tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/nevada-20032/articlesNevada – The Conversation2024-02-15T13:35:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229402024-02-15T13:35:30Z2024-02-15T13:35:30ZStudents lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses − draining school budgets and especially hurting the poorest students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575520/original/file-20240214-20-j3e0d8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1684%2C678&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Exxon Mobil Corp.'s campus in East Baton Rouge Parish, left, received millions in tax abatements to the detriment of local schools, right.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/oil-refinery-owned-by-exxon-mobil-is-the-second-largest-in-news-photo/1225711980">Barry Lewis/Getty Images, Tjean314/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Built in 1910, James Elementary is a three-story brick school in Kansas City, Missouri’s historic Northeast neighborhood, with a bright blue front door framed by a sand-colored stone arch adorned with a gargoyle. As bustling students and teachers negotiate a maze of gray stairs with worn wooden handrails, Marjorie Mayes, the school’s principal, escorts a visitor across uneven blue tile floors on the ground floor to a classroom with exposed brick walls and pipes. Bubbling paint mars some walls, evidence of the water leaks spreading inside the aging building.</p>
<p>“It’s living history,” said Mayes during a mid-September tour of the building. “Not the kind of living history we want.”</p>
<p>The district would like to tackle the US$400 million in deferred maintenance needed to create a 21st century learning environment at its 35 schools – including James Elementary – but it can’t. It doesn’t have the money.</p>
<h2>Property tax redirect</h2>
<p>The lack of funds is a direct result of the property tax breaks that Kansas City lavishes on companies and developers that do business there. The program is supposed to bring in new jobs and business but instead has ended up draining civic coffers and starving schools. Between 2017 and 2023, the Kansas City school district lost $237.3 million through tax abatements.</p>
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<p>Kansas City is hardly an anomaly. An <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/incentives-to-pander/E0003C20215EDA5047EA0831FEEB6D92">estimated 95%</a> of U.S. cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors. The upshot is that billions have been diverted from large urban school districts and from a growing number of small suburban and rural districts. The impact is seen in districts as diverse as Chicago and Cleveland, Hillsboro, Oregon, and Storey County, Nevada.</p>
<p>The result? A 2021 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2022.2148171">review of 2,498 financial statements</a> from school districts across 27 states revealed that, in 2019 alone, at least $2.4 billion was diverted to fund tax incentives. Yet that substantial figure still downplays the magnitude of the problem, because three-quarters of the 10,370 districts analyzed did not provide any information on tax abatement agreements.</p>
<p>Tax abatement programs have long been controversial, pitting states and communities against one another in beggar-thy-neighbor contests. Their economic value is also, at best, unclear: Studies show most companies <a href="https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/289/">would have made the same location decision</a> without taxpayer subsidies. Meanwhile, schools make up the largest cost item in these communities, meaning they suffer most when companies are granted breaks in property taxes.</p>
<p>A three-month investigation by The Conversation and three scholars with expertise in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RO4oI-8AAAAJ&hl=en">economic development</a>, <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/education/kevin-welner">tax laws</a> and <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/government/faculty/nj4353">education policy</a> shows that the cash drain from these programs is not equally shared by schools in the same communities. At the local level, tax abatements and exemptions often come at the cost of <a href="https://www.schoolfinancedata.org/the-adequacy-and-fairness-of-state-school-finance-systems-2024/.">critical funding</a> for school districts that <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3062/2024-01-31_Good_Jobs_First_Abating_Our_Future.pdf?1707953373">disproportionately serve</a>
students from low-income households and who are racial minorities.</p>
<p>In Missouri, for example, in 2022 <a href="https://www.kcpublicschools.org/about/tax-incentives-kcps#:%7E:text=As%20of%202022%2C%20nearly%20%241%2C700,%24500-%24900%20per%20pupil">nearly $1,700 per student was redirected</a> from Kansas City public and charter schools, while between $500 and $900 was redirected from wealthier, whiter Northland schools on the north side of the river in Kansas City and in the suburbs beyond. Other studies have found <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/08912424231174836">similar demographic trends elsewhere</a>, including <a href="https://goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/How-Tax-Abatements-Cost-New-York-Public-Schools.pdf">New York state</a>, <a href="https://goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/South-Carolinas-Corporate-Tax-Breaks-2022.pdf">South Carolina</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2023.2217899">Columbus, Ohio</a>.</p>
<p>The funding gaps produced by abated money often force schools to <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3325345">delay needed maintenance</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12098">increase class sizes</a>, <a href="https://districtadministration.com/teacher-layoffs-enter-k12-outlook-school-districts-budget-deficits/">lay off teachers</a> and support staff and even close outright. Schools also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/reader-center/us-public-schools-conditions.html">struggle to update or replace</a> outdated technology, books and other educational resources. And, amid a nationwide teacher shortage, schools under financial pressures sometimes turn to inexperienced teachers who are <a href="https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/state-teacher-shortages-vacancy-resource-tool">not fully certified</a> or <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2023/10/16/dallas-relies-on-international-teachers-more-than-any-other-school-district-in-the-us/">rely too heavily</a> on recruits from overseas who have been given special visa status.</p>
<p>Lost funding also prevents teachers and staff, who often feed, clothe and otherwise go above and beyond to help students in need, from <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/teacher-pay-by-state">earning a living wage</a>. All told, tax abatements can end up harming a community’s value, with constant funding shortfalls creating <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding">a cycle of decline</a>.</p>
<h2>Incentives, payoffs and guarantees</h2>
<p>Perversely, some of the largest beneficiaries of tax abatements are the politicians who publicly boast of handing out the breaks despite the harm to poorer communities. Incumbent governors have used the incentives as a means of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/incentives-to-pander/E0003C20215EDA5047EA0831FEEB6D92">taking credit for job creation</a>, even when the jobs were coming anyway.</p>
<p>“We know that subsidies don’t work,” said <a href="https://www.elizabethmarcello.com/">Elizabeth Marcello</a>, a doctoral lecturer at Hunter College who studies governmental planning and policy and the interactions between state and local governments. “But they are good political stories, and I think that’s why politicians love them so much.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Academic research shows that economic development incentives are ineffective most of the time – and harm school systems.</span></figcaption>
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<p>While some voters may celebrate abatements, parents can recognize the disparities between school districts that are created by the tax breaks. Fairleigh Jackson pointed out that her daughter’s East Baton Rouge third grade class lacks access to playground equipment.</p>
