The governor of the commonwealth of Virginia has decided, “in the interest of religious freedom,” to grant state chaplains the freedom to pray in the name of Jesus at public events.

“I just didn’t think it was right, the change that was made a couple years ago, to have an official state policy to tell chaplains of any faith how to pray, whether Muslim or Jew or Catholic or Christian,” Gov. Bob McDonnell told reporters Thursday.

If you reverse an official state policy on prayer with another state policy on prayer, it’s still a state policy on prayer, right?

The conservative Christian Family Foundation of Virginia doesn’t seem to mind….

Oddly enough, the ACLU of Virginia agrees with the Family Foundation, at least on the need for the state of Virginia to have the right policy on prayer.

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A federal official said this afternoon that the leading edge of the Gulf oil slick could reach the Mississippi River delta sometime tonight, and an executive said BP has asked the Department of Defense for technical help.

In Washington, lawmakers raised the heat on the offshore energy industry, although the Obama administration stopped short today of backing off its commitment to expanded drilling.

The White House dispatched top officials from the Homeland Security Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department to the Gulf Coast, and President Barack Obama today called the five Gulf Coast state governors to emphasize the federal government’s support and concern about the spill.

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The U.S. Catholic bishops slammed a new Arizona immigration law as “draconian” and called on Congress to stop political “gamesmanship” and pass immigration reform.

Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration committee, said Tuesday (April 27) the Arizona law could lead to ethnic profiling and adversely effect how immigrants are treated nationwide.

Wester, speaking on behalf of fellow bishops, called on the Obama administration to review the law’s impact on civil rights and urged Washington to enact federal immigration reform.

“While many of our federal elected officials have made good faith efforts to pass reform, too many still view the issue through a political lens, using it to gain political or partisan advantage,” Wester said in a statement. “This gamesmanship must stop.”

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My Dear Spanish-Speaking Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Today is a sad day in the struggle to see all God’s people treated in a humane and compassionate manner. I had hoped that our Governor and law-makers would listen to their consciences and not be swayed by the voices of bigotry and racism. With the Governor’s signing of SB 1070, it seems that for now the advocates of fear and hatred have won over those of charity and love. Arizona claims to be a Golden Rule State. We have not lived up to that claim.

I know that the passage of this law is deeply troubling to many of you, especially those of undocumented status. I know that many of you fear for your jobs, your families, and your future in this state and in this country.

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School districts around the country, forced to resort to drastic money-saving measures, are warning hundreds of thousands of teachers that their jobs may be eliminated in June.

The districts have no choice, they say, because their usual sources of revenue ”” state money and local property taxes ”” have been hit hard by the recession. In addition, federal stimulus money earmarked for education has been mostly used up this year.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge class sizes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.

“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

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In Nashua, N.H., published reports said the city collected about $50,000 from two closed Catholic churches in 2004. A lower court agreed with the Diocese of Manchester when it fought the assessment. But the state Supreme Court upheld the city’s decision, saying warehousing religious artifacts does not rise to the level of “religious purposes.”

Other states, including Michigan, Colorado, New York and Utah, have declined to question how much a building has to be used to qualify for an exemption, according to court records.

New Jersey’s tax laws, and the way they are interpreted, mean that waves of consolidations sweeping local churches and religious institutions won’t bring much more revenue to local towns. State law exempts “all buildings actually used” by religious institutions for both worship and charitable purposes. The law also allows these groups two buildings and up to five acres for use as a parsonage, or home for the officiating clergy.

The key phrase in the law is “actually used,” said Lois H. Finifter, Atlantic County tax administrator, meaning it is used regularly. But she said the issue quickly becomes gray when challenged in court.

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A half-dozen health insurers…[Monday] filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to reverse last week’s decision by the insurance commissioner to block double-digit premium increases ”” a ruling they say could leave them with hundreds of millions in losses this year.

