A small town in western Mass. may be the 'canary in the coal mine' for cash-strapped municipalities across the U.S.

Anti-override activists insisted South Hadley town officials need
to address inefficiencies instead of raising taxes. 

After weeks of intense debate and campaigning, residents of South Hadley, Massachusetts, shot down a proposed 50% property tax increase, reports Scott Calvert of The Wall Street Journal. “South Hadley is a warning sign for financially strained municipalities across the U.S."

By 65% to 34% vote, residents from this small community rejected a "measure to allow the western Massachusetts college town to raise $11 million in new property taxes through what is called an override," Calvert explains. "A $9 million proposal also failed."

Override proponents said the town needed the cash infusion to address its current $3 million deficit, fund school operations and address rising costs. Calvert writes, "Override foes said a hefty property tax jump would overburden residents, particularly seniors."

Rudy Ternbach, who led the anti-override group Alliance for Fair Taxes, told the Journal, “Voters do not want to try and fix the government by increasing taxes on those least able to pay. They want more efficiencies in government and less taxes.”

South Hadley’s financial squeeze, partially due to a 42% increase in healthcare costs and declining state aid, may be part of a national trend, Calvert reports. Many municipalities are draining the last of their pandemic aid even as costs continue to rise.

Ternbach wants the town to "extract more money from Mount Holyoke College. . . which is largely tax-exempt," Calvert writes. "Both sides in the override debate want the college to do more."

Without additional taxes, local officials say, "there will be deep cuts: no school sports or extracurriculars and slashed Advanced Placement offerings, along with hits to police and public-works staffing," Calvert adds.

Chris Morrill, an expert in public finance, told Calvert, "It’s really a preview of what communities across the country are going to face. I think South Hadley’s perhaps the canary in the coal mine.” 

Data center developments force farmers to make tough choices

Data centers can devastate nearby farmlands by depleting a
regions aquifer. (Graphic by Adam Dixon, Offrange)

Despite the financial windfall some farmers could get from selling their land to data center developers, many are rejecting those offers because they don't want the energy-sapping, water-draining structures on their land.

Lands across Indiana's farm belt have "become an especial target for hyperscale facilities," reports Lela Nargi for Offrange. The battle within the state, both for and against land sales for data centers, is "illustrative of the challenges that farmers in particular are up against."

The per-acre land payments, often in the thousands, that data center developers are paying to some farmland owners are part of the problem for active farmers. When developers pay more than market value for properties, overall property taxes rise, leaving farmers struggling to pay them.

Currently, there are roughly 40 data center proposals for land throughout Indiana. Kiley Blalock, a third-generation Indiana farmer, is "fighting a proposed 585-acre data center that abuts some of her farmland in Henry County," Nargi writes. "The facility would be built on land sold by the property’s non-farming heirs — no one knows for how much."

Even if a data center is built on uncontested property, the resources it will inevitably require can devastate surrounding farms. Data centers gobble vast amounts of electricity and water. "A hyperscale data center can use upwards of 8 million gallons of water per year, mostly for cooling its servers," Nargi explains.

Taking millions of gallons from a regional aquifer without any process to replace it could leave crops and cattle thirsty and cause local wells to run dry. Farmers fear a data center could render the surrounding farmland useless.

According to data center critics, data center developers haven't done much to address local fears beyond making promises that are "rarely backed up in clear, detailed, contractual writing," Nargi reports.

Rural hospitals struggling to stay open can't use the newly created $50 billion federal fund to survive

President Trump signs his bill of tax breaks and spending cuts.
(Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson, AP via the Yonder)

Rural hospitals struggling to stay open will be unable to manage financial shortages caused by ongoing Medicaid cuts with funds from the Rural Health Transformation Program, which sets aside $50 billion in federal dollars for rural hospitals. Liz Carey for The Daily Yonder reports, "The legislation itself specifically says RHTP funds cannot be used as an offset for Medicaid. And the administration in multiple avenues has specifically said this cannot be used to keep rural hospitals open, period.”

During summer budget negotiations, lawmakers created the RHTP program and touted it as a way to protect rural hospitals; however, the totals don't balance each other out. "Federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is expected to drop by about $15.5 billion per year over the next 10 years," Carey explains. The Rural Health Transformation Program "will provide about $10 billion per year over five years. Many industry experts say that’s not enough."

Although lawmakers may have said the fund was to keep rural hospitals open, the program isn't designed to save struggling medical centers in the short term. Instead, states that apply to the program must include a "rural transformation plan" that outlines how they will improve services, cut costs and deploy technology with RHTP funding aimed at long-term solvency.

Any state that receives RHTP funding will also be "assessed for additional funding based on its population, the number of rural health facilities it has, and the situation of the hospitals in the state to receive additional funds," Carey explains. "Additional funds would also be allocated based on 'how well state applications align with program strategic goals,'" which includes the HHS Make America Healthy Again initiative.

At its core, RHTP funds won't help financially strapped hospitals stay open, and rural residents will likely face more struggles to access providers and care. Alan Morgan, president of the National Rural Health Association, told the Yonder, "The $50 billion cannot by legislation (and is not by the administration) going to be used to help rural hospitals keep their doors open. This $50 billion is about sustaining healthcare for the future. It has nothing to do with maintaining access today.”

IRS union objects to closing in-person taxpayer assistance offices in six states

Closed TAC offices could create filing obstacles for
some taxpayers. (Adobe Stock photo)

As the IRS moves to close nine taxpayer assistance center (TAC) offices in six states, rural and underserved areas may find it harder to file and pay their taxes. The National Treasury Employees Union asked the IRS to reconsider the closures, reports Sean Michael Newhouse of Government Executive. The IRS planned the closures to cut overhead costs.