<p>The class is attending school in a temporary building while their elementary school undergoes a two-year renovation.</p>
<p>The temporary site has some grass and a cement slab where kids can play, but no playground equipment, Jackson said. And parents needed to set up an Amazon wish list to purchase basic equipment such as balls, jump ropes and chalk for students to use. The district told parents there would be no playground equipment due to a lack of funds, then promised to install equipment, Jackson said, but months later, there is none.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cement surface surrounded by a fence with grass beyond. There's no playground equipment.." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575426/original/file-20240213-28-rkjkme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The temporary site where Fairleigh Jackson’s daughter goes to school in East Baton Rouge Parish lacks playground equipment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fairleigh Jackson</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Jackson said it’s hard to complain when other schools in the district don’t even have needed security measures in place. “When I think about playground equipment, I think that’s a necessary piece of child development,” Jackson said. “Do we even advocate for something that should be a daily part of our kids’ experience when kids’ safety isn’t being funded?”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the challenges facing administrators 500-odd miles away at Atlanta Public Schools are nothing if not formidable: The district is dealing with <a href="https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/chronic-absenteeism-aps/">chronic absenteeism</a> among half of its Black students, many students <a href="https://atlantaciviccircle.org/2023/08/28/more-atlanta-students-homeless-this-school-year/">are experiencing homelessness</a>, and it’s facing a <a href="https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/teacher-retention-an-issue-in-georgia-situation-could-get-worse">teacher shortage</a>.</p>
<p>At the same time, Atlanta is showering corporations with tax breaks. The city has two bodies that dole them out: the Development Authority of Fulton County, or DAFC, and Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency. The deals handed out by the two agencies have drained $103.8 million from schools from fiscal 2017 to 2022, according to Atlanta school system financial statements.</p>
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<p>What exactly Atlanta and other cities and states are accomplishing with tax abatement programs is hard to discern. <a href="https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/289/">Fewer than a quarter</a> of companies that receive breaks in the U.S. needed an incentive to invest, according to a 2018 study by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit research organization. </p>
<p>This means that at least 75% of companies received tax abatements when they’re not needed – with communities paying a heavy price for economic development that sometimes provides little benefit.</p>
<p>In Kansas City, for example, there’s no guarantee that the businesses that do set up shop after receiving a tax abatement will remain there long term. That’s significant considering the historic border war between the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City – a competition to be the most generous to the businesses, said Jason Roberts, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel. Kansas City, Missouri, has a <a href="https://www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/departments/finance/earnings-tax">1% income tax</a> on people who work in the city, so it competes for as many workers as possible to secure that earnings tax, Roberts said.</p>
<p>Under city and state tax abatement programs, companies that used to be in Kansas City have since relocated. The AMC Theaters headquarters, for example, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2011/09/14/amc-entertainment-will-move-hq-to-ks.html">moved from the city’s downtown</a> to Leawood, Kansas, about a decade ago, garnering some $40 million in <a href="https://www.kansascommerce.gov/program/business-incentives-and-services/peak/">Promoting Employment Across Kansas</a> tax incentives.</p>
<p>Roberts said that when one side’s financial largesse runs out, companies often move across the state line – until both states decided in 2019 that <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article233725152.html">enough was enough</a> and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-end-of-kansas-missouris-border-war-should-mark-a-new-chapter-for-both-states-economies/">declared a cease-fire</a>.</p>
<p>But tax breaks for other businesses continue. “Our mission is to grow the economy of Kansas City, and application of tools such as tax exemptions are vital to achieving that mission, said Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, the Kansas City Port Authority. The incentives speed development, and providing them "has resulted in growth choosing KC versus other markets,” he added.</p>
<p>In Atlanta, those tax breaks <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/fulton-authority-gives-tax-breaks-to-projects-in-hot-markets-ajc-finds/PHR5H4SXNRAGRNWHBUUCIPHFQM/">are not going</a> to projects in neighborhoods that need help attracting development. They have largely been handed out to projects that are in high demand areas of the city, said Julian Bene, who served on Invest Atlanta’s board from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, for instance, the Fulton County development authority <a href="https://saportareport.com/fulton-agency-approves-nearly-100-million-in-property-tax-abatements/sections/reports/maggie/">approved a 10-year, $16 million tax abatement</a> for a 410-foot-tall, 27,000-square-foot tower in Atlanta’s vibrant Midtown business district. <a href="https://1105westpeachtree.com/">The project</a> included hotel space, retail space and office space that is now occupied by <a href="https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/atlanta-office/">Google</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/business/economy/invesco-plans-add-500-jobs-new-midtown/CX8ubABcCfK2IuqrJu5nMJ/">Invesco</a>.</p>
<p>In 2021, a developer in Atlanta <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/ponce-city-market-developer-pulls-request-8-million-tax-break-its-expansion/DYWYAKHVTNH5PPVHFBD5QCZDXY/">pulled its request</a> for an $8 million tax break to expand its new massive, mixed-use Ponce City Market development in the trendy Beltline neighborhood with an office tower and apartment building. Because of community pushback, the developer knew it likely did not have enough votes from the commission for approval, Bene said. After a second try for $5 million in lower taxes was also rejected, the developer went ahead and <a href="https://poncecitymarket.com/directory-view-all">built the project</a> anyway.</p>
<p>Invest Atlanta has also turned down projects in the past, Bene said. Oftentimes, after getting rejected, the developer goes back to the landowner and asks for a better price to buy the property to make their numbers work, because it was overvalued at the start.</p>
<h2>Trouble in Philadelphia</h2>
<p>On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, an environmental team was preparing Southwark School in Philadelphia for the winter cold. While checking an attic fan, members of the team saw loose dust on top of flooring that contained asbestos. The dust that certainly was blowing into the floors below could contain the cancer-causing agent. Within a day, <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/philadelphia-school-asbestos-closed-southwark-20231027.html">Southwark was closed</a> – the seventh Philadelphia school temporarily shuttered since the previous academic year because of possible asbestos contamination.</p>