The proposed rate hikes would have taken effect April 1 for plans covering thousands of small businesses and individuals. Insurers wanted to raise base rates an average of 8 percent to 32 percent; tacked on to that are often additional costs calculated according to factors such as the size and age of the workforce.

Yesterday’s legal action sets the stage for a showdown between state regulators and the health insurance industry.

Governor Deval Patrick has made reining in runaway health care costs a centerpiece of his administration and his campaign for reelection ”” contending they are stifling the capacity of small businesses to create jobs. At the same time, health insurers argue that government is forcing them to sell policies at a loss that is unsustainable as the costs of medical services climb.

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The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

To put that number in perspective, it’s almost seven times greater than all the outstanding voter-approved state general obligation bonds in California.

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Schools will close, sports and arts programs will be dropped and class size will increase “astronomically” as student numbers increase while fewer teachers can be paid.

That’s the dire scenario Lowcountry public schools face by 2013 if the state sees the billion-dollar revenue shortfalls that are expected and continues cutting funds for education, the chairman of the Berkeley County School Board said.

“We’re essentially out of business,” Doug Cooper told members of the Greater Summerville-Dorchester County Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. A whole generation of students could be lost and need remedial education as adults, he said.

“We’re going to have more and more students and less and less money. We just can’t ride this out. Education in this state is not a line item in the budget. It is our state,” Cooper said.

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In South Carolina, the announcement fueled a debate that’s been growing for years, with advocates saying tapping the sea floor could help move the state into a new revenue stream, while opponents say the $18 billion tourism industry could be devastated if even a single environmental catastrophe occurs.

“Opening the South Atlantic Coast to oil and gas drilling will do nothing to address climate change, provide only about six months worth of oil, and put at risk multibillion dollar tourism and fisheries industries,” said Derb Carter, director of the Carolinas office of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Off South Carolina, most experts say natural gas — not oil — would be the most likely harvest, though accounts differ on whether it would be financially viable. The closest any platforms would be to shore is around 60 miles, some projections indicate.

[State Senator Paul] Campbell said that based on today’s technology, the “likelihood of having an accident is almost zero.”

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink ”” budgets that will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay.

And states are responding in sometimes desperate ways, raising concerns that they, too, could face a debt crisis.

New Hampshire was recently ordered by its State Supreme Court to put back $110 million that it took from a medical malpractice insurance pool to balance its budget. Colorado tried, so far unsuccessfully, to grab a $500 million surplus from Pinnacol Assurance, a state workers’ compensation insurer that was privatized in 2002. It wanted the money for its university system and seems likely to get a lesser amount, perhaps $200 million.

Connecticut has tried to issue its own accounting rules. Hawaii has inaugurated a four-day school week. California accelerated its corporate income tax this year, making companies pay 70 percent of their 2010 taxes by June 15. And many states have balanced their budgets with federal health care dollars that Congress has not yet appropriated.

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As the number of death sentences declined nationwide in 2009, death verdicts in California rose to their highest total in nearly a decade, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday.

All but five of the 29 California death sentences last year were handed down in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties, the ACLU said.

Only two of the death sentences came from Bay Area courts, both in Contra Costa County. Darryl Kemp was sentenced in June for a 1978 rape and murder in Lafayette, a case in which he was identified through DNA evidence in 2000; and Edward Wycoff was condemned in December for murdering his sister and her husband in the couple’s El Cerrito home in 2006.

Nationally, death sentences fell to 106 in 2009, their seventh straight year of decline and the lowest total since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to an earlier report from the Death Penalty Information Center, a separate organization.

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Despite a real estate implosion, property tax revenue collected by states and localities actually rose 2.7% last year to $421.8 billion.

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In the scramble to find something, anything, to generate more revenue, states are considering new taxes on virtually everything: garbage pickup, dating services, bowling night, haircuts, even clowns.

“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.

Opponents of imposing taxes on services like funerals, legal advice, helicopter rides and dry cleaning argue that this push comes as businesses are barely clinging to life and can ill afford to see customers further put off by new taxes. This is especially true, they say, in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where some of the most sweeping proposals are being considered this spring.