While the agency promised its closures won't result in job losses, closing in-person tax offices will make it harder for some U.S. residents to handle their taxes. Doreen Greenwald, NTEU's president, issued a statement saying, "These communities will have to drive longer distances, possibly 100 miles or more to meet with the IRS and get their questions answered.”

TAC offices slated for closure on Nov. 30 are: Altoona and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Elmira and West Nyack, New York; Owensboro and Paducah, Kentucky; Walnut Creek, California; and Wheeling, West Virginia.

The IRS also promised TAC closures won't reduce taxpayer services, which Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents West Nyack, N.Y., questioned in a letter to Scott Bessent, the acting IRS commissioner: "Closing this office without providing a suitable replacement will impose an undue burden on my constituents. . . .Forcing them to travel farther distances — often without reliable access to transportation — adds unnecessary barriers to fulfilling their obligations as taxpayers.”

The planned closures are a reversal of IRS outreach efforts. Newhouse writes, "The IRS had used funding from President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to open or reopen 54 centers, bringing the total number to more than 360."

Particularly for rural populations, which often have few tax service options nearby or can lack reliable broadband for online communication, TAC offices serve as a way for rural folks to file correctly and on time. Greenwald said, “Reducing the number of customer service centers reverses the progress that the IRS has made when it comes to being accessible and helpful to the American people."

Policy director for Rural Democracy Initiative warns of budget bill’s ‘devastating’ impacts

Members of the 119th House applaud the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (The Hill video reel photo)

After weeks of wrangling, the U.S. House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" on May 22. The bill, which has moved to the U.S. Senate, includes massive spending cuts to support tax cut extensions and additional tax cuts.

Michael Chameides, the communications and policy director for the Rural Democracy Initiative, in an opinion piece published in Iowa's Times-Republican, points out six ways the bill could hurt rural residents. He writes, "I’ve been hearing from rural leaders across the country about the devastating impacts this bill would have. . . .The good news is it’s not too late. But there’s little time to spare." 

Here are the six concerns Chameides cited:

1. The bill "guts" rural health care. "It would take health care away from 13.8 million Americans and increase the cost for millions more. In some states, 50% of rural children get healthcare from Medicaid. Millions more rely on access to clinics and hospitals that would likely close because of these cuts."

2. It cuts federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending. "More than 15% of families in small towns and rural areas rely on this support to feed their families."

(The Department of Agriculture canceled "about $660 million in funding this year for the Local Food for Schools program, which is active in 40 U.S. states," reports Aimee Picchi of CBS News. The cuts were announced in March and have left schools and farmers scrambling.)

3. The bill shifts more costs onto state and local governments. "Slashing federal funding to states would create new burdens for rural states that are already struggling to provide critical public services like health care, transportation, and emergency response services to local communities."

4. It takes away local land control. "Landowners have fought to stop the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines by passing bans and moratoria. . . .This bill would overrule state and local laws and ordinances. . . and deprive residents of a fair opportunity to evaluate the adverse impacts of pipelines."

5. The bill phases out clean energy and infrastructure spending, including tax credits. "It would also take away $262 million in funding for energy efficiency and conservation grants as well as transportation infrastructure. . . .Ending these tax credits will increase household energy costs, which are already higher in many rural communities."

6. The bill favors bigger agribusiness companies and mega-farms. "Leaders in Congress are using the budget reconciliation process to give big farms a $50 billion windfall. Add the heightened pressures and instability caused by the Trump administration’s erratic trade policy and more family farmers would lose their farms — while Big Ag consolidates more of the market."

Chameides calls on rural residents and businesses to speak up: “Lawmakers have already heard from the giant corporations who helped write the bill. Now they need to hear from the rest of us. It’s up to us to alert our communities and tell our lawmakers: Don’t sell rural America out to big corporations and the wealthy.”

A longer version of the Times-Republican op-ed was originally published by Barn Raiser. To learn more about what could happen to the bill in the Senate, click here. 

The Republican tax break plan would give many Americans more money, but most cuts would end in early 2029

 Many lawmakers seek Medicaid cuts to pay for
the new tax legislation. (Adobe Stock photo)

The tax break plan currently being crafted by Republicans on Capitol Hill would put more cash in the hands of many Americans, but the strategy comes with a catch: Many of the cuts will end when President Trump's second term comes to a close. "Almost all of the cuts that Republicans hope to pass in the coming weeks will last only until President Trump is set to leave office," reports Andrew Duehren of The New York Times.

Despite the short-term gains, many Americans may see the cuts as a hard-earned respite from years of post-pandemic inflation. They include "a $500 increase to the child tax credit and a $1,000 bonus to the standard deduction, as well as Trump’s pledges to not tax tips or overtime pay," Duehren writes. "The effect would be to shower many Americans with hundreds of dollars per year, starting when they file taxes next year, a windfall that would dry up as Mr. Trump leaves office."

Not every tax break will be time-limited. "Much of the legislation is focused on preserving the architecture of the last Republican tax cut, passed during Trump’s first term," explains Duehren. For instance, the lower income rates for individual filers and the larger standard deduction would remain intact.

Tax policy experts do not see the new cuts substantially impacting the U.S. economy. Duehren reports, "The Tax Foundation, a think tank that is generally bullish on tax cuts’ ability to spur economic growth, estimated this week that the bill would increase gross domestic product by 0.6% in the long term."