<p>A 2019 inspection of the John L Kinsey school in Philadelphia found <a href="https://www.philasd.org/capitalprograms/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/11/6280_Building_21_@_John_L_Kinsey_School_2018_2019_3_Year_AHERA_Report.pdf">asbestos in plaster walls, floor tiles, radiator insulation and electrical panels</a>. Asbestos is <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/education/asbestos-closure-philadelphia-school-district-20231027.html">a major problem</a> for Philadelphia’s public schools. The district needs <a href="https://www.philasd.org/capitalprograms/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2017/06/2015-FCA-Final-Report-1.pdf">$430 million</a> to clean up the asbestos, lead, and other environmental hazards that place the health of students, teachers and staff at risk. And that is on top of an additional <a href="https://www.philasd.org/capitalprograms/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2017/06/2015-FCA-Final-Report-1.pdf">$2.4 billion</a> to fix failing and damaged buildings.</p>
<p>Yet the money is not available. Matthew Stem, a former district official, <a href="https://pubintlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/02.07.23-Memorandum-Opinion-Filed-pubintlaw.pdf">testified in a 2023 lawsuit</a> about financing of Pennsylvania schools that the environmental health risks cannot be addressed until an emergency like at Southwark because “existing funding sources are not sufficient to remediate those types of issues.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the city keeps doling out abatements, draining money that could have gone toward making Philadelphia schools safer. In the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24362508-final-acfr-2022-with-artwork-as-of-022423">fiscal year ending June 2022</a>, such tax breaks cost the school district $118 million – more than 25% of the total amount needed to remove the asbestos and other health dangers. These abatements <a href="https://www.phila.gov/media/20180524153805/City-of-Philadelphia-2018-Abatement.pdf">take 31 years to break even</a>, according to the city’s own <a href="https://www.phila.gov/documents/property-tax-abatement-studies/">scenario impact analyses</a>.</p>
<p>Huge subsets of the community – primarily Black, Brown, poor or a combination – are being “drastically impacted” by the exemptions and funding shortfalls for the school district, said Kendra Brooks, a Philadelphia City Council member. Schools and students are affected by mold, asbestos and lead, and crumbling infrastructure, as well as teacher and staffing shortages – including support staff, social workers and psychologists.</p>
<p>More than half the district’s schools that lacked adequate air conditioning – 87 schools – had to <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-schools-early-dismissals-lack-air-conditioning-extreme-heat/">go to half days</a> during the first week of the 2023 school year because of extreme heat. Poor heating systems also leave the schools cold in the winter. And some schools are overcrowded, resulting in large class sizes, she said.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Front of a four-story brick school building with tall windows, some with air-conditioners" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575461/original/file-20240213-28-1b0wxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Horace Furness High School in Philadelphia, where hot summers have temporarily closed schools that lack air conditioning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horace_Furness_High_School_1900_S_3rd_St_Philadelphia_PA_%28DSC_3038%29.jpg">Nick-philly/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Teachers and researchers agree that a lack of adequate funding undermines educational opportunities and outcomes. That’s especially true for children living in poverty. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26495136">A 2016 study</a> found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public schooling results in nearly one-third of a year of more education, 7.7% higher wages and a 3.2% reduction in annual incidence of adult poverty. The study estimated that a 21.7% increase could eliminate the high school graduation gap faced by children from low-income families.</p>
<p>More money for schools leads to more education resources for students and their teachers. The same researchers found that spending increases were associated with reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases in teacher salaries and longer school years. Other studies <a href="https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9781682532447/educational-inequality-and-school-finance/">yielded similar results</a>: <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25368/w25368.pdf">School funding matters</a>, especially for children already suffering the harms of poverty.</p>
<p>While tax abatements themselves are generally linked to rising property values, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21862">benefits are not evenly distributed</a>. In fact, any expansion of the tax base due to new property construction tends to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15575339809489773">outside of the county granting the tax abatement</a>. For families in school districts with the lost tax revenues, their neighbors’ good fortune likely comes as little solace. Meanwhile, a poorly funded education system is less likely to yield a <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/13398/education-for-life-and-work-developing-transferable-knowledge-and-skills">skilled and competitive workforce</a>, creating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199982981.003.0014">longer-term economic costs</a> that make the region less attractive for businesses and residents.</p>
<p>“There’s a head-on collision here between private gain and the future quality of America’s workforce,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director at Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that’s critical of tax abatement and tracks the use of economic development subsidies.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three-story school building with police officers out front and traffic lights in the foreground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575449/original/file-20240213-26-7jhmm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Roxborough High School in Philadelphia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X4dQQT50psqFFY1sPKeUz_wAk8eOtZ44/view?usp=sharing">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</a></span>
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<p>As funding dwindles and educational quality declines, additional <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3739064">families with means often opt for</a> alternative educational avenues such as private schooling, home-schooling or moving to a different school district, further weakening the public school system.</p>
<p>Throughout the U.S., parents with the power to do so <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0161956X.2015.988536">demand special arrangements</a>, such as selective schools or high-track enclaves that <a href="https://www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/NYULawReview-93-4-Miller.pdf">hire experienced, fully prepared</a> teachers. If demands aren’t met, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904818802106">they leave</a> the district’s public schools for private schools or for the suburbs. Some parents even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2009.01166.x">organize to splinter</a> their more advantaged, and generally whiter, neighborhoods away from the larger urban school districts.</p>
<p>Those parental demands – known among scholars as “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-6991-3">opportunity hoarding</a>” – may seem unreasonable from the outside, but scarcity breeds very real fears about educational harms inflicted on one’s own children. Regardless of who’s to blame, the children who bear the heaviest burden of the nation’s concentrated poverty and racialized poverty again lose out.</p>
<h2>Rethinking in Philadelphia and Riverhead</h2>
<p>Americans also ask public schools to accomplish Herculean tasks that go <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15575330.2023.2217881">far beyond the education basics</a>, as many parents discovered at the onset of the pandemic when schools closed and their support for families largely disappeared.</p>
