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Matthew Braunginn, Erica DePalma, Howard Neukrug, Satya Rhodes-Conway, and Mariah Young-Jones. Basic Water Utility Management. Mayors Innovation Project, 2019.
Access to safe and affordable drinking water is a human right, and it is the duty of the water utility to ensure that this right is protected and upheld. Understanding the different ways water intersects with your city is critical. Basic Water Utility Management provides local leaders with a foundation for understanding their local water systems, including: understanding what a successful water system looks like; getting up to speed on government compliance; identifying infrastructure and maintenance needs; and engaging with community members around water resources.
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Matthew Braunginn, Erica DePalma, Howard Neukrug, Satya Rhodes-Conway, and Mariah Young-Jones. Paying for Water Systems. Mayors Innovation Project, 2019.
Even as the scale of needed investment grows, utilities can develop rate structures, impact fees, and new products or services that generate needed revenue fairly. This report is a primer on getting started with financing water systems, including: assessing where the largest costs are incurred and where borrowing is most extensive; understanding your city’s specific water utility structure and financial status; building a relationship with your water utility manager/CEO(s); and reaching out to and growing relationships with community leaders across a range of neighborhoods and interests, and asking questions about needs and water affordability.
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Matthew Braunginn, James Irwin, and Satya Rhodes-Conway. Reducing Carbon Risk & Investing in Local Economic Strength. Mayors Innovation Project, 2019.
Climate change poses a risk to communities and their investments. There is a growing toolbox of measures cities can take to combat climate change. One of these tools, divestment from fossil fuels, is ethical, viable, and a moral imperative. Successful divest/invest strategies are a matter of political will. Steps a city can take: determine if they have funds that should be divested; reinvest the capital moved from fossil fuel stocks to a Green Bank or Revolving Loan Fund; identify what opportunities there are to attract “fossil free” investments to sustainable projects via green bonds or other mechanisms; ensure that any jobs created through this process are quality jobs.
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Kristinn Már Ársælsson, and Joel Rogers. Digital’s Promise for Worker Organizing: A 2018 Update. LIFT (Labor Innovation for the 21st Century), 2019.
Digital tools and technologies—most familiarly, apps, websites, internet search engines and social media platforms—have become a central and pervasive feature of our lives.
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Laura Dresser. Race in the Heartland: Wisconsin’s Extreme Racial Disparity. COWS, 2019.
In the 20th Century, people from around the world came to Wisconsin and the Midwest, seeking opportunity in the industrial boom. Manufacturing and unions helped create good jobs for many black workers, but discrimination and segregation limited that sharply. When industrial jobs declined, black Midwesterners suffered the most. Over the last 40 years, opportunity and outcomes for black residents in Wisconsin have fallen below national averages. As a result, black Wisconsinites face stubborn barriers and road blocks that many white people don’t even know are there. Racial disparity in Wisconsin is not inevitable, but closing the gap will require a broad focus and multifaceted approach.
‘Wisconsin’s Extreme Racial Disparity’ provides a Wisconsin-focused summary to ‘Race in the Heartland‘, which shows the persistence of racial disparities in the Midwest and what can be done about them.
Wisconsin has the regrettable distinction of ranking among the worst states in the nation for racial inequality. Disparities among black and white residents of our state – spanning poverty, unemployment, educational attainment, and incarceration – have been documented consistently for more than a decade. Although activists and policymakers have increasingly focused on addressing these issues, they remain pressing.
‘Race in the Heartland’ and ‘Wisconsin’s Extreme Racial Disparity’ provide a careful historical context and a broadly informed policy framework that are critical to winning greater racial equity throughout this region.
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Laura Dresser, and Joel Rogers. The State of Working Wisconsin 2019: Facts & Figures. COWS, 2019.
Each year on Labor Day, COWS draws a picture of how working people in Wisconsin are faring. The long report, The State of Working Wisconsin, is released biannually on even-numbered years and looks at the economy comprehensively from a working-family perspective. In odd-numbered years, like 2019, we provide a more abbreviated and focused report, called The State of Working Wisconsin: Facts & Figures.
On some of the most well-known economic indicators, there is good news for Wisconsin workers. The unemployment rate in the state has been consistently low. The economy is steadily adding jobs. These are important measures for working people’s lives. When jobs are more available not only is it easier to secure a job, it is also easier to get the hours of work you want, to be able to ask for time-off you need, and to make ends meet. This Labor Day, with the memory of the Great Recession of 2007 now fading from memory, workers across Wisconsin have this good news to celebrate.
Even so, many working families in the state feel stressed and stretched. In this report, then, we provide information on few key long-term trends that are contributing to the stress even in the context of low unemployment. Looking across the last forty years, the challenges working people face are clear. Wage growth has been anemic. Income inequality is reaching new highs. Unions, which have been so critical to supporting workers in this state, are in serious decline. Additionally, state policy, which could be helping to close gaps, is actually exacerbating these trends. From tax changes that reward our highest income families to rejection of health insurance to cover our families in need, policy continues to pave the low-road for our state.
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Matthew Braunginn, James Irwin, and Satya Rhodes-Conway. A Divest & Invest Guide for Local Governments: Reducing Carbon Risk and Investing in Local Economic Strength. COWS, 2019.
This guide examines the case for addressing climate risk in investments, examine potential solutions and ways to implement them, and explore how reinvestments can create good jobs. This is specifically aimed at local governments, though the strategies and approaches have been proven effective in other sectors.
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David Abel, and Katya Spear. Wisconsin Opportunity in Domestic Energy Production: The Economic and Health Benefits of 100 Percent In-State Energy Production. COWS, 2019.
Wisconsin has a current energy spending deficit of $14.4 billion ($14.4 billion in expenditures leaves the state annually). With no substantial in-state fossil fuel resources, reliance on fossil fuels is hurting the Wisconsin economy. Transitioning to in-state energy resources would bring dollars and jobs back to the state of Wisconsin and provide a win-win-win strategy for economic growth, social well-being, and environmental protection. This report was prepared for the Office of Sustainability, La Crosse County, Wisconsin.
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Joel Rogers, and Kris Ársælsson. Digital’s Promise for Worker Organizing: A 2018 Update. LIFT: Labor Innovations for the 21st Century, 2019.
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Chris McCahill, Beth Osborne, and Eric Sundquist. “, Rhodium Group, 2019.
Transcending Oil, released in April 2018, describes Hawaii’s path toward meeting its ambitious clean energy goals by 2045. The report was commissioned by Elemental Excelerator and prepared independently by Rhodium Group and Smart Growth America. It focuses mainly on transitioning the electrical grid to renewable energy while moving large numbers of vehicles to electric power but also points to the importance of managing overall travel demand through transportation policies and investments.
This technical guide describes the methods and findings behind Transcending Oil’s travel demand forecasts, developed by SSTI and Smart Growth America. Outlined in the report are two forecasts: a business as usual scenario and a policy scenario that includes multimodal transportation investments, transportation demand management, land use regulations and pricing mechanisms. Whereas business as usual could lead to a 16.6 percent increase in vehicle miles travel (VMT) by 2045, the policy scenario outlined in this document results in an estimated 7.3 percent reduction. This analysis points to the importance of comprehensive, widespread transportation and land use policies in achieving ambitious VMT reductions. The modeling approach described here may be useful in the development of similar long-term VMT management plans, since it relies on fairly straightforward methods, readily available data and assumptions derived from peer-reviewed research.
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