Part of the money needed to pay for the tax cuts will come from Medicaid cuts. "More than eight million low-income Americans could lose their health insurance as a result of the Medicaid cuts that the G.O.P. has drafted," Duehren adds. "All while the biggest benefits of the tax cuts would flow to high-income Americans who owe the most in income tax . . . ."

PBS and NPR executives pledge to push back 'very hard' against White House efforts to end taxpayer support

PBS’s Paula Kerger

PBS and NPR leaders say they are exploring legal options to protect their services from President Trump's executive order barring them from receiving taxpayer dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

PBS’s chief executive, Paula Kerger, "told CBS News’s Face the Nation that Republican-led threats to withdraw federal funding from public broadcasters had been around for decades but are 'different this time,' reports Edward Helmore of The Guardian. NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher agreed and said that both services will be "'pushing back very hard, because what’s at risk are our stations, our public television, our public radio stations across the country.'"

The White House maintains that taxpayer dollars should not support biased broadcasting. Helmore writes, "The order added: 'Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.'"

NPR’s Katherine Maher

As the battle ensues, services to many rural Americans would be the first affected. Helmore reports, "Maher said in an April interview with NPR that rural stations would see the biggest impact. 'You could see some of those stations really having to cut back services or potentially going away altogether.'" NPR radio has historically been one place rural Americans turned to for emergency alerts and safety directions.

PBS stations in rural areas could also face shortfalls and possible cuts. Helmore adds, "A fact sheet from PBS says on average federal funds make up 15% of their revenue, but a funding cut would be especially acute for smaller and rural stations."

It's uncertain how Trump's executive order will be implemented. "The CPB’s budget is already approved by Congress through 2027, and in a statement to The New York Times, CPB’s president, Patricia Harrison, said the agency was not subject to the president’s authority," Helmore reports. “'Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private non-profit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,' she said."

On the whole, the CPB spends "more money on less populated states," reports Alex Curley of Current. "We can also say that, despite a few blue-leaning outliers like the District of Columbia and Vermont, public media stations in states that voted Republican in the last Presidential election tended to get more Community Service Grants, or CSG money, per person than in states that voted Democrat."

The CPB awards money through its Community Service Grants, or CSGs.
(Graphic by Alex Curley, Current, from CPB data)

Fentanyl imports saturate U.S. illicit drug market. U.S. tariffs aim to curb its transit as fentanyl continues to kill.

The global drug problem has ended countless lives.
(Unsplash image)

More than 70% of drug overdose deaths are due to opioids, with fentanyl as the main assailant. From August 2023 to 2024, 89,740 people died from overdoses in the United States. This number is 22% less than than the year prior, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projections.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 100 times stronger than other opioids like morphine, heroin or oxycodone. Its main use, as approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is as a pain reliever. Often fentanyl is mixed into other drugs as a cheap way to make them stronger. According to José de Córdoba, Vipal Monga, Julie Wernau and Brian Spegele of the Wall Street Journal, “The drug is cheap to make, provides huge profit margins and is easy to smuggle.”

“President Trump has declared that the illegal transit into the U.S. of migrants and drugs, chiefly fentanyl, is a national emergency, and he has targeted Mexico, Canada and China with tariffs to force them to halt the flow,” reports the Journal.

According to the Journal, Canada responded to the fentanyl problem in 2024, saying that it would invest "$900 million over six years to improve security." China cracked down on the production and sale of fentanyl in 2019, however it continues "to produce the chemical ingredients used to make fentanyl and to sell them to drug producers in Mexico, the U.S. and elsewhere.” Mexico also said that it would increase border security to focus on preventing drugs from crossing the border.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum, “whose top security concern is a war between two factions of the Sinaloa cartel, said she asked for Trump’s help in stopping the smuggling of weapons to Mexico that end up in the hands of cartels,” reports the Journal.

Report: The IRS has gotten better at helping rural and 'underserved' markets but still has room to improve

TIGTA analysis of IRS TAC, VITA, TCI and LITC locations and
SSA shared office space by zip code.

For rural residents, getting help from the Internal Revenue Service might be a bit easier than it was a year ago; however, the agency still needs to  improve its outreach to help "underserved" people, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Sean Michael Newhouse of Government Executive reports, "A watchdog report published last week offered new insights on how the IRS can better use the nearly $58 billion in funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to improve taxpayer services for underserved, underrepresented and rural individuals."

While the TIGTA report recognized some improvements, it noted that the "IRS does not currently have a definition for what an underserved taxpayer is," Newhouse explains. "While IRS officials told investigators that they use different models to identify such taxpayers, the inspector general argued this practice has resulted in disparate definitions across the agency."

The report also recommended the agency use strategic communication tools to inform underserved residents about available tax assistance programs. Newhouse reports, "For example, investigators did not find any information on the IRS website about outreach events for rural taxpayers or the agency’s virtual assistance program. That being said, since the virtual service started in 2022, a total of 46 employees have helped more than 22,000 taxpayers."

Because reaching underserved populations is a challenge, investigators suggested the IRS piggyback its office locations with or near other government service offices, such as the Social Security Administration office. 

Lawmakers in some states are working to provide property tax relief because of soaring home values, increased bills

(Photo by Jennifer Grismer, Unsplash)

Alongside soaring home values, U.S. property taxes have increased, leaving some homeowners struggling to pay eye-popping bills. "The typical home value in Idaho increased from $275,852 in November 2019 to $434,224 this November — a 57% increase over four years, according to data provided by real estate giant Zillow, which tracks the average of the middle one-third of home values," reports Kevin Hardy of Stateline. Property tax rates are "generally set by local governments, not legislatures. But public pressure has compelled lawmakers in several states, including Idaho, to use surplus state revenues to mitigate property tax hikes."

