Tag: states
GOP Legislators Undermine Public Health As Measles Spreads Across 15 States

GOP Legislators Undermine Public Health As Measles Spreads Across 15 States

West Virginia’s Republicans passed a bill through the House of Delegates on Monday that would allow religious exemptions for vaccines required for school attendance. The bill comes as dozens of measles cases across 15 states have been reported. The bill will now head to the state Senate for debate. If the bill passes, it would be the first nonmedical vaccine exemption allowed in West Virginia.

The bill began as a proposal to eliminate vaccine requirements for public virtual schooling, but it has expanded to allow private schools the right to decide whether to require vaccinations for their students. Whether the bill would allow parents to exempt their child from a public school’s vaccine mandate remains unclear at this time, according to analysis from ABC News.

The state GOP’s attempt to dismantle public health protections isn’t going over well with some West Virginians, though. Dr. Steven Eshenaur, the health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston health department, told the Associated Press, “It escapes sound reasoning why anyone would want to weaken childhood immunization laws. Our children are more important than any agenda that would bring these horrific diseases back to the Mountain State.”

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled Florida is in the midst of a measles outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Broward County. Seven of 10 statewide cases of measles have ties to the school, while the state’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo recently issued a letter that didn’t urge parents to make sure their children were immunized. Ladapo, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is best known for his vaccine denialism during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida has called for Ladapo to either resign or be fired. She said his handling of the Broward County outbreak has been “grossly irresponsible,” and calling Ladapo “a misinformation super spreader.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data in November showing that national vaccination rates among kindergartners have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels, making West Virginia’s flirtation with religious-exemption policies that much more troubling. Currently, children in West Virginia are required to have at least one dose of chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough before entering K-12 school for the first time.

By leaning into the right’s anti-science movement, GOP-controlled states are encouraging a new normal that includes outbreaks of childhood diseases once thought to be eliminated more than two decades ago.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

A Covid Head-Scratcher: Why Lice Lurk Despite Physical Distancing

PARKER, Colo. — The Marker family opened their door on a recent evening to a woman dressed in purple, with a military attitude to cleanliness. Linda Holmes, who has worked as a technician with LiceDoctors for five years, came straight from her day job at a hospital after she got the call from a dispatcher that the Marker family needed her ASAP. According to those in the world of professional nitpicking, Pediculus humanus capitis, the much-scorned head louse, has returned. “It’s definitely back,” said Kelli Boswell, owner of Lice & Easy, a boutique where people in the Denver area can get delous...

Vaccine-or-Test Requirements Increase Work and Costs for Governments

Amanda Kostroski, a 911 dispatcher in Madison, Wisconsin, leaves her busy job once a week to go to a county health clinic to be tested for covid-19. She’s been making the 15-minute drive from work since late September, when Dane County mandated all employees get vaccinated or tested weekly. The testing is free, and she is typically back to work within an hour. Kostroski is among 10% of county employees who are unvaccinated and get weekly tests. She chose not to get immunized because she thinks the vaccines are too new and she fears side effects. Kostroski said she doesn’t understand the need f...

‘Checkbook’ Websites Shine Light On State Spending

‘Checkbook’ Websites Shine Light On State Spending

By Jenni Bergal, Stateline.org (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel was mortified when a consumer watchdog group last year gave his state a D-minus for transparency in providing online access to information on government spending.

So he decided to do something about it.

In December, Mandel’s office launched a user-friendly, cutting-edge financial transparency website that this year earned Ohio the only A-plus in a national review of state websites that tell the public how state government spends taxpayer money.

Every state now runs some kind of public accountability — or “checkbook” — site. The goal is to increase transparency and accountability. But while many states have been ramping up their efforts to make their sites accessible and comprehensive, some still have a long way to go. Eighteen states were graded between C and F in an annual evaluation of the sites this year by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG).

State checkbook websites vary considerably. Some are easy to use and provide lots of information with one click, making it easy for users to unearth individual payments to a person or company. Others are difficult to navigate or don’t contain as much information.

“There is a lot of variation. If you were to compare Ohio with Alaska or Idaho, you’d see huge differences in how user-friendly it is,” said Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst at U.S. PIRG, which published this year’s ratings in March.

Every year, states spend hundreds of billions of dollars contracting with private vendors and nonprofits, handing out subsidies, such as tax credits, to companies to spur development and making other expenditures. States created the checkbook websites to open up information about that spending to the public. The sites tell taxpayers who is getting the money, and what for.

“It’s extremely important because you have a new set of eyes on this information, not just those of someone in government,” said LaVita Tuff, a policy analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes open government.

State financial officials say that checkbook websites can help save money by identifying inefficiencies and reducing the amount of time spent by staff filling information requests. Posting contract information on the websites can result in more competitive bidding and lower bids. For example, interested vendors might see that they could win a contract by offering a lower price, and state agencies might see that they could consolidate contracts to get a better deal.

Massachusetts saved $3 million by eliminating paper, postage and printing expenses related to information requests by state agencies and paperwork from vendors, according to U.S. PIRG. Texas was able to renegotiate its copier machine lease and save $33 million over three years. And in South Dakota, a reporter used the website to launch an investigation into subsidies that led to the state saving about $19 million by eliminating redundancies.

“I think these websites are very important,” said Kinney Poynter, executive director of the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers. “More transparency provides better information for all of those involved, whether they be citizens, contractors or legislative bodies.”

The U.S. PIRG report, in its sixth year, evaluates and grades states on their online transparency initiatives and how well they provide access to spending data. It examines whether checkbook sites offer comprehensive, one-stop, one-click access to users and make large sets of data easy to download.

A growing number of states are doing a better job, the report found. Fourteen got an A this year, up from eight last year. Louisiana and Illinois were among those that got bumped up.

Other states that made strides included Colorado, which got a B-plus after it re-launched its portal, now easier to use, and Kansas, which vaulted from a D-minus to a B by overhauling its site to make information more accessible and easier to download.

Connecticut, which got an A for the first time this year, recently launched OpenCheckbook, an easy to use, comprehensive site that allows users to search real-time information about payments to vendors, nonprofits and others.

“You not only have direct access to micro and macro information about the operation of state government, but you can search it, compare it, trend it and download big data sets,” said State Comptroller Kevin Lembo, a Democrat. “I’d like to think that we’re pushing the envelope in this area.”

Lembo said that because government officials “like to keep information close,” checkbook websites are especially important for transparency.

“We don’t like other people telling us we’re doing things wrong,” he said. “The result of pulling information in and holding it tight is that public confidence continues to erode.”

Lembo said he was so pleased with OpenCheckbook, which was paid for with existing funds in his budget, that last month he launched OpenBudget, a new feature that will let users compare what was budgeted to what was actually spent.

But not all states have improved their websites enough, according to the U.S. PIRG report.

Fifteen got a C or a D. And California, Alaska and Idaho were graded an F in 2014 and again in 2015. Two of the three don’t have a central one-stop database for searching or viewing details on spending, the report found. Not one of the three provides information on economic development subsidies.

“These three are not user-friendly,” said U.S. PIRG’s Baxandall, who co-authored the report. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

Photo: Catch up on your state government. RikkisRefuge Other via Flickr