<p>A school serving students who endure housing and food insecurity must dedicate resources toward children’s basic needs and trauma. But districts serving more low-income students <a href="https://edtrust.org/resource/equal-is-not-good-enough/">spend less per student</a> on average, and almost half the states <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED596199.pdf">have regressive funding structures</a>.</p>
<p>Facing dwindling resources for schools, several cities have begun to rethink their tax exemption programs.</p>
<p>The Philadelphia City Council recently passed a scale-back on a <a href="https://www.phila.gov/2018-05-24-city-releases-study-of-10-year-property-tax-abatement/">10-year property tax abatement</a> by decreasing the percentage of the subsidy over that time. But even with that change, millions will be lost to tax exemptions that could instead be invested in cash-depleted schools. “We could make major changes in our schools’ infrastructure, curriculum, staffing, staffing ratios, support staff, social workers, school psychologists – take your pick,” Brooks said.</p>
<p>Other cities looking to reform tax abatement programs are taking a different approach. In Riverhead, New York, on Long Island, developers or project owners can be granted exemptions on their property tax and allowed instead to shell out a far smaller “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT. When the abatement ends, most commonly after 10 years, the businesses then will pay full property taxes.</p>
<p>At least, that’s the idea, but the system is <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2023/10/11/riverhead-ida-tax-breaks-aquarium-school">far from perfect</a>. Beneficiaries of the PILOT program have failed to pay on time, leaving the school board struggling to fill a budget hole. Also, the payments <a href="https://nysfocus.com/2023/10/11/riverhead-ida-tax-breaks-aquarium-school">are not equal</a> to the amount they would receive for property taxes, with millions of dollars in potential revenue over a decade being cut to as little as a few hundred thousand. On the back end, if a business that’s subsidized with tax breaks fails after 10 years, the projected benefits never emerge.</p>
<p>And when the time came to start paying taxes, developers have returned to the city’s Industrial Development Agency with hat in hand, asking for more tax breaks. A <a href="https://www.newsday.com/business/ida-tax-breaks-nestle-aquarium-steel-i30377">local for-profit aquarium</a>, for example, was granted a 10-year PILOT program break by Riverhead in 1999; it has received so many extensions that it is not scheduled to start paying full taxes until 2031 – 22 years after originally planned.</p>
<h2>Kansas City border politics</h2>
<p>Like many cities, Kansas City has a long history of segregation, white flight and racial redlining, said Kathleen Pointer, senior policy strategist for Kansas City Public Schools.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575513/original/file-20240214-16-znl7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Elementary in Kansas City, Mo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Danielle McLean</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Troost Avenue, where the Kansas City Public Schools administrative office is located, serves as the city’s <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-dividing-line-troost-avenue-kansas-city-mo-sees-new-n918851">historic racial dividing line</a>, with wealthier white families living in the west and more economically disadvantaged people of color in the east. Most of the district’s schools are located east of Troost, not west.</p>
<p>Students on the west side “pretty much automatically funnel into the college preparatory middle school and high schools,” said The Federation of Teachers’ Roberts. Those schools are considered signature schools that are selective and are better taken care of than the typical neighborhood schools, he added.</p>
<p>The school district’s tax levy was set by voters in 1969 at 3.75%. But successive attempts over the next few decades to increase the levy at the ballot box failed. During a decadeslong desegregation lawsuit that was eventually resolved through a settlement agreement in the 1990s, a court raised the district’s levy rate to 4.96% without voter approval. The levy has remained at the same 4.96% rate since.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Kansas City is still distributing 20-year tax abatements to companies and developers for projects. The district calculated that about 92% of the money that was abated within the school district’s boundaries was for projects within the whiter west side of the city, Pointer said.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, we can’t pick or choose where developers build,” said Meredith Hoenes, director of communications for Port KC. “We aren’t planning and zoning. Developers typically have plans in place when they knock on our door.”</p>
<p>In Kansas City, <a href="https://kcbeacon.org/stories/2021/11/29/kansas-city-tax-incentives/">several agencies administer tax incentives</a>, allowing developers to shop around to different bodies to receive one. Pointer said he believes the Port Authority is popular because they don’t do a third-party financial analysis to prove that the developers need the amount that they say they do.</p>
<p>With 20-year abatements, a child will start pre-K and graduate high school before seeing the benefits of a property being fully on the tax rolls, Pointer said. Developers, meanwhile, routinely threaten to build somewhere else if they don’t get the incentive, she said.</p>
<p>In 2020, BlueScope Construction, a company that had received tax incentives for nearly 20 years and was about to roll off its abatement, asked for another 13 years and <a href="https://www.kcur.org/news/2020-06-25/kansas-city-council-rejects-incentives-for-a-company-that-threatened-to-move-across-state-line">threatened to move</a> to another state if it didn’t get it. At the time, the U.S. was grappling with a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.</p>
<p>“That was a moment for Kansas City Public Schools where we really drew a line in the sand and talked about incentives as an equity issue,” Pointer said.</p>
<p>After the district raised the issue – <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/development/article243798657.html">tying the incentives to systemic racism</a> – the City Council rejected BlueScope’s bid and, three years later, it’s still in Kansas City, fully on the tax rolls, she said. BlueScope did not return multiple requests for comment.</p>
<p>Recently, a <a href="https://kcbeacon.org/stories/2023/07/18/port-kc-waldo-plaza-tax-breaks/">multifamily housing project</a> was approved for a <a href="https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-08-30/port-kc-approves-20-year-tax-incentive-deal-for-plaza-apartments">20-year tax abatement</a> by the Port Authority of Kansas City at Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center in an affluent part of the city. The housing project included no affordable units. “This project was approved without any independent financial analysis proving that it needed that subsidy,” Pointer said.</p>
<p>All told, the Kansas City Public Schools district faces several shortfalls beyond the $400 million in deferred maintenance, Superintendent Jennifer Collier said. There are staffing shortages at all positions: teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff. As in much of the U.S., the cost of housing is surging. New developments that are being built do not include affordable housing, or when they do, the units are still out of reach for teachers.</p>
<p>That’s making it harder for a district that already loses about 1 in 5 of its teachers each year to keep or recruit new ones, who earn an average of only $46,150 their first year on the job, Collier said.</p>
<h2>East Baton Rouge and the industrial corridor</h2>