Commenting on the public outcry, Idaho state Rep. Jason Monks told Hardy, "The biggest problem was they just went up so quickly. … I think that's one of the reasons why it became this rallying cry from the people asking for tax relief." Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, a pro-business research organization, told Hardy: "In virtually every state where the legislature meets this year, property tax relief bills will be filed. This is a front-of-mind issue for many legislators across the country."

However, intervening in property taxes is complex, and failure to do it correctly could leave some coffers empty because the money is being used for tax relief. "The effort across the country to provide property tax relief has sparked some concern that states could go too far, jeopardizing revenue for school districts and local governments," Hardy explains. "And some policymakers worry about overly broad relief that could benefit the wealthiest property owners at the expense of those most in need."

Colorado lawmakers are trying for a measured approach, which is difficult when the state's "landscape ranges from rural ranching communities to booming urban and suburban markets," Hardy reports. Democratic state Rep. Marc Snyder told Hardy: "I've been struggling with this. It's really hard to come up with a statewide solution when you have such a variety of situations in Colorado."

Democratic state Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy said he "wants to ensure that Colorado's school and fire districts have the revenue sources they need to operate well. But he's wary of tax relief that is overly broad," Hardy adds. Kennedy told him: "I want to make sure that whatever we do to provide property tax or rent assistance is done in the most targeted way possible so that we're actually giving the dollars to the people that need them, rather than doing across-the-board cuts."

Hardrock mining companies pay 'a pittance' for minerals mined from public lands. Some say taxpayers need more.

A copper mine shaft 1,100 feet below the surface near
Superior, Ariz. (Photo by Tamir Kalifa, The New York Times)

Since 1872, mining companies have taken stores of gold and other metals from public lands without paying royalty fees to the federal government. The Biden administration says lawmakers need to "fix the Gold Rush-era General Mining Law so it can better manage the mineral resources buried under millions of acres of public land," reports Lisa Friedman of The New York Times. "A top priority: require companies to pay something in exchange for what they take. Unlike companies that extract oil, gas and coal from federal lands, hardrock miners pay no royalties to the federal government."

Initial plans suggest a 4 to 8 percent fee of the net value of mined materials, which "could translate into as much as $97 million annually and drew sharp opposition from mining operators," Friedman writes. Tommy Beaudreau, the deputy secretary of the Interior Department, told Friedman: "The biggest takeaway from our report is that our 150-year-old-law, the 1872 mining law, needs to be reformed and brought into the 21st century."

Beaudreau heads up a "working group of officials across federal agencies who reviewed policies and regulations for hardrock mining," Friedman explains. "The group found the law did not do enough to steer mineral exploration away from sensitive resources or to promote 'early and meaningful' engagement with tribes or other affected communities. . . . And the law should require mining companies that take resources from public lands to pay something for that privilege. . . .The report stated, [the law] 'fails to provide the American taxpayer with any direct financial compensation for the value of hardrock minerals extracted from most publicly owned lands.'"

While mining operations pay state royalties and taxes, operators on federal land "only pay the U.S. government one-time claim processing fees totaling $60. Many companies also pay an annual $165 maintenance fee per site, according to the report," Friedman writes. Mining companies oppose the change. Rich Nolan, chief executive of the National Mining Association, told Friedman that the changes would "throw additional obstacles in the way of responsible domestic projects and would-be investment, forcing the U.S. to double-down on our already outsized import reliance from countries with questionable labor, safety and environmental practices."

Environmental groups praised the proposed change. Chris Wood, the president of Trout Unlimited, a conservation group, told Friedman, “It’s the only commodity produced off of our public lands where there is no tax or royalty." Friedman reports, "Wood added that money raised from federal royalties could help to clean up an estimated half a million abandoned mines scattered across the American West."

Opinion: Saving local news could also save taxpayer money

By Steven Waldman

Zak Podmore did not bring down a corrupt mayor. He did not discover secret torture sites or expose abuses by a powerful religious institution. But there was something about this one article he wrote as a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that changed my conception of the value of local news.

Podmore, then a staff journalist for the Tribune and a corps member of Report for America, a nonprofit I co-founded, published a story revealing that San Juan County, Utah, had paid a single law firm hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees. Among other things, Podmore found that the firm had overcharged the county, the poorest in the state, by $109,500. Spurred by his story, the firm paid the money back. Perhaps because it didn’t involve billions of dollars, but rather a more imaginable number, it struck me: In one story, Podmore had retrieved for the county a sum that was triple his annual salary.

Steven Waldman

I’ve grown used to talking about the threat that news deserts pose to American democracy. After all, the whole concept of democratic self-government depends on the people knowing what public officials are up to. That’s impossible without a watchdog press. Researchers have linked the decline of local news to decreased voter participation and higher rates of corruption, along with increased polarization and more ideologically extreme elected officials. At this point, I can make high-minded speeches about this stuff in my sleep, with Thomas Jefferson quotes and everything. Recently, however, I’ve come to realize that I have been ignoring a less lofty but perhaps more persuasive argument: Funding local news would more than pay for itself.

Unlike other seemingly intractable problems, the demise of local news wouldn’t cost very much money to reverse. Journalists are not particularly well compensated. Assuming an average salary of $60,000 (generous by industry standards), it would cost only about $1.5 billion a year to sustain 25,000 local-reporter positions, a rough estimate of the number that have disappeared nationwide over the past two decades. That’s two-hundredths of a percent of federal spending in 2022. I personally think this would be an amount well worth sacrificing to save American democracy. But the amazing thing is that it wouldn’t really be a sacrifice at all. If more public or philanthropic money were directed toward sustaining local news, it would most likely produce financial benefits many times greater than the cost.