But this is also a period of economic gloom for states. Pension funds are in the red, federal stimulus help will soon vanish, and revenues from traditional sources like income and property taxes are slumping ever lower, with few elected officials willing to risk voter wrath by raising them.

“This is born out of necessity,” said Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat. His proposed budget, being debated in Harrisburg, would tax services including accounting, advertising and data processing.

Read it all from the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

Add an entire school day to the chopping block. State lawmakers want tomove financially struggling schools to four day weeks. They say it willsave money, and it won’t affect classroom time.

Thesuperintendent of one local school district believes the plan couldwork. CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker paid them a visit.

“I think it’ssomething we should take a look at,” said Dr. Kamala Buckner,Superintendent of Thornton Township High Schools District 205.

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Because of the new health care law, Arizona lawmakers must now find a way to maintain insurance coverage for 350,000 children and adults that they slashed just last week to help close a $2.6 billion budget deficit.

Louisiana officials say a reduction in federal money to hospitals that treat the uninsured under the bill could be a death knell for their state-run charity hospital system.

In California, policymakers estimate they will have to come up with an additional $500 million a year to make necessary increases in payments to Medicaid providers.

Across the country, state officials are wading through the minutiae of the health care overhaul to understand just how their governments will be affected. Even with much still to be digested, it is clear the law may be as much of a burden to some state budgets as it is a boon to uninsured consumers.

States with the largest uninsured populations, like Texas and California, might be considered by its backers the biggest winners to emerge from the law, because so many additional residents will have access to health insurance. But because those states are being required to significantly expand their Medicaid programs, they are precisely the ones that will face the biggest financial strains, in many cases magnified by existing budget shortfalls.

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An initiative to legalize marijuana and allow it to be sold and taxed will appear on the November ballot, state election officials announced Wednesday, triggering what will probably be a much-watched campaign that once again puts California on the forefront of the nation’s debate over whether to soften drug laws.

The number of valid signatures reported by Los Angeles County, submitted minutes before Wednesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, put the measure well beyond the 433,971 it needed to be certified. Supporters turned in 694,248 signatures, collecting them in every county except Alpine. County election officials estimated that 523,531 were valid.

The measure’s main advocate, Richard Lee, an Oakland marijuana entrepreneur, savored the chance to press his case with voters that the state’s decades-old ban on marijuana is a failed policy.

“We’re one step closer to ending cannabis prohibition and the unjust laws that lock people up for cannabis while alcohol is not only sold openly but advertised on television to kids every day,” he said.

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The White House says it isn’t worried that 13 state attorneys general, including South Carolina’s, are suing to overturn the massive health care overhaul, and many legal experts agree the effort is futile.

But the lawsuit, filed in federal court seven minutes after President Barack Obama signed the 10-year, $938 billion health care bill, underscores the divisiveness of the issue and the political rancor that has surrounded it.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

But the comfortable retirement promised to retired firefighters and police officers is taking its toll on the city where DeGenova still lives. Today, Cranston is staggering under a huge underfunded pension liability equal to more than twice its annual budget, and paying the pensions of retired police officers and firefighters now absorbs some 20 percent of the city’s budget.

“Right now the unfunded liability is well over $240 million,” says Mayor Allan Fung. “And so it’s a big obligation and is basically a ticking time bomb for the city of Cranston that we are trying to get a handle on.”

How this happened is a monument to political shortsightedness. For years, Cranston operated a separate pension fund for more than 500 police and firefighters who regularly contributed money from their paychecks to the fund. (Other municipal employees were part of the state pension system.) Instead of setting the money aside and investing it, the city used the funds to pay operating expenses ”” everything from shoveling snow to paying employee salaries, says former Mayor Stephen Laffey.

“It was like taking your 401(k) plan and saying, ‘I have to buy a lot of bubble gum with it.’ That’s what they did, and they really did it with a straight face,” Laffey says.