<p>It’s impossible to miss the tanks, towers, pipes and industrial structures that incongruously line Baton Rouge’s Scenic Highway landscape. They’re part of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s campus, home of the oil giant’s refinery in addition to chemical and plastics plants.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of industrial buildings along a river" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575171/original/file-20240213-20-ey3jk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baton Rouge campus occupies 3.28 square miles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/3c6e5c10434a44c48929197377f7a717?ext=true">AP Photo/Gerald Herbert</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sitting along the Mississippi River, <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/united-states/baton-rouge-area-operations-overview#Safetyhealthandenvironment">the campus</a> has been a staple of Louisiana’s capital for over 100 years. It’s where 6,000 employees and contractors who collectively earn over $400 million annually produce <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/global/files/locations/united-states-operations/baton-rouge/2022-brrf-fact-sheet.pdf">522,000 barrels</a> of crude oil per day when at full capacity, as well as the annual production and manufacture of <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/global/files/locations/united-states-operations/baton-rouge/2022-brpo-fact-sheet.pdf">3 billion pounds</a> of high-density polyethylene and polypropylene and <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/global/files/locations/united-states-operations/baton-rouge/2022-brcp-fact-sheet.pdf">6.6 billion pounds</a> of petrochemical products. The company posted a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exxon-smashes-western-oil-majors-earnings-record-with-59-billion-profit-2023-01-31/">record-breaking</a> <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2023/0131_exxonmobil-announces-full-year-2022-results">$55.7 billion</a> in profits in 2022 and <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2024/0202_exxonmobil-announces-2023-results">$36 billion</a> in 2023.</p>
<p>Across the street are empty fields and roads leading into neighborhoods that have been designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas/">food desert</a>. A mile drive down the street to Route 67 is a Dollar General, fast-food restaurants, and tiny, rundown food stores. A Hi Nabor Supermarket is 4 miles away.</p>
<p>East Baton Rouge Parish’s McKinley High School, a 12-minute drive from the refinery, serves a student body that is about 80% Black and 85% poor. The school, which boasts famous alums such as rapper Kevin Gates, former NBA player Tyrus Thomas and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gardner C. Taylor, holds a special place in the community, but it has been beset by violence and tragedy lately. Its football team quarterback, <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2709703-mckinley-high-school-qb-bryant-lee-fatally-shot-days-before-graduation">who was killed</a> days before graduation in 2017, was among at least four of McKinley’s students who <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/mckinley-high-student-shot-and-injured-near-baton-rouge-campus-school-placed-on-lockdown/article_f1025d24-2f07-11e9-9d4e-2789b90eae2f.html">have been shot</a> <a href="https://www.nola.com/archive/suspects-in-up-and-coming-baton-rouge-rappers-november-slaying-not-indicted-or-cleared/article_c18af908-164c-5c16-b871-55e7fbe3dbf8.html">or murdered</a> <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/he-played-tuba-baseball-at-mckinley-and-dreamed-of-college-a-shooting-cut-it-all/article_0f5fa014-9e73-11ec-941e-0f819ca7bca1.html">over the past six years</a>.</p>
<p>The experience is starkly different at some of the district’s more advantaged schools, including its magnet programs open to high-performing students.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white outline of Louisiana showing the parishes, with one, near the bottom right, filled in red" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575533/original/file-20240214-26-gvctzn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">East Baton Rouge Parish, marked in red, includes an Exxon Mobil Corp. campus and the city of Baton Rouge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Louisiana_highlighting_East_Baton_Rouge_Parish.svg">David Benbennick/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Baton Rouge is a tale of two cities, with some of the worst outcomes in the state for education, income and mortality, and some of the best outcomes. “It was only separated by sometimes a few blocks,” said Edgar Cage, the lead organizer for the advocacy group Together Baton Rouge. Cage, who grew up in the city when it was segregated by Jim Crow laws, said the root cause of that disparity was racism.</p>
<p>“Underserved kids don’t have a path forward” in East Baton Rouge public schools, Cage said.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://urbanleaguela.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/BR-Equity-Report-Online.pdf">2019 report</a> from the Urban League of Louisiana found that economically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic students are not provided equitable access to high-quality education opportunities. That has contributed to those students underperforming on standardized state assessments, such as the LEAP exam, being unprepared to advance to higher grades and being excluded from high-quality curricula and instruction, as well as the highest-performing schools and magnet schools.</p>
<p>“Baton Rouge is home to some of the highest performing schools in the state,” according to the report. “Yet the highest performing schools and schools that have selective admissions policies often exclude disadvantaged students and African American and Hispanic students.”</p>
<p>Dawn Collins, who served on the district’s school board from 2016 to 2022, said that with more funding, the district could provide more targeted interventions for students who were struggling academically or additional support to staff so they can better assist students with greater needs.</p>
<p>But for decades, Louisiana’s <a href="https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/business-incentives/industrial-tax-exemption">Industrial Ad Valorem Tax Exemption</a> <a href="https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/business-incentives/industrial-tax-exemption">Program</a>, or ITEP, allowed for 100% property tax exemptions for industrial manufacturing facilities, said Erin Hansen, the statewide policy analyst at Together Louisiana, a network of 250 religious and civic organizations across the state that advocates for grassroots issues, including tax fairness.</p>
<p>The ITEP program was created in the 1930s through a state constitutional amendment, allowing companies to bypass a public vote and get approval for the exemption through the governor-appointed <a href="https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/boards-reports-and-rules/louisiana-board-of-commerce-and-industry">Board of Commerce and Industry</a>, Hansen said. For over 80 years, that board approved nearly all applications that it received, she said.</p>
<p>Since 2000, Louisiana has granted a total of <a href="https://fastlaneng.louisianaeconomicdevelopment.com/public/reports">$35 billion in corporate property tax breaks</a> for 12,590 projects. </p>
<h2>Louisiana’s executive order</h2>
<p>A few efforts to reform the program over the years have largely failed. But in 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards <a href="https://gov.louisiana.gov/assets/ExecutiveOrders/JBE16-26.pdf">signed an executive order</a> that slightly but importantly tweaked the system. On top of the state board vote, the order gave local taxing bodies – such as school boards, sheriffs and parish or city councils – the ability to vote on their own individual portions of the tax exemptions. And in 2019 the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/itep-critics-defeat-exxonmobil-tax-break-requests-at-school-board-here-are-next-steps/article_09cb2d54-1a68-11e9-a672-7f6ee09f1f74.html">exercised its power</a> to vote down an abatement.</p>
<p>Throughout the U.S., <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2022.2148171">school boards’ power over the tax abatements</a> that affect their budgets vary, and in some states, including Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey and South Carolina, school boards lack any formal ability to vote or comment on tax abatement deals that affect them.</p>