What do government officials do when no one’s watching? Often, they enrich themselves or their allies at the taxpayers’ expense. In the 2000s, some years after its local paper shut down, the city of Bell, California, a low-income, overwhelmingly Latino community, raised the pay of the city manager to $787,637 and that of the police chief to $457,000. The Los Angeles Times eventually exposed the graft, and several city officials ended up in prison. Prosecutors accused them of costing taxpayers at least $5.5 million through their inflated salaries. These salaries were approved at municipal meetings, which is to say that if even one reporter (say, with a salary of $60,000) had been in attendance, the city might have saved millions of dollars.

Sometimes the work of journalists prompts government investigations into the private sector, which, in turn, produce fines that go into the public’s bank account. After the Tampa Bay Times found that a battery recycler was exposing its employees and the surrounding community to high levels of lead and other toxins, regulators fined the company $800,000. A ProPublica investigation into one firm’s questionable mortgage-backed securities prompted investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which ultimately assessed $435 million in fines. A review of more than 12,000 entries in the Investigative Reporters and Editors awards found that about one in 10 triggered fines from the government, and twice as many prompted audits.

In other cases, local-news organizations return money directly to consumers by forcing better behavior from private institutions. MLK50, a local newsroom in Memphis, teamed up with ProPublica to report that Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare had sued more than 8,300 people, many of them poor, for unpaid hospital bills. In response, the faith-based institution erased nearly $12 million in debt.

Of course, most journalism does not convert quite so immediately into cash on hand. The impacts may be enormous but indirect. One study of toxic emissions at 40,000 plants found that when newspapers reported on pollution, emissions declined by 29 percent compared with plants that were not covered. The study did not track the ripple effects, but it stands to reason that residents in the less polluted areas would have fewer health problems, which in turn would translate to lower medical costs and less lost work time. Another study, by the scholars Pengjie Gao, Chang Lee, and Dermot Murphy, looked at bond offerings in communities with and without local news from 1996 to 2015. It concluded that for each bond offering, the borrowing costs were five to 11 basis points higher in the less covered communities. That translated to additional costs of $650,000 per bond issue, on average.

One academic tried to track the economic effects even further downstream. In his book Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism, Stanford University professor James Hamilton looked at a series by KCBS in Los Angeles that uncovered a flawed restaurant-inspection program. The exposé prompted Los Angeles County to require restaurants to display their inspection scores, which in turn led to a 13.3 percent drop in L.A. County hospital admissions for food poisoning. Hamilton estimated a savings of about $148,000. In another case study, Hamilton analyzed a series by the Raleigh News & Observer that found that, because the state criminal-justice system didn’t adequately keep track of those under supervision, 580 people on probation in North Carolina killed someone from 2000 to 2008. After the state implemented reforms, murders committed by people on probation declined. Applying the statistical “value of human life” used by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Hamilton concluded that society saved about $62 million in just the first year after the policy changes. The series cost only about $200,000 to produce.

Ideally, investment in local news would come from the federal government, which has more freedom to think long-term than cash-strapped states and municipalities do. The Rebuild Local News Coalition supports legislation that would provide a refundable tax credit for news organizations that employ local reporters, and a tax break for small businesses that advertise in local news. A new version of the bill was just introduced in the House of Representatives by Republican Claudia Tenney and Democrat Suzan DelBene. Civic-minded philanthropists focused on high-impact donations should also put money into local news, given the likely societal returns. It’s impossible to quantify exactly how much money would be generated for government and consumers by restoring the health of local news. But it’s nearly as hard to deny that the investment would pay off handsomely. And the saving-democracy part? Well, that’s just gravy.

Steven Waldman is president opf the Rebuild Local News Coalition, which includes the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which publishes The Rural Blog.

News-media roundup: Unionized Gannett staffers walk out to protest CEO; company gets competition in New Mexico

Employes at 24 of the 50 unionized newsrooms of Gannett Co. will walk out Monday (and maybe also Tuesday in some cases) to protest how the company is handling its business, The Washington Post reports.

In a northwest New Mexico market where Gannett has cut back its Farmington Daily Times, the owners of the Durango Herald in southwest Colorado have started the Tri-City Record, a five-day-a-week free publication, Editor & Publisher reports. 

Writing for E&P, veteran marketer Bob Sillick lays out "membership models that create value for readers" of newspapers.

Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project, discussses with the Observer how to generate philanthropic support for local journalism. John Palfrey, presiddnet of the MacArthur Foundation, says "there are hundreds of promising new and re-energized philanthropic investment opportunities in the field of journalism."

The school committee in Amherst, Mass., is looking for a new superintendent after the student newspaper at Amherst Regional High School, The Graphic, reported accusations that counselors at the school had mistreated LGBTQ+ students, WBUR reports.

Gordon Wolf, longtime editor of the Denison Bulletin-Review in western Iowa, lost his job in a Lee Enterprises cutback. Now he's with the recioal Hispanic paper, the Carroll Times Herald reports. 

"Strengthening rural journalism will save small towns, and our democracy," writes Willliam McKenzie, senior editorial adviser at the George W. Bush Institute, and contributing columnist and former staffer at the Dallas Morning News. He says "These public and private sector efforts would help:

• Congress should consider tax laws that make it easier for struggling newspapers to become nonprofit publications.
• Lawmakers could allow subscribers to deduct their subscriptions from their taxes, just as taxpayers can do for contributions to public broadcasting operations.
• Rural papers could share back-office operations, perhaps with a larger news outlet, thereby allowing the smaller community papers to focus more of their resources on reporting.
• Nonprofit funders could help create more collaboratives like the Nebraska Journalism Trust that allow news to be shared across local communities."

