NOLA Defender
by Annika Mengisen
In a city with an out-of-control murder rate, opinion columnist Annika Mengisen explores New Orleans’ prospects for reining in the availability of the weapons used to do most of the killing.
By Evelyn Theiss, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland has a message for Ohio legislators: We have the right to make laws on what we prohibit inside our borders, not you.
Last April, Cleveland City Council passed a law to ban restaurants from using cooking oils containing trans fats, as part of its Healthy Cleveland initiative.
HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov 10, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Two of Pennsylvania’s leading environmental organizations today called on the General Assembly to enact tougher environmental protections in proposed legislation aimed at regulating development of the state’s Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves.
NEW YORK (AP) Monday, September 12, 2011; Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other mayors in support of gun control are speaking out against a bill that would allow licensed gun owners to carry concealed firearms across state lines.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns launched the “Our Lives, Our Laws” campaign Monday against H.R. 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011. If passed, someone allowed to carry a concealed weapon in his or her home state could do so in any other state.
The mayors’ group says the act would prevent states from setting standards for concealed weapons and would force them to accept whatever standards the most-lenient state uses.
The bill is supported by the National Rifle Association. The organization says the bill allows owners to protect themselves in other states.
A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, September 13.
For the Public’s Health: Revitalizing Law and Policy to Meet New Challenges
For the Public’s Health: Revitalizing Law and Public Policy to Meet New Challenges, the second of three reports by the Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health, builds on earlier Institute of Medicine efforts to describe the activities and role of the public health system. As defined in the 2003 report The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century (IOM, 2003), the system is multi-sectoral and comprises governmental public health agencies and various partners, including the community (individuals and organizations), the clinical care delivery system, employers and business, the mass media, and academia, or more broadly, the education sector. The committee’s first report (IOM, 2011) redefines the system as simply “the health system.” By using this term, the committee seeks to reinstate the proper and evidence-based understanding of health as not merely the result of clinical care, but the result of the sum of what we do as a society to create the conditions in which people can be healthy (IOM, 1988).
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Recommendation 5: The committee recommends that when the federal government regulates state authority, and the states regulate local authority in the area of public health, their actions, wherever appropriate, should set minimum standards (floor preemption) allowing states and localities to further protect the health and safety of their inhabitants. Preemption should avoid language that hinders public health action.
By JOHN FLESHER
Forbes.com
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A federal appeals court has refused to prohibit states from being tougher than the federal government on ships that discharge ballast water, a leading culprit in the spread of invasive species such as zebra and quagga mussels in U.S. coastal waterways and the Great Lakes.
The ruling by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., escalates a battle between the shipping industry, regulators and environmentalists over dumping ballast water and other substances from vessels. Legislation pending in Congress would strip funding for any Environmental Protection Agency programs from states whose rules exceed those on the federal level.
By TOM FAHEY
State House Bureau Chief
CONCORD — A second legislative attempt to block local fire and planning officials from setting rules on residential sprinklers has been vetoed.
Gov. John Lynch Wednesday vetoed Senate Bill 91, saying it intrudes too far on local authority.
SB 91 bars towns and cities from passing ordinances that require fire sprinkler systems in new one- and two-family homes. It also bars them from enforcing existing ordinances that require them in manufactured homes situated in trailer parks.
NY Times, June 30, 2011
By STEPHANIE STROM
Several state legislatures are passing laws that prohibit municipalities and other local governments from adopting regulations aimed at curbing rising obesity and improving public health, such as requiring restaurants to provide nutritional information on menus or to eliminate trans fats from the foods they serve.
In some cases, lawmakers are responding to complaints from business owners who are weary of playing whack-a-mole with varying regulations from one city to the next. Legislators have decided to sponsor state laws to designate authority for the rules that individual restaurants have to live by.
Brookfield Mayor Steve Ponto asks state lawmakers to reject Senate Bill 32 which would prohibit municipalities from enforcing stricter fire codes than the state.
By Steve Ponto | Email the author | June 13, 2011
The League of Wisconsin Municipalities recently produced a two-page list of state budget items and proposed state legislation which would preempt or limit municipal powers. What is particularly disappointing is most of these proposals are being sponsored by Republican state legislators.
The Republican Party, in its platforms and resolutions, has long advocated more local control and less centralized power. In fact the first principle on the Wisconsin Republican Party’s website includes: “. . . the most effective government is government closest to the people.”
CLEVELAND — Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman is mad. The ordinance he helped get passed in Cleveland that would ban restaurants from using trans fats in food may get overturned by another law.
The Ohio Restaurant Association convinced the Ohio Senate to add an amendment to the proposed state budget that would ban local municipalities from regulating the ingredients fast food-type eateries can use to prepare foods.