This report investigated attempts in RI to make childcare affordable. The Child Care Assistance Program provides assistance to working families who cannot afford expensive childcare. A pilot program was launched to allow parents enrolled in CCAP to increase their earning and maintain child care assistance. Another Pilot enables parents to participate in short-term child care training.

The Solar Incentive Program (SIP) is the most established rooftop solar program in the City of Los Angeles. It originated at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2000 with a $150 million investment to incentivize the poliferation of rooftop solar in Los Angeles. With the passage of Senate Bill 1 (2007), the SIP was revised to comply with state law. The updated, 10 year, $313 million program, subsidizes photovoltaic solar panel installation for residential, commercial, non-profit, and governmental customers. This research identifies the geographic reach the program over the past 15 years through analysis of data that is available on DWP’s website and US Census data.

\\\"Interest in state and federal campaign finance has soared, following the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United v. FEC ruling in 2010. Discussions of Super PACs and 501(c) groups are now commonplace, and candidates’ campaign accounts are meticulously watched for hints of strength or weakness. However, political contributions are flowing in large amounts to a widely overlooked destination: local elections.1 2 Although these races often do not receive the headlines of their state and federal counterparts, the election results can have a great effect on people’s everyday lives. School curriculum, zoning, and local tax code are just some examples of policy determined by the elected local boards, councils, and executives who carry out local governance. Knowing who funded their campaigns is an essential component of maintaining an effective, accountable democracy. As part of a project funded by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Institute on Money in State Politics examined the state of local candidate campaign finance disclosure in Knight Foundation’s 26 communities.3 This report identifies some of the best practices for candidate campaign finance disclosure in three key areas—completeness, timeliness, and accessibility—and highlights those Knight Foundation communities that have instituted such practices.\\\"

On April 30, President Barack Obama signed into law the Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015, a much pared-down version of a bill that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Sen. Rob Portman have been pushing for several years. Several other energy-efficiency bills just underwent hearings in Congress. At the same time, the House Appropriations Committee has just voted to slash federal research on energy efficiency, and several bills to impede efficiency efforts are advancing. Thus it remains to be seen whether the EEIA has broken the logjam on energy-efficiency legislation, and will be followed by a gush of other bills, or is an anomaly in a Congress that is much friendlier to fossil fuels than to clean energy. This column begins with a description of the new enactment. It then discusses the other pending energy-efficiency legislation, and it concludes with a summary of the appropriations actions.

Alongside the celebrated entertainment venues and storied restaurants, New Orleans is a center of international trade and industry, as it has been for 300 years – but now with much more and better infrastructure. Today this network of river ports, railroads, pipelines and interstates converges in the super region encompassing both New Orleans and Baton Rouge, LA, where it supports a growing and diversifying economy. In this environment, there is a major opportunity for the super region of New Orleans–Baton Rouge to capture community value from the largely underutilized rail system as the region grows through transit-oriented development (TOD) and cargo-oriented development (COD).

This document concludes a series of papers sponsored by the Ford Foundation on the subject of metrics for Cargo-Oriented Development (COD). This concise report is prepared for the benefit of corporate executives, public officials, and policy makers who want to quickly gain a familiarity with the core ideas of COD and the means of assessing it. The following links provide access to the interim COD reports, which paved the way for the development of the COD metrics. The accompanying technical report is forthcoming and will provide a more in-depth discussion of what COD entails and ways to measure its achievement.

The large and growing volume of litigation in the U.S. courts about climate change has received an avalanche of analysis in the professional and academic literatures. In contrast, climate litigation outside the United States is little known on these shores and has gotten far less attention. This column analyzes non-U.S. climate litigation specifically looking at relative breadths of ambition, statistical findings, and climate change induced migration. In addition to this, the author also speaks specifically to climate litigation in Australia.

On June 29, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule on mercury from power plants. The decision, Michigan v. EPA, is less significant for its effect on mercury emissions than for what it says about the court\'s deference to EPA in cases of statutory ambiguity. This column discusses the background and context of the case; the majority and dissenting opinions; and the decision\'s implications for mercury emissions, for judicial review of administrative actions, and for the Clean Power Plan

Developing an empirical model for parking utilization in Washington, D.C and creating to an interactive, web-based tool utilizing the model named ParkRight DC, to support and guide parking supply decisions. A transparent, data driven process for parking supply decisions may help relieve problems associated with over- or under-supply of parking. This paper outlines the data collection, model development process, functionality of the resulting tool, and findings on key relationships and policy implications.

Outlines the need and future benefits of connecting more Cook County residents to jobs and amenities to which they have limited access through the current hub-and-spoke transit system.