Churches donated to candidates with conservative agendas; town rejected their picks; donations are under investigation

Campaign signs outside polling location at Willis Church of
Christ in Abilene, Texas. (Photo by Johnathan Johnson, ProPublica)

The issue of local churches' involvement in elections, often present but rarely highlighted, has come to the forefront in Abilene, Texas, Jessica Priest of ProPublica reports. While the Internal Revenue Service has consistently looked away from churches donating or even sermonizing in support of candidates, some in this city of 125,000 did not. "Voters in West Texas decisively rejected three conservative Christian candidates who campaigned on infusing religious values into local decision making. . . . But the support the candidates received from local churches during the race has prompted calls for state and federal investigations and triggered a local political reckoning," Priest reports. Weldon Hurt, who was elected mayor over one of the candidates, told Priest, "I think there should definitely be some penalties. . . . I think there has to be a way to curtail this from happening again. . . . I think there should be some discipline to these churches."

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported a day before the May 6 election that "three churches had donated a total of $800 to the campaign of Scott Beard, a pastor who was running for City Council," Proest writes. The donations violate The Johnson Amendment, a measure named after its author, former president Lyndon B. Johnson, when he was Senate majority leader, which prohibits nonprofits from intervening in political campaigns. "Beard, a senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship, said the donations were a mistake and that he would be returning the money. But within days after Beard's defeat to retired Air Force Col. Brian Yates, a national group that espouses the separation of church and state demanded that the IRS revoke the churches' tax exemptions."

Among the three conservatives who lost "touted their involvement in an effort to get abortion outlawed in Abilene. . . . . And all three candidates spoke about the need to prohibit family-friendly drag shows within the city limits and establish community standards. . .   [to] protect children. Beard said in interviews that those standards should be based on 'Judeo-Christian principles' that he believes serve as the nation’s foundation," Priest reports. "Yates, Beard’s opponent, said it was overly simplistic to cast the election as a fight between religious conservatives and fiscal ones. He said he too is a Christian who opposes abortion. A key difference, he said, was that he and his allies don’t believe that establishing community standards is the role of government. . . . .The local Republican Party endorsed Beard. . . In the end, the three candidates each lost by at least 29 percentage points, according to unofficial final results."

While Beard's Johnson Amendment violations may go unchecked -- there is only one publicly known example of the IRS revoking a church's tax exemption -- "The church donations may also violate Texas election law, which prohibits both nonprofit and for-profit corporations from making political contributions to candidates or political committees," Priest notes. "The Texas Ethics Commission is charged with investigating such violations and can assess a civil penalty of up to $5,000 or triple the amount at issue, whichever is greater, said J.R. Johnson, the commission's executive director. . . . Violations are considered third-degree felonies. Beard has had at least two pending state ethics complaints filed against his campaign."

Biden's rural points were on broadband, other infrastructure; on some other topics he exaggerated or lacked context

President Biden spoke in front of Vice President Kamala Harris and
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. (Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin)

Did President Biden have anything for rural America in his State of the Union speech? And how closely did he stick to the facts?

He used the word "rural" once, in saying the bipartisan infrastructure law is funding projects in all kinds of places: “Urban. Suburban. Rural. Tribal.” Just before that, he mentioned “high-speed internet across America,” and later he said “We're making sure every community in America has access to high-speed internet.” He also announced that all materials in federal construction projects will have to be made in America, including fiber-optic cable that is the standard for high-speed internet.

Another line could be taken as a rural reference: “My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades, too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.”

Rural America is the home of extractive industries, and Biden slammed oil companies, noting their record profits and saying “They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down. Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders.” An ad-lib about oil brought derisive laughter from Republicans: “We’re gonna need oil for at least another decade.” Longer than that.

"Some of Biden's claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context," CNN's Daniel Dale writes. Biden claimed the infrastructre law "funded 700,000 major construction projects," but the actual number is 7,000. The New York Times' analysis repeatedly cited lack of context.

In his Fact Checker column for The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler writes that Biden exaggerated several points, including deficit reduction, U.S. exports, the nation's infrastructure ranking. the effect of recent tax legislation and the number of jobs being created.

Kessler also looks at Biden's claim that "some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset," explaining that word is "inside-the-Beltway lingo for programs terminating automatically on a periodic basis unless explicitly renewed by law. Last year, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a 60-page “11-point plan to rescue America” that offered 128 proposals. Buried on Page 39, in a section on government restructuring, was one sentence: 'All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.' Scott’s write-up — which offered few details and had no proposed legislative language — was almost immediately rejected by most Senate Republicans. Scott also said he was being misinterpreted. 'No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what we’re doing is we don’t even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years,” Scott said on Fox News last March. 'I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.'"

U.S. partisan divide now runs along rural-urban lines, and that has worsened rural-urban conflict in state legislatures

"The relationships between big cities and rural-dominated legislatures have often been hostile. But a rift between Nashville and the Tennessee Legislature suggests the nation’s partisan divide is making things worse," and there are examples in other states, The New York Times reports.

Michael Wines writes, "For most of American history, the rivalry has played out in state politics more so as a matter of parochial divisions than national ones. Now, a dispute in Nashville raises the question of whether the nation’s barbed political divide — which splinters along the rural-urban axis as well — is infusing old local antagonisms with contemporary partisan acrimony. It’s not just in Tennessee. In Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kentucky and elsewhere, old city-country political tensions have taken on a harder edge as Democratic-leaning urban areas become ever more isolated islands in an ever-redder, rural-dominated sea."