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Got this (via im) yesterday from a friend who lives in Washington state:

Just got a bill Friday for a new $800 a year rain tax only they called it surface water management–to pay for all the rain that runs off my tree-covered 5 acres

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OVER the past few years, a growing number of America’s parentless children have found homes. In 2008 there were 463,000 children in foster care, a system where the government places orphans and children with parents who are abusive or unable to take care of them in the care of guardians. That is 11% down since 2002, and great news. But experts worry the trend might now go into reverse.

Some welfare advocates fear that the bad economy may cause parents with frayed nerves to abuse and neglect their children, and even cause some to abandon them. Already, several hospitals across the country have reported an increase in the frequency and severity of injuries from child abuse.

The most recent national data on child welfare available dates from September 2008, before the recession was in full throttle; data from 2009 won’t be reported until later this year. But there is some question about whether the data, when reported, will even be accurate. Many states and counties, in an attempt to cope with their fiscal straits, are considering cutting down on child-welfare services, such as benefits for foster parents and the number of social workers they employ.

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OVER the past few years, a growing number of America’s parentless children have found homes. In 2008 there were 463,000 children in foster care, a system where the government places orphans and children with parents who are abusive or unable to take care of them in the care of guardians. That is 11% down since 2002, and great news. But experts worry the trend might now go into reverse.

Some welfare advocates fear that the bad economy may cause parents with frayed nerves to abuse and neglect their children, and even cause some to abandon them. Already, several hospitals across the country have reported an increase in the frequency and severity of injuries from child abuse.

The most recent national data on child welfare available dates from September 2008, before the recession was in full throttle; data from 2009 won’t be reported until later this year. But there is some question about whether the data, when reported, will even be accurate. Many states and counties, in an attempt to cope with their fiscal straits, are considering cutting down on child-welfare services, such as benefits for foster parents and the number of social workers they employ.

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Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.

States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.

“It’s an indicator of how bad it is,” says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “You know things are bad when you have to do that.”

New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.

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Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.

States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.

“It’s an indicator of how bad it is,” says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “You know things are bad when you have to do that.”

New York, hit with a $9 billion deficit, may delay $500 million in refunds to keep the state from running out of cash, says Gov. David Paterson.

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While President Obama’s push to raise federal income taxes for the wealthy gets lots of attention, the continuing upward creep in the sales tax rates imposed by state and local governments has gotten less notice.

But Vertex Inc., which calculates sales tax for Internet sellers, reports that the average general sales tax rate nationwide reached 8.629% at the end of 2009, the highest since the Berwyn, Pa., company started tracking data in 1982. That was up a nickel on a taxable $100 purchase from a year earlier and up nearly 40 cents for the decade. The highest sales tax rate in the country now stands at 12%.

During 2009 seven states and the District of Columbia raised sales tax rates, with one jurisdiction — North Carolina — actually doing it twice. Only four states hiked rates in 2008 and only one in 2007. Given state budget problems, the 2009 state sales tax increases aren’t surprising. States have also been raising income tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations and boosting excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. With states now facing record budget shortfalls, more tax increases seem likely.

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James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.

“I ask kids all the time, and they’ll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government,” he said, noting that drug dealers don’t ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.

So Gray ”” who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican ”” switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana.

“Let’s face reality,” he says. “Taxing and regulating marijuana will make it less available to children than it is today.”

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States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.

Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.

But states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.

“In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “Double up to catch up.”

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California passed a gas tax last week to help make up for its nearly $20 billion budget gap, the latest in a series of measures to right the state’s teetering economy. The country of Greece is in even worse shape, with accumulated debt higher than 110 percent of GDP, set to reach 125 percent this year. Can a state declare bankruptcy? Can a country?

No and no. Chapter 9 of the U.S. bankruptcy code allows individuals and municipalities (cities, towns, villages, etc.) to declare bankruptcy. But that doesn’t include states. (The statute defines “municipality” as a “political subdivision or public agency or instrumentality of a State”””that is, not a state itself.)

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