<p>Edwards’ executive order also capped the maximum exemption at 80% and tightened the rules so routine capital investments and maintenance were no longer eligible, Hansen said. A requirement concerning job creation was also put in place.</p>
<p>Concerned residents and activists, led by Together Louisiana and sister group Together Baton Rouge, rallied around the new rules and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/us/louisiana-itep-exxon-mobil.html">pushed back</a> against the billion-dollar corporation taking more tax money from the schools. In 2019, the campaign worked: the school board rejected a $2.9 million property tax break bid by Exxon Mobil.</p>
<p>After the decision, Exxon Mobil reportedly described the city as “<a href="https://www.businessreport.com/business/exxonmobil-calls-baton-rouge-unpredictable-for-investment-after-itep-requests-rejected">unpredictable</a>.”</p>
<p>However, members of the business community have continued to lobby for the tax breaks, and they have pushed back against further rejections. In fact, according to Hansen, loopholes were created during the rulemaking process around the governor’s executive order that allowed companies to weaken its effectiveness.</p>
<p>In total, <a href="https://fastlaneng.louisianaeconomicdevelopment.com/public/reports">223 Exxon Mobil projects</a> worth nearly $580 million in tax abatements have been granted in the state of Louisiana under the ITEP program since 2000.</p>
<p>“ITEP is needed to compete with other states – and, in ExxonMobil’s case, other countries,” according to Exxon Mobil spokesperson Lauren Kight.</p>
<p>She pointed out that Exxon Mobil is the largest property taxpayer for the EBR school system, paying more than $46 million in property taxes in EBR parish in 2022 and another $34 million in sales taxes.</p>
<p>A new ITEP contract won’t decrease this existing tax revenue, Kight added. “Losing out on future projects absolutely will.”</p>
<p>The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has continued to approve Exxon Mobil abatements, passing $46.9 million between 2020 and 2022. Between 2017 and 2023, the school district has lost $96.3 million.</p>
<p><iframe id="8PBGX" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8PBGX/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Taxes are highest when industrial buildings are first built. Industrial property comes onto the tax rolls at <a href="https://ascensionedc.com/local-incentives/#">40% to 50% of its original value</a> in Louisiana after the initial 10-year exemption, according to the Ascension Economic Development Corp.</p>
<p>Exxon Mobil received its latest tax exemption, $8.6 million over 10 years – an 80% break – in October 2023 for $250 million to install facilities at the Baton Rouge complex that purify isopropyl alcohol for microchip production and that create a new advanced recycling facility, allowing the company to address plastic waste. The project <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/la/ebrp/Board.nsf/files/CV7LXR562D7C/$file/ITEP-Exxon%20Mobil%20Corporation%2020230071-ITE%20Application.pdf">created zero new jobs</a>.</p>
<p>The school board <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Ry-veRlM4">approved it by a 7-2 vote</a> after a long and occasionally contentious board meeting.</p>
<p>“Does it make sense for Louisiana and other economically disadvantaged states to kind of compete with each other by providing tax incentives to mega corporations like Exxon Mobil?” said EBR School Board Vice President Patrick Martin, who voted for the abatement. “Probably, in a macro sense, it does not make a lot of sense. But it is the program that we have.”</p>
<p>Obviously, Exxon Mobil benefits, he said. “The company gets a benefit in reducing the property taxes that they would otherwise pay on their industrial activity that adds value to that property.” But the community benefits from the 20% of the property taxes that are not exempted, he said.</p>
<p>“I believe if we don’t pass it, over time the investments will not come and our district as a whole will have less money,” he added.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-9hbVfhZRQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2022, a year when Exxon Mobil made a record $55.7 billion, the company asked for a 10-year, 80% property tax break from the cash-starved East Baton Rouge Parish school district. A lively debate ensued.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, the district’s budgetary woes are coming to a head. Bus drivers staged a sickout at the start of the school year, refusing to pick up students – in protest of low pay and not having buses equipped with air conditioning amid a heat wave. The district was forced to release students early, leaving kids stranded without a ride to school, before it acquiesced and provided the drivers and other staff <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/lost-class-time-due-to-baton-rouge-bus-crisis-to-be-made-up/article_f5666e24-4694-11ee-8f5d-87183159ce0e.html">one-time stipends</a> and purchased new buses with air conditioning.</p>
<p>The district also agreed to reestablish transfer points as a temporary response to the shortages. But that transfer-point plan has historically resulted in students riding on the bus for hours and occasionally missing breakfast when the bus arrives late, according to Angela Reams-Brown, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers. The district plans to purchase or lease over 160 buses and solve its bus driver shortage next year, but the plan could lead to <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/baton-rouge-school-bus-crisis-could-lead-to-budget-crisis/article_a24d6502-5fdb-11ee-ad9c-c378e2276bbf.html">a budget crisis</a>.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.wafb.com/2023/06/20/program-aimed-help-teacher-shortage/">teacher shortage looms</a> as well, because the district is paying teachers below the regional average. At the school board meeting, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Ry-veRlM4">Laverne Simoneaux</a>, an ELL specialist at East Baton Rouge’s Woodlawn Elementary, said she was informed that her job was not guaranteed next year since she’s being paid through federal COVID-19 relief funds. By receiving tax exemptions, Exxon Mobil was taking money from her salary to deepen their pockets, she said.</p>
<p>A young student in the district told the school board that the money could provide better internet access or be used to hire someone to pick up the glass and barbed wire in the playground. But at least they have a playground – Hayden Crockett, a seventh grader at Sherwood Middle Academic Magnet School, noted that his sister’s elementary school lacked one.</p>
<p>“If it wasn’t in the budget to fund playground equipment, how can it also be in the budget to give one of the most powerful corporations in the world a tax break?” Crockett said. “The math just ain’t mathing.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Wen worked for the nonprofit organization Good Jobs First from June 2019 to May 2022 where she helped collect tax abatement data. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Jensen has received funding from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danielle McLean and Kevin Welner do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An estimated 95% of US cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors, taking billions away from schools.Christine Wen, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, Texas A&M UniversityDanielle McLean, Freelance Reporter and Editor, The ConversationKevin Welner, Professor of Education Policy & Law; Director of the National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado BoulderNathan Jensen, Professor of Government, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059852023-05-28T11:32:31Z2023-05-28T11:32:31ZAs teams from the U.S. Sun Belt proceed to the Stanley Cup finals, has the NHL forgotten its Canadian fans?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528121/original/file-20230524-7504-oejtzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C62%2C3772%2C2445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague celebrates after scoring against the Edmonton Oilers during Game 5 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup second-round playoff series on May 12 in Las Vegas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Locher)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/as-teams-from-the-u-s--sun-belt-proceed-to-the-stanley-cup-finals--has-the-nhl-forgotten-its-canadian-fans" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Hockey is supposed to be Canada’s game. Yet the last two Canadian-based NHL teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the <a href="https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/maple-leafs-eliminated-from-playoffs-after-3-2-loss-against-panthers-1.6396932">Toronto Maple Leafs</a> and the <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/edmonton-oilers-eliminated-in-second-round-by-golden-knights/c-344396382">Edmonton Oilers</a>, have been eliminated from the tournament. This lengthens the <a href="https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/canadas-stanley-cup-drought-hits-30-years-after-golden-knights-oust-oilers/">three-decade drought</a> since a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup. </p>