Music City Center (John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In Tennessee, the Legislature split Nashville among three congressional districts, eliminating a Democratic seat. Then the city council's Democratic majority, citing security concerns, killed Republican leaders' bid to bring the party's 2024 national convention to Nashville, and the GOPers vowed revenge. The House floor leader has filed a bill to limit municipal legislaitve bodies to 20 members; only Nashville, with 40, exceeds the limit, and its voters rejected shrinkage seven years ago. The Senate president, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, "is proposing to defund the largest civic project in the city's history," Nate Rau of Axios Nashville reports. His bill would repeal "tourism-related taxes dedicated for the $623 million Music City Center." A McNally spokesperson told Rau, "Metro has made it clear they are no longer interested in aggressively recruiting top-tier conventions to Nashville." Councilmember Bob Mendes, who opposed the convention, told Rau he expects the flogging will continue: "There's a massive culture war going on in this country, and the state of Tennessee's leadership doesn't like the culture of Nashville and is going to keep coming after us."

A 2020 study found that Tennessee "led the nation in overruling local laws and policies," Wines reports. "State laws that override city ordinances and policies have mushroomed over the last decade, especially in states where Republicans controlled both the governor’s office and the legislature." He cites examples, such as Missouri laws that keep St. Louis from banning plastic grocery bags and Kansas City from raising the minimum wage, the North Carolina House speaker's bid to block a local sales tax to finance mass transit in Charlotte and so-called "war on Louisville" laws in Kentucky "that sapped the authority of the elected board running the metro area’s 100,000-student public school system, weakened the ground rules of a city-county merger approved by voters two decades ago and limited the city’s mayor to two terms."

The study "found that such laws were more common in states with a Republican government, a strong conservative bent and a higher share of Black residents," Wines reports, quoting Professor Thad Kousser of the University of California, San Diego, who tracks the urban-rural divide: “A hundred or even fifty years ago, Democrats in Atlanta may have wanted different things than the Democrats who were governing the state of Georgia, but they were in the same party. Now they both have different legislative interests and different political interests, too.”

Wines notes, "The dynamic can work the opposite way, too: In New Mexico, the Democrat-controlled State Legislature has drafted legislation to overturn local ordinances passed in conservative towns that restrict access to abortion clinics and abortion pills. The state attorney general on Jan. 23 sued New Mexico cities and counties to overturn the ordinances."

Rebuild Local News Coalition is now a nonprofit that will push for policies that will lead to hiring of more reporters

Coalition logo

With the collapse of local news accelerating, Steve Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, leads new independent nonprofit organization developing non-partisan public policies to strengthen community journalism. It's called the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

The group, an alliance of news organizations launched in 2020, is now an independent nonprofit "and plans a drive to advance a range of public policies to address the accelerating crisis in local news that threatens so many communities," it said in an announcement today.

The coalition says it will "research, develop and champion public policies at the state, local and national levels, including payroll tax credits to hire and retain local reporters, proposals to target government advertising spending toward local news instead of social media, and reducing the influence of hedge funds on local newspapers." It has a page with links to research about local news.

Funding the coalition are several journalism organizations and philanthropies, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Yellow Chair Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Argosy Foundation, the Posner Foundation and Microsoft Corp.

Members of the coalition include the National Newspaper Association, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (representing Black papers), the Institute for Nonprofit News, The News Guild-CWA (Communications Workers of America), Local Independent Online News Publishers, the National Association of Hispanic Publications, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, Report for America / The GroundTruth Project, the American Journalism Project, the Solutions Journalism Network, the Local Media Consortium, Chalkbeat, PEN America, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and several state newspaper associations. "Together, they represent more than 3,000 local newsrooms," the announcement says.

The Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog, is a member of the coalition and its Steering Committee. In addition to the steering committeem, the coalition will have an Advisory Council with a range of leaders from the civic sector, including both political parties.

Steven Waldman

Waldman will become the full-time president of the organization, which was incubated at the GroundTruth Project, home of Report for America. “The collapse of local news poses a massive crisis for American communities, and democracy,” Waldman said. “Part of the solution is smart, nonpartisan public policy that carefully preserves editorial independence. We have had this at other points in American history, and we must again.”

The announcement noted that the coalition stresses that policies need to be carefully crafted to be “content-neutral, nonpartisan and ensure editorial independence,” and will focus on federal, state and local policies that lead to the hiring of more local reporters."  The group will especially explore policies that strengthen weekly papers, hyperlocal newsrooms, diverse media, nonprofits and other newsrooms truly grounded in the communities they serve," the announcement says.

Santos story illustrates demise of local news ecosystem; lots of commentary, but 'No one is ... being paid to run down tips'

The fact that a Long Island weekly's revealing coverage of congressional candidate and now Rep.-elect George Santos wasn't picked up by other news outlets until after the election illustrates the demise of the local news ecosystem, writes Steven Waldman of the Rebuild Local News Coalition.

“If this had run 25 years ago, it would have been gobbled up,” Grant Lally, the publisher and owner of the North Shore Leader, told Waldman. “There’d have been 20 follow ups from Newsday and other publications and the weeklies.” But the weeklies that once served Long Island towns have "mostly merged into larger chains, and many don’t even have editorial offices in the covered towns anymore," Waldman reports. "Another part of this case, though, is the attention economy."

