on surface water such as lakes and rivers.

That means small towns and ranches face tough and expensive choices on where to draw water from, a problem likely to increase as climate change brings more extreme weather. And it’s a quandary that stretches far beyond Kansas. Persistent drought is plaguing communities across the country’s interior: The map created by the U.S. Drought Monitor shows its deepest red pockets across Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas, among other states.

Lack of rain has hit crops hard: In Missouri, for example, 40% of the state’s corn crop was classified as poor or very poor, according to the drought monitor. Iowa, the nation’s top corn producer, is in the midst of its worst drought in a decade with about 80% of the state in some measure of drought.

Prolonged drought has even reached the banks of Lake Superior: Parts of Wisconsin have the most severe drought designation for the first time since the 1999 inception of the U.S. Drought Monitor, said Dennis Todey, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub.

“It’s the severity of the drought and the length of the drought that are causing some confounding issues right now,” he said.

In Southeast Kansas, locals have taken extraordinary measures to conserve the dwindling lake water supply.

The city pool closed in the middle of the summer. So did the town’s only car wash.

Local schools shut off drinking fountains, furnishing bottled water instead.

A community of about 900 people, Sedan has banned residents from using tap water for plants or lawns, forcing some to get creative. The mayor, for one, has been collecting the water that drains off his basement air conditioning unit to keep outdoor plants alive. The local movie theater is doing the same, allowing locals to come pick up its air conditioning runoff.

“Word’s kind of got around about the various places you can go and get water,” Warren said.

Conservation efforts appear to be working: Warren said Sedan has cut its water usage by about 30% since entering a stage 3 water emergency in early August.

“Drive around and you won’t see a green yard in town,” he said.

The water district just began construction on an emergency fix to its intake equipment. The work will essentially extend the floating dock farther into the lake, allowing the pipe to fall deeper into the water as the lake drops.

Locals, who noted that the drought has been ongoing since last year, said they’ve never seen a situation this severe.

“It just doesn’t rain,” said Rainbolt, who has lived in the area for nearly two decades. “This is not normal.”

Signs of drought

Sedan is surrounded by the foothills of the scenic Flint Hills, which contain the nation’s largest concentration of remaining tallgrass prairie.

The sidewalks of the small downtown are an homage to “The Wizard of Oz”: Sedan claims to be home to the world’s largest Yellow Brick Road with more than 10,000 yellow bricks encircling the heart of town.

On average, the town sees nearly 40 inches of precipitation each year, according to National Weather Service data. But last year, Sedan reported only 28.32 inches. Through August of this year, the town has seen fewer than 18 inches.

Signs of drought are apparent throughout the region.

On the Red Buffalo Ranch outside of town, no water flows over the 14-foot Butcher Falls. Normally a scenic destination, visitors can now walk across dry boulders where water normally rolls.

At the edge of one nearby community, a church sign implores passers-by to “Pray for Rain.” Inside another church, pews are filled with photocopies of a special prayer for rain.

After Sedan’s public pool closed early this summer, the city allowed ranchers and farmers to pump out the remaining water. They’ve also allowed locals to pump water from a local fishing lake to bring water to dry farms.

“Where are you getting water? Wherever you can find it,” said Jim Bell, a longtime farmer in the area who manages Sedan Farm Supply, which runs a small grain elevator and retail store selling feed, seed and other products.

This is the time of year farmers bring their combines out of the barn to reap the year’s harvest. Bell said local corn yields aren’t great but are better than people expected. Still, more than a year of lackluster precipitation and recent extreme heat has jeopardized many soybean crops.

“Soybeans are burning up in the field, the grass is burning up on the prairie. And water’s becoming a bigger and bigger issue,” he said. “Something needs to happen pretty quick.”

The drought has threatened hay production, a necessity to keep livestock fed through cold Kansas winters. Bell said many ranchers, including himself, have culled their herds because of limited water and hay.

The five ponds on his family farm long ago went dry, forcing him to haul water he buys from the local water district. In nearly 50 years on the property, he said he’s never seen things this dry.

“I’ve got one pond that I had no idea how deep it was until I saw the bottom of it this year,” Bell said.

Luckily, the lake that supplies the area’s drinking water hasn’t totally dried up, though Rainbolt estimates water levels have dropped 8 or 9 feet below normal.

“Typically, there should be water right where we’re standing,” he said, perched atop dry rocks on a metal gangway that leads to the floating pumphouse.