<p>The Vegas Golden Knights, Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers, and Carolina Hurricanes made it to the final four teams vying for the Stanley Cup. <a href="https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/sports/nhls-final-four-comprised-of-only-sun-belt-teams-for-first-time/3229451/">For the first time in NHL history</a>, the final four are located in the U.S. Sun Belt in places Canadian snowbirds usually go to escape the snow and ice, not play on it.</p>
<p>The Florida Panthers will play against the winner of the Western Conference Final for the Stanley Cup.</p>
<p>What does the success of these teams mean for the NHL? And should Canadian hockey fans be frustrated with the success of non-traditional hockey markets at the expense of Canadian teams?</p>
<h2>The NHL expands southward</h2>
<p>The fact that the final four teams are from non-traditional markets in the United States represents a success for the NHL’s Sun Belt expansion strategy. The plan was to seek new revenue by expanding the game to large U.S. cities with no hockey history. </p>
<p>NHL superstar <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/gretzky-trade-to-los-angeles-shocked-hockey-world/c-679887">Wayne Gretzky’s 1988 trade to Los Angeles</a> was the perfect catalyst to start the expansion strategy. <a href="https://www.nhl.com/news/nhl-expansion-history/c-281005106">The addition of the San Jose Sharks in 1991</a> as an inter-state rival to Gretzky’s Kings began this process. Next were new teams in Tampa Bay, Miami and Anaheim. The Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix, and the Hartford Whalers to North Carolina. </p>
<p>Additional NHL teams were added in Nashville, Atlanta (since moved to Winnipeg) and Columbus, Ohio. The NHL targeted these unlikely destinations while ignoring Canadian markets like Québec City and Hamilton despite <a href="https://mowatcentre.munkschool.utoronto.ca/the-new-economics-of-the-nhl/">research suggesting Canada could support more franchises</a>. The team in Minnesota was moved to Dallas, and an expansion team was added in Las Vegas, resulting in more teams being based in the U.S. Sun Belt than Canada.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Disappointed men in blue hockey jerseys stand in an ice rink." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528122/original/file-20230524-27-7d3729.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares and teammates react after losing to the Florida Panthers in an NHL Stanley Cup playoff game in Toronto on May 12.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Sun Belt expansion strategy was not without its <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/bettmans-sunbelt-strategy-hits-a-rut/article1198429/">problems</a>, and some argued that strong markets in Canada and elsewhere had to <a href="https://mowatcentre.munkschool.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/publications/19_the_new_economics_of_the_nhl.pdf">subsidize</a> some of the weaker expansion teams. However, most of these new teams have <a href="https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2017/01/23/Franchises/Sun-Belt.aspx">achieved success</a>. </p>
<p>Since 1993 — the last time a Canadian-based team won the Stanley Cup — Sun Belt teams have won eight times, while Canadian-based teams have lost in the finals on six occasions. Four losses were at the hands of Sun Belt teams: in 2004 Calgary lost to Tampa Bay, the Carolina Hurricanes beat the Edmonton Oilers in 2006, Anaheim defeated Ottawa the following year and most recently Tampa Bay beat Montréal in 2021.</p>
<h2>Canadian hockey vs. the Sun Belt</h2>
<p>Many Canadians might feel frustrated this year with four unconventional hockey markets left to compete for the Stanley Cup. Disappointment might be made worse by comparing the four U.S. cities left in the playoffs with traditionally hockey-crazy markets like Toronto or Edmonton. </p>
<p>Texas, North Carolina, Nevada and Florida have a combined population of 65 million people — almost ten times the combined population of Edmonton and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). But according to <a href="https://www.usahockey.com/membershipstats">2022 USA Hockey registration reports</a>, those four states have less than 50,000 players in organized hockey.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the GTA alone <a href="https://gthlcanada.com/about-gthl/">has more players</a> in hockey. Edmonton, a city of one million people, had <a href="https://www.hockeyedmonton.ca/content/quikcard-edmonton-minor-hockey-week-2023">10,000 kids participate</a> in a single minor hockey tournament last year.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a green hockey jersey shoots a puck toward a goaltender in a white jersey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528126/original/file-20230524-23-z0j3jo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Adin Hill blocks a shot by Dallas Stars defenseman Joel Hanley during Game 3 of the NHL Stanley Cup Western Conference finals in Dallas on May 23.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/LM Otero)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps there are fewer players in the U.S. states because of the dearth of hockey rinks. <a href="http://sk8stuff.com/m_clubs.asp">Texas, North Carolina, Nevada and Florida have fewer than 75 rinks in total</a>. Meanwhile, the <a href="https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/recreation/skating-winter-sports/public-leisure-skating/#location=&lat=&lng=">GTA</a> and <a href="https://www.edmonton.ca/activities_parks_recreation/arenas">Edmonton</a> have more indoor rinks than each of the four U.S. states. </p>
<p>Fewer players and rinks undoubtedly contribute to the lack of NHL players produced in these four U.S. states. Only 22 players born in the four states have played more than 100 games in the NHL. This compares to the <a href="https://www.quanthockey.com/">347 players from the GTA and Edmonton</a>.</p>
<h2>Tickets and ratings</h2>
<p>It’s not surprising that there are more players and rinks in Canada, but what about fans? Three of the remaining teams in this year’s playoffs are in <a href="https://theathletic.com/3200274/2022/03/23/florida-panthers-remain-the-nhls-best-deal-for-fans-but-the-others-may-surprise-you/">the cheapest eight NHL markets for tickets</a>. That suggests demand is not driving up ticket prices in these non-traditional markets. Toronto has the league’s most expensive tickets, while small-market Edmonton has the 14th most expensive tickets. </p>
<p>While it is difficult to access television ratings for specific regions, we know that Canadians are hockey consumers. This year, the Toronto-Florida series averaged around <a href="https://brioux.tv/blog/2023/05/08/round-2-ratings-suggest-leaf-fans-just-cant-look/">3.5 million viewers in Canada</a> compared to <a href="https://twitter.com/Zone_NHL/status/1659209293315579911">1.378 million in the U.S.</a> meaning that, per capita, 22 times more Canadians watched the series.</p>
<p>The Vegas-Oilers series averaged <a href="https://mediaincanada.com/2023/05/02/ratings-up-4-for-first-round-of-stanley-cup-playoffs/">1.7 million viewers in Canada</a> compared to less than <a href="https://twitter.com/Zone_NHL/status/1659209293315579911">1.2 million in the U.S.</a> resulting in almost 13 times more Canadian viewers per capita.</p>