Steven Waldman

Waldman explains, "Succeeding in media today requires doing good journalism and then building your own audience for it, and the North Shore Leader didn’t successfully disseminate their scoop. They didn’t mention their story on their Facebook or Instagram accounts (not updated since 2021), nor did they tweet about it, though that stems more from them not having a Twitter account. Which isn’t really surprising since the paper doesn’t have anyone working social media hard—in part because they’ve shrunk." Lally told him, “We lost half our advertising during Covid and most of it really hasn’t come back.”

Because "the local media ecosystem is compromised, even when someone manages to get a good story, the rest of the system can’t amplify it or pursue it," Waldman writes. "If a small paper broke a story, it would be picked up by a bigger paper, or The Associated Press, which would prompt the TV stations and radio stations to dive in. Now the hyperlocal small newsrooms rarely do investigative work, and when they do, the bigger players don’t pay attention. And in smaller communities, the weekly papers are the entire foodchain, so their demise is even more consequential."

There are stil more than 6,000 weeklies, but many of them, and some dailies, are “ghost newspapers . . . slim papers full of wire copy, press releases and ads," Waldman notes. "One consequence of this hollowing out is that voters have little to no information on which to base their choices in local elections. This would seem to be a fairly significant problem for, you know, democracy. And ironically, the more local the election, the worse the coverage is likely to be. But the harm goes much deeper. Other studies show that areas with less local news have more corruption, fewer competitive elections, less resident involvement in PTAs, and even lower bond ratings. . . . There’s now evidence that the decline of local news exacerbates polarization, too. Studies show, for instance, that in areas with less coverage, voters are less likely to split their tickets. That’s because the vacuums created by the contraction of local news are filled largely by national cable TV, radio, and social media. The contraction of local news accelerates the nationalization of politics while at the same time, we have less of the kinds of information that binds together communities—everything from obituaries to high-school sports. And as "many communities have moved from good information, to no information, to deceptive information, a new wave of “pink slime” sites—often set up by political activists—to impersonate traditional news sites while actively promoting particular candidates or businesses."

Waldman, who runs Report for America, notes the book, News Hole, by media scholars Danny Hayes and Jennifer Lawless, who wrote that most discussions about the problems of democracy “don’t account for the most dramatic change in the civic life U.S. communities have experienced in the last 20 years: the decimation of the local news media.” He promotes his coalition's main cause, the proposed Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which would give tax credits to newsrooms to pay local journalists, to small businesses that advertise in local news outlets and to consumers who purchase local news: "Perhaps Rep. Santos could co-sponsor the bill."

Screenshot from CNN

UPDATE, Jan. 7: On his Saturday morning CNN program, Michael Smerconish said "mythomanic" Santos also benefited from a late redistricting that turned the formerly Democratic district into a marginally Republican one and left little time for other Republicans to organize a primary campaign. But his six-minuite segment is mainly about the "systemic failure that is only getting worse" in local news. He concluded, “George Santos is what you get when everyone with a laptop is a wannabe journalist, but no one is left being paid to run down tips, and that should make all of us nervous. The next time you hear about the closure of a newspaper, or the scaling back of a newsroom, think about George Santos and how many more like him might be getting away with something.”

GAO report on economic viability of local journalism ignores state-based issue of public-notice advertising in newspapers

Chart from Government Accountability Office report shows some revenue options for local journalism. 

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky

Thursday's Government Accountability Office report on local journalism is a welcome document. It is a recognition by the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress that threats to the economic viability of local journalism are a collective threat to local democracy in the United States. The 88-page report is a valuable compilation of the issues and potential solutions, such as philanthropy, tax incentives, direct public funding and federal advertising. It should raise the issue on policymakers' radar and help guide their responses.

But the report misses a key point, especially for rural newspapers. Perhaps because it is from one federal agency to another, the Federal Communications Commission, which requested the report, it does not mention an increasingly important revenue source that is under threat in most states: public-notice advertising by local and state governments.

GAO is not unaware of the issue. I mentioned it as one of the 40 participants in a two-day workshop that the agency held last February to explore the threats to the viability of local journalism. I pointed out that as goods-and-services advertising has moved from local newspapers to digital platforms, public notices (which many still call "the legal ads") have become a much more important part of newspaper revenue, especially in rural areas, where retail display advertising has largely disappeared. Some publisher say they account for more than 20 percent of revenue, the difference in profiit and loss.

As newspapers increasingly depend on government advertising that is required by law, that revenue is in jeopardy in most state legislatures, where local officials and their lobbyists argue that public notices would be better placed on government websites. Some states, most notably Florida, have given local governments that option. It saves a very small share of a local budget, but makes for great reduction in the reach of the notices. Surveys have shown that citizens are highly unlikely to look for notices on government websites and would prefer to kepe them in local newspapers. Most states already require papers to post public notices on freely accessible websites, usually run by state newspaper associations.

Beyond newspaper revenue, public notices are increasingly important for public information, because newspapers are less able to cover government activities. Even journalists sometimes forget that public-notice ads are one leg of the three-legged stool of open government, along with open-records and open-meetings laws. "The legals" are often sources for stories; the Public Notice Resource Center gives an annual award for the best story that sprang from a public-notice ad.

In some states, public-notice laws lack objective standards, letting local officials play favorites with their advertising, as writer Susan Chandler reported a few months ago in a story for the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. But state newspaper associations are often reluctant to ask legislators for better standards, for fear that any public-notice legislation would become a vehicle for damaging measures.

This is largely a state-by-state fight, but it has become an existential one for newspapers, especially those in rural America. It needs to be remembered in the national discussion about the sustainability of local journalism.