The lake is so small locals don’t even agree on its name: Some call it Murray Gill Lake. Others call it Quivira Lake or Boy Scout Lake, because of the regional Boy Scout council that owns the lake and runs the Quivira Scout Ranch on its banks each summer.

Whatever it’s called, locals agree that the lake is a crucial, but threatened, lifeline. Through its various customers, the water district supplies treated water for some 7,000 residents, Rainbolt said.

Lake levels dropped so low that boat ramps and docks are unusable at the summer camp.

The water district has some reserve funds it will rely on and will also seek state and federal emergency funds to cover construction costs of upgrading and protecting the water intake structure, Rainbolt said.

“That’s what this is: It’s an emergency,” he said.

Officials with the Kansas Water Office say they are well aware of the drought conditions in Southeast Kansas.

The state has encouraged communities to secure secondary sources of water, but that’s easier said than done, according to Nathan Westrup, manager of the Kansas Water Office’s public water supply programs.

That’s especially true in Southeast Kansas, which is typically the wettest corner of the Sunflower State. Many water providers rely on a single river, lake or stream.

“It’s more common than I would like,” he said. “I’d say it’s more common than not.”

He noted that the GOP-controlled legislature made an extra $35 million available to protect water resources in a bill Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed into law in April. The legislation makes grants available to communities both for technical assistance and for major water projects.

“That’s, in my opinion, just a start and a recognition that the state might be needed,” Westrup said, “and is willing to assist these small, small communities.”

‘It is not going to be a cheap fix’

About 30 miles away, the small city of Caney, Kansas, has for decades relied on the Little Caney River, a small waterway, to feed its water treatment plant.

But that river’s flow has been compromised for months. Water currently doesn’t even fall over the concrete dam.

Kelley Zellner, city manager for the community of about 1,600 people on the Oklahoma border, blames the problem on a mix of environmental factors and previous decisions by city leaders.

Caney resisted previous regional efforts to consolidate water sourcing and treatment. It runs its own municipal water plant that relies on a singular — and relatively precarious — water supply. Last year, county crews had to bring excavators to break up a logjam decades in the making that clogged water flow and accelerated evaporation.

Aside from the source issues, Zellner said the city is also struggling with an inefficient water plant and water lines. The plant was improperly designed for treating river water, he said. And a patchwork of duplicative, leaky city pipes causes the city to lose about 40% to 45% of its treated water.

Since last summer, city leaders have explored alternative water sources.

An attempt to connect with a water treatment plant in nearby Copan, Oklahoma, was unsuccessful. While the town is only about 9 miles away, moving water across state lines proved politically complicated and overly expensive.

Now, the city is eyeing a new water pipeline to connect to Coffeyville, a town of about 9,000 that sits along the Verdigris River. A tributary of the Arkansas River, the 310-mile Verdigris is replenished by several dams and reservoirs maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But building a pipeline isn’t easy or cheap.

Last week, engineers told the Caney City Council it would cost nearly $22 million to fix water infrastructure in town and construct a new pipeline to Coffeyville.

“You guys have quite the interesting predicament,” Danny Coltrane, the owner of Midwest Engineering Group, told the council. “Unfortunately it is not going to be a cheap fix.”

Coltrane said the city’s crisis would likely help it compete for state and federal funding. That’s because the city would tackle dual problems: the ongoing drought and the replacement of lead in its pipes, a major priority of the federal government.

Plus, some direct allocations could be made available through current congressional negotiations to reauthorize the farm bill, the omnibus bill that’s expected to top $1 trillion for the first time.

“If you’re related to a senator or representative, now would be the time to call them,” Coltrane said.

The city just made its first formal proposal to connect to Coffeyville’s water plant. The cost of running an 8-inch pipe over 14 miles is expected to top $7.6 million — when the city’s total annual budget is about $7.2 million.

“So, $21 million is pretty big,” Zellner said. “We’re kind of at the mercy of the funding. I hate to say it that way, but we are.”

After a presentation on Caney’s water problems, the Coffeyville City Commission Tuesday evening expressed support for a new pipeline and voted to begin planning.

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Zellner told the commission. “ … We’re not on our prayer bones yet but we could be.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter. 

Taylor Swift performs on opening night of The Eras Tour at State Farm Stadium in March in Arizona. The ticketing fiasco before the tour has prompted lawmakers across the country to consider new laws on live event ticketing (Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management).