<p>Perhaps Canadians have a right to be disappointed with four non-traditional hockey markets left to battle for the Cup, particularly when comparing hockey culture between the two regions. But as the old adage in sports goes: just wait until next year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Valentine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Should Canadian hockey fans be frustrated with the success of non-traditional hockey markets at the expense of Canadian teams?John Valentine, Associate Professor Health & Community Studies, MacEwan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2063862023-05-26T12:28:18Z2023-05-26T12:28:18ZColorado River states bought time with a 3-year water conservation deal – now they need to think bigger<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528392/original/file-20230525-15-nxrpr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C11%2C3841%2C2085&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An irrigation canal moves Colorado River water through farm fields in California's Imperial Valley.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-aerial-view-shows-an-irrigation-canal-through-news-photo/1248577568">Photo by Sandy Huffaker / AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Arizona, California and Nevada have narrowly averted a regional water crisis by agreeing to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-05-22/seven-states-announce-colorado-river-water-deal-agreeing-on-water-cuts-for-three-years">reduce their use of Colorado River water</a> over the next three years. This deal represents a temporary solution to a long-term crisis. Nonetheless, as a <a href="https://robertglennon.net/">close observer of western water policy</a>, I see it as an important win for the region.</p>
<p>Seven western states – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California – and Mexico rely on water from the Colorado River for irrigation for 5.5 million acres and drinking water for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/climate/colorado-river-deal.html">40 million people</a>. Their shares are apportioned under a compact negotiated in 1922. We now know, thanks to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12989">tree-ring science</a>, that its framers wildly overestimated how much water the river contained on a reliable basis. And climate change is <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-shrinking-the-colorado-river-76280">making things worse</a>. </p>
<p>Some recent commentators have argued for <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-19/former-interior-secretary-calls-for-revamping-colorado-river-compact">revamping the compact</a>. The lawyer in me shudders to think of the utter chaos that would ensue as states, tribes that were left out of the original agreement, and Mexico try to unwind settled expectations and create new ones. </p>
<p>In my view, the agreement announced on May 22, 2023, strongly repudiates the need to revamp the compact. Seven states were able to finesse an agreement that will ultimately result in significant changes to the legal documents collectively known as the <a href="https://www.crwua.org/law-of-the-river.html">Law of the River</a>, without the need to begin again. The next step – a broader, longer-lasting overhaul of the compact – will be even more challenging. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The May 2023 deal staves off an immediate water crisis but does not solve long-term problems in the Colorado River Basin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Overallocated and shrinking</h2>
<p>The Colorado River, the lifeblood of the U.S. Southwest, faced the prospect of going dry if its two largest reservoirs – Lakes Mead and Powell – hit <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-dead-pool-a-water-expert-explains-182495">dead pool</a>, the level at which no water flows through their dams. Several forces led to this catastrophic prospect. </p>
<p>First, the 1922 Colorado River Compact and other elements of the Law of the River dole out rights to <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-climate-change-parches-the-southwest-heres-a-better-way-to-share-water-from-the-shrinking-colorado-river-168723">more water than the river provides</a>. </p>
<p>Second, a historic drought that commenced in 2000 has caused water levels in the reservoirs to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-02-05/colorado-river-reservoirs-unlikely-to-refill-experts-say">plummet by 75%</a>. </p>
<p>Third, climate change has reduced the flow in the river by more than 1 million acre-feet. (One acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover an acre of land to a depth of 1 foot – about 325,000 gallons.) Evaporation off the surface of the reservoirs annually claims in excess of an additional 1 million acre-feet. </p>
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<iframe frameborder="0" class="juxtapose" width="100%" height="400" src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=562fd2cc-fb2c-11ed-b5bd-6595d9b17862"></iframe>
</figure><figure><figcaption>These satellite images show water levels declining from 2020 through 2022 in Lake Mead, located in the Mojave Desert in Arizona and Nevada (move slider to see change).<a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145762/a-flash-drought-dries-the-southeast">NASA Earth Observatory</a></figcaption></figure>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/05/05/1173069933/snowpack-california-2023-flooding-what-to-expect">This year’s snowpack</a>, historic by any measure, offers a year or two of relief from hitting dead pool. However, one wet year <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-western-drought-finally-ending-that-depends-on-where-you-look-201156">doesn’t alter the trajectory of climate change</a> or the level of reliable flows in the river over time. </p>
<p>State water managers clearly understand the problem and have taken <a href="https://library.cap-az.com/documents/departments/planning/colorado-river-programs/CAP-FactSheet-DCP.pdf">significant but insufficient steps to conserve water</a>. Each state thinks <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-long-game/2023/02/07/the-colorado-river-hits-a-boiling-point-00081530">the others should do more</a> to solve the problem. Negotiations, sometimes acrimonious, have stalled. </p>
<p>In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior broke this stalemate with a plea and then a demand for the states to do more, faster, to protect the river. Then, in April 2023, the agency released a <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/documents/NearTermColoradoRiverOperations/20230400-Near-termColoradoRiverOperations-DraftEIS-508.pdf">draft supplemental environmental impact study</a> that offered two alternatives – one more favorable to California, the other to Arizona. The message to states was clear: If you can’t reach a consensus, we’ll act to protect the river. Intense negotiations followed, leading to the May 22 agreement. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/Crt1UM8tMHo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u0026igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Will payments promote long-term conservation?</h2>
<p>The new cuts center on California, Nevada and Arizona because they draw their shares of the river mostly from Lake Powell and Lake Mead. The states have agreed to reduce their consumption of Colorado River water by 3 million acre-feet by 2026, which represents <a href="https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-05-22/seven-states-announce-colorado-river-water-deal-agreeing-on-water-cuts-for-three-years">about 14%</a> of their combined allocations. </p>
<p>This pact temporarily protects water supplies for cities, farmers and tribes. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation immediately accepted the proposal and committed to pay for steps that are expected to <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-historic-consensus-system-conservation-proposal">conserve 2.3 million acre-feet of water</a> with money from the Inflation Reduction Act. For example, the Gila River Indian Community will receive $