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Information and Intelligence on the 50 States & Congress | ||
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Hot Issues
Lawmakers will spend much of their energy in 2011 dealing with ongoing budget shortfalls. But money woes are far from the only issues that will dominate statehouses next year:
Mortgage Foreclosure Protection
With hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders still facing possible foreclosure, states will continue to take action to help slow the foreclosure rate including requiring lenders to give borrowers more time to work out a plan to avoid default.
Pension Reform
Cash-strapped states are seeking to make pensions more manageable while moderating losses experienced by most retirement trust funds. Likely measures will increase transparency, more tightly regulate management of trust funds and place limits on the type of investments pension plans can make. State efforts to increase the amount public workers must contribute to their own pension plans or move workers from defined-benefit to defined-contribution plans can also be expected.
Expect to see a host of bills related to subjects like credit card rate changes, transaction rates charged to stores when consumers use a credit card, regulation of gift cards, fees for check overage protection, consumer opt-out techniques and the use of on-campus credit card marketing to college students.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as signed into law in March of 2010, places copious responsibility on states. While the feds seem more than willing to kickstart expansion with a pile of money, it is left to the states to create and implement health insurance exchanges by 2014. Coupled with numerous other provisions that go into effect over the course of the next several years, we expect to see a flurry of health care reform activity in the states.
Prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and cancer, will continue to be of great interest to state legislatures. Costs associated with the treatment of chronic conditions can be high, and as states examine their balance sheets, these costs will certainly come under review. Expect to see targeted disease prevention campaigns and more disease-management programs for Medicaid recipients.
When CALIFORNIA lawmakers endorsed AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, numerous states soon followed suit with plans of their own to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. Now all eyes are on the Golden State to see how it will go about implementing the plan, which calls for a 25 percent carbon emissions reduction by 2020.
With Congress seemingly content to turn national energy policy into permanent political limbo, expect key environmental issues to move entirely to the states. Regulatory agencies are expected to explore renewable energy portfolio standards to measure the impact of the growth of solar and wind power. States are expected to take a close looks at the efficiency and cost of biofuels, their effect on the environment, and well as manufacturing product that will use these fuels
With the Obama administration now dangling a $4 billion carrot, many states are already feverishly working to change their education policies in order to qualify for "Race to the Top" federal education grants. Plans include raising or eliminating caps on charter schools, linking teacher evaluations to student performance and taking greater action on dealing with failing schools.
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