There’s no question what motivated state Rep. Kelly Moller to push for changes in Minnesota law on concert ticket sales.

“Really, it was the Taylor Swift debacle for me,” she said.

A self-professed Swiftie, the Democrat found herself among millions of other Americans unable to buy tickets last year to Swift’s Eras Tour.

She preregistered for tickets, but never received a code to buy them. And on the day sales went live online, she sat by as friends with codes got bumped out of the ticket queue for no apparent reason. Then Ticketmaster’s website crashed.

The ordeal convinced her that the concert ticket industry warrants more government oversight.

“I do think a lot of that is better served at the federal level, but that said, there are things we can do at the state level,” she said.

Moller introduced a bill this year that would force ticket sellers to disclose the full cost of tickets, including fees, up front to buyers in her state. It also would ban speculative ticketing — a practice in which resale companies sell tickets they don’t yet own.

The bill stalled, but Moller expects it to be reconsidered next year. It is part of a wave of legislation considered in more than a dozen states this year following the unprecedented disaster in the run-up to Swift’s Eras Tour, which is on pace to be the highest-grossing tour in history.

Swift and her legions of fans were outraged when Ticketmaster’s website crashed last November as it faced unprecedented demand from fans, bots and ticket resellers ahead of her tour. Social media blew up over the fiasco, and news organizations published story after story. It sparked bipartisan legislative proposals in Congress, though no bill has become law yet.

That’s led state legislatures to step in: Lawmakers of both parties across the country introduced new bills this year to regulate concert and live event ticket purchasing.

It’s a rare bipartisan issue in statehouses. But lawmakers are learning how complicated — and controversial — the world of online ticketing is. In several states, legislators are caught in the middle between companies like Ticketmaster and secondary sellers such as StubHub.

“There are a lot of issues that beg for a national focus, a national solution. But because of the political dynamics in Washington, D.C., we haven’t gotten very many solutions. … So states believe they have to act,” said California state Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat.

Dodd sponsored a bill this year that would ban so-called junk fees on tickets — fees tacked onto the base price that lawmakers view as deceptive. The proposal targets other services, including hotel and resort fees, but Dodd said concerts were a major driver. President Joe Biden called out junk fees in his State of the Union address in February and has publicly praised companies that have committed to transparent pricing, such as Airbnb and Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company.

Dodd said he isn’t hostile to ticket marketplaces such as Ticketmaster and StubHub. He uses those sites to buy tickets to concerts and basketball games. But, he said, consumers should know the full price up front. The White House estimates junk fees cost Americans more than $65 billion per year.

“It’s outrageous,” he said, “and I think Californians are sick and tired of dishonest fees being tacked onto just anything.”

Dodd’s bill, which was backed by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, passed the state Senate and is pending in the Assembly. It is one of several ticketing bills considered by Golden State lawmakers this session.

The state Senate unanimously passed a proposal from Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk that he said targets the “stranglehold” some companies have over sales. The bill would prohibit exclusivity clauses in contracts between a primary ticket seller such as Ticketmaster and an entertainment venue in California. Wilk said in his news release it would allow artists to work with other ticket sellers without the fear of retaliation from large ticket sellers — and ultimately reduce fees for consumers. It’s in committee in the Assembly.

‘The states are where it’s at’

Earlier this year, the Colorado legislature passed a bill that would have required sellers to fully disclose the total cost of event tickets, prohibited vendors from raising prices during the buying process and banned speculative ticketing.

But Democratic Gov. Jared Polis vetoed the act in June, saying it could prevent competition and “risk upsetting the successful entertainment ecosystem in Colorado.”

Chris Castle, an entertainment lawyer who tracks ticket legislation across the country, said the Colorado veto illustrates the industry’s ability to sway public officials.

Polis referenced concerns he heard from the National Consumers League and the Consumer Federation of America. Both of those consumer advocacy groups have received funding from secondary ticket marketplaces such as StubHub, the music publication Pitchfork reported.

“It’d be easy enough to say, ‘Well, I heard from the stakeholders, and I thought these guys had the better argument.’ But he didn’t say that,” Castle said of Polis. “He starts talking about these groups. And sure enough, it turns out, they’re all on the take.”

Conor Cahill, the governor’s spokesperson, did not answer questions about the influence of ticket marketplaces on the veto, but said Polis will apply a “consumer-first lens” to future legislation on the issue.

The National Consumers League has no problem being associated with groups like StubHub, said John Breyault, the organization’s vice president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud. He said the group shares a common belief with resellers that the marketplace needs more competition, not less. But it still disagrees on some specific issues, he said.

“There are problems at every level of the industry including in the secondary market that we are trying to address through both our advocacy at the state level and our advocacy at the federal level,” Breyault said.

Bills in several states backed by StubHub aim to protect so-called transferability of tickets — that is, the customers’ right to pass on or resell tickets they purchase.

Six states — Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Utah and Virginia — currently protect the right of fans to transfer or sell tickets. Without that right, some advocates say Ticketmaster’s terms and conditions can ban transferring tickets or require that they be resold on their own platform.

StubHub makes no secret of its efforts to educate and persuade state lawmakers.

“The states are really where it’s at in a lot of ways,” said Laura Dooley, the company’s head of global government relations. “Our industry right now is almost exclusively regulated at the state level.”

This year, the company has tracked nearly 70 ticketing bills proposed across 25 states. Dooley said many state lawmakers introduce new regulations with good intentions, but don’t always understand the industry.

As an example, she pointed to state efforts to ban bots — software that can bypass security measures in online ticketing systems and buy tickets in bulk faster than humans.

Ticketmaster cited bots as a major cause of the Eras Tour fiasco. Bots are banned by federal law, though that regulation only has been enforced once since 2016, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Dooley said StubHub isn’t opposed to state bot bans, but does push legislators to consider enforcement measures in crafting their bills. That’s because regulators need cooperation from the industry and access to ticketing software to monitor for bots, Dooley said.

Dooley contends some lawmakers’ proposed solutions don’t target root causes, including the unique way live event tickets are sold, generally through exclusive deals with one retail platform.

“When you have millions and millions of people wanting to buy a product and they’re being asked to buy that product at the same time on the same day through an exclusive retail provider — in this case Ticketmaster and in many cases Ticketmaster — that system is going to be overloaded, right? And it’s going to be a frustrating experience,” Dooley said.

Ticketmaster did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

Brian Hess, executive director of the nonprofit fan advocacy organization Sports Fans Coalition, pointed out thatlawmakers have a variety of interests to consider: the primary ticket markets like Ticketmaster, the artists, the consumer, and secondary markets like StubHub.

“Ticketing fights are far more contentious than anyone anticipates,” he said. “Each side of the market likes to blame the other side, and consumers are stuck in the middle.”

The Sports Fans Coalition is in part funded by secondary marketplaces like StubHub and lobbies on ticket legislation across the country.

Hess said federal regulators should not have allowed the 2010 merger of Live Nation, an event promoter and venue operator, with Ticketmaster, a ticket provider.

“They are the monopoly in the industry,” he said. “They were the ones that botched Taylor Swift’s tickets, and they’re the ones that continue to have ticket sale problems when they launch new shows.”

A bipartisan focus

Texas Republican state Rep. Kronda Thimesch said she saw firsthand how bots can distort the marketplace and prevent customers from purchasing tickets.

That’s what she blamed for her own daughter’s unsuccessful attempts to buy Swift tickets last year.

“Fans then have to resort to paying hundreds, if not thousands, over face value to resellers in order to see their favorite artist,” she said.

That’s why she introduced a bill banning ticket-buying bots in Texas, which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Thimesch noted that ticket issues aren’t just a problem for Swift fans — country star Zach Bryan named his December live album “All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster.” Thimesch said she is open to exploring more ticketing legislation when the Texas legislature reconvenes.

More than 1,500 miles away, Massachusetts Democratic state Sen. John Velis has a similar outlook. He’s interested in diving deep into the world of ticketing. But he’s starting off small.

“I think the art, if you will, of legislating is you kind of go little by little,” he said. “I think ticket pricing is a great and very logical place to start.”

Velis introduced a bill that would require upfront transparent ticket pricing and ban “dynamic pricing,” a practice in which sellers adjust prices based on demand. While he’s interested in eventually exploring ride shares or other services, his legislation is so far focused on concert and live event tickets, he said.

Before the Eras Tour mess, Velis said he got interested in the issue after hearing constituents and co-workers complain about exorbitant fees on live event tickets. Tickets advertised for $100 can sometimes end up costing double that once all the fees are tacked on, he said.

“I just thought to myself, ‘That is so incredibly wrong,’” he said. “If someone wants to spend their hard-earned money at $10,000 a ticket to go see Taylor Swift or Jay-Z or the Boston Celtics, giddy up. But I just want that consumer to know going into that initial transaction that they’re going to be spending $10,000.”

Velis said his bill should receive a hearing soon in the state Senate.

Jurisdictional bounds are likely to prove complicated, he acknowledged. After all, consumers often buy tickets for events in other states. But he said his bill is solely aimed at protecting consumers — a notion he says is hard to oppose.

“In my experience, this is without a doubt a bipartisan issue,” he said. “I’ve experienced nobody raising a concern from a partisan politics standpoint.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A help wanted sign is displayed at a car wash in Indianapolis. Indiana is one of many states confronting a shortage of workers, even as it has enacted measures designed to create good-paying jobs there. Lawmakers across the nation say they are trying to address major workforce shortages in their states. (Michael Conroy/The Associated Press)

INDIANAPOLIS — For years, Indiana’s GOP-controlled legislature has focused on creating a business-friendly climate by pushing favorable tax rates and regulations, aiming to foster the creation of good-paying jobs across the state.

The way Republican state Sen. Michael Crider sees it, those moves have worked: Companies such as Amazon and Walmart have built new warehouses and fulfillment centers in his district just east of Indianapolis.

But it didn’t take long for him to realize how all those new private-sector jobs could further strain short-handed local governments, particularly school systems, by luring away bus drivers and teachers’ aides.

“That is a general theme in almost every conversation: An able-bodied person that desires to work can find a job just about anywhere in Indiana right now,” said Crider, the Senate majority whip. “And it’s reached the point where I think in some areas, businesses are saying we can’t expand, we would like to expand, we would expand, but we cannot because we don’t have enough workers.”

State legislators from across the country point to the labor shortage as a major concern. While they have been pushing job training and career readiness programs, they increasingly are addressing other factors that can keep people from joining the workforce, such as a lack of child care, affordable housing or mental health services. Some want to attract more immigrants.

The national worker shortage and those indirect solutions came up time and again during the annual summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which brought hundreds of lawmakers, policy experts and lobbyists together at the Indiana Convention Center.

Crider, for example, said a persistent lack of mental health resources has limited the work potential of some people in his state.

“It not only keeps people out of the workforce, but it also affects people’s attendance and focus on the task at hand when somebody in their family is struggling,” he said. “And so that’s one of the things I think we talked about quite a bit.”

Research from Indiana’s behavioral health commission in 2022 found that mental illness was costing the state more than $4 billion in lost productivity and health care costs each year. The potential to improve worker productivity was one reason the legislature earlier this year near-unanimously approved Crider’s legislation that overhauled the state’s antiquated mental health system and aims to infuse $130 million more per year into services.

Crider said the workforce shortage requires a comprehensive set of solutions. Quality of life is as important as job opportunities — and that is especially true for remote workers who can live anywhere.

Doug Howard, senior vice president of human services at government services provider Maximus, said employers across the country have had to get creative to fill job openings: Some have lured retirees back into the workforce or targeted young people for part-time work.

“The punchline here is that we don’t have enough people,” he told a group of lawmakers at the summit.

Howard cited federal labor data showing there are nearly 10 million unfilled jobs across the country, but just under 6 million people seeking jobs. The nation’s labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of the civilian population in the workforce, has not returned to its pre-pandemic rate, which even then had steadily been falling for decades. (In July, the national rate was 62.6% compared with 66.2% in July 2003.)

“Those all equal a math problem,” he said.

Those challenges are only exacerbated by state efforts to recruit new employers. A new factory doesn’t just need workers on the assembly line, Howard noted. Contractors need workers to build the plant. Those workers need housing. And both permanent and temporary workers need child care.

States target housing and child care

While the labor market has been squeezed since the pandemic recovery, experts say things could still get worse.

In Indianapolis, several labor experts said three massive federal spending bills will heighten the need for workers: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. The infrastructure bill alone is expected to spend $1.2 trillion on bridges, ports and mass transit systems.

“That is a lot of money for projects at a time when the U.S. is facing a very tight labor market,” Suzanne Hultin, the director of the National Conference of State Legislatures’ employment, labor and retirement program, said during one panel in Indianapolis.

New Hampshire Democratic state Rep. Brian Sullivan said the impending federal investments weren’t on his radar before the conference — but definitely are now.

“If we can’t fill the jobs we’ve got now and we start building more manufacturing plants and that sort of thing, who’s going to work there?” he said.

The ranking member of the New Hampshire House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee, Sullivan said he views housing as a major driver of workforce challenges in his state.

He pointed to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, New Hampshire’s only academic medical center and an employer of more than 8,000 people.

“They are having huge problems being able to attract workers who then can find some place to live,” Sullivan said in an interview with Stateline. “They’re not bad jobs. But the cost of housing is so high that a lot of these people will say, ‘I can’t work here, I’ve got to go live somewhere where I can afford housing.’”

Sullivan said two recently launched bipartisan special committees — one on workforce housing and one on child care — should help tackle labor challenges. He expects legislation soon from those efforts, though the legislature has already added $60 million for child care services.

“I don’t know if it’s the best way,” Sullivan said. “But it’s the way the legislature can contribute. I think employers are going to have to contribute and I think it’s got to be a communitywide effort.”

In Washington state, a lack of child care is a major driver of the labor shortage, said Democratic state Sen. Karen Keiser. While all industries have struggled to hire, she said hospitality and health care employers are especially hard pressed in Washington.

“There are so many workers who cannot work unpredictable schedules because they do not have reliable child care,” she said. “Well, hospitality has unpredictable schedules and so does health care. And those kinds of systemic problems are just running up against each other.”

In 2021, Washington state approved a $1.1 billion plan to make child care and early learning programs more affordable and accessible. This year, the legislature added more than $400 million in new funds to raise child care provider pay and increase subsidies for families over the next two years.

Keiser, president pro tempore of the state Senate, said the ongoing labor shortage does provide workers more leverage, even if it’s a pain for employers.

“And that’s good,” she said, “because they have seen pay stagnation for the last 20 years. … At the same time, we do need to get to work. We need the economy to grow.”

Immigration, education efforts

North Dakota Republican state Rep. Karen Karls sees it in the grocery stores.

She used to encounter mostly young people running registers and bagging groceries in the capital city of Bismarck. Now, many of those workers are older adults.

“That’s a little scary,” said Karls, a 17-year veteran of the legislature. “Their work ethic is fabulous, but I just think we need younger workers.”

She said the problem in North Dakota is complex: She blames the pandemic for getting people “used to not working.” For others, it instilled a strong preference for remote work, a challenge for many employers demanding on-site attendance, she said.

North Dakota has more than 20,000 job openings — a huge number for a state of just over 770,000 people. The state has 0.3 unemployed people per job opening, per the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We’re just not having enough babies,” Karls said.

The state is examining immigration as a potential solution.

In April, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed bipartisan legislation creating the Office of Legal Immigration within the state’s Department of Commerce to help businesses recruit and retain foreign labor.

And Brent Sanford, a former GOP lieutenant governor, is leading a pilot program called Uniting for Ukraine. Run by the North Dakota Petroleum Council, the program brings refugees and migrants from Ukraine to work in the state’s Bakken oil fields. Karls said jobs in that remote portion of the state pay very well, but because the oil patch is surrounded by very small towns, housing is a major struggle for workers.

Not all lawmakers agree state government should help private companies.

“I think it’s more of a free market issue,” said Texas Democratic state Rep. Penny Morales Shaw. “Employers have to figure out a way to retain people, they’ve got to figure out a way to attract people.”

In Arkansas, the state government has focused on building up careers in the trades.

Arkansas state Rep. Stephen Meeks, a Republican, pointed to the state’s Be Pro Be Proud campaign. An initiative led by the Associated Industries of Arkansas Foundation, it encourages young people to enter fields such as construction, railroading and manufacturing.

State leaders even hold a Draft Day, pairing graduating seniors enrolled in career and technical education courses with employers ready to hire them.

Meeks said the state has also had a difficult time filling public school teaching positions.

That was part of the motivation behind the state’s LEARNS Act, which passed earlier this year. In addition to a new school voucher program, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ signature education bill also raised minimum teacher pay to $50,000 across the state.

Meeks said some Arkansas teachers were making as little as $36,000 per year before that legislation, making it difficult for the state to retain teachers whose degrees could command a higher salary in the private sector.

“I think that’ll definitely help,” he said, “especially in the rural areas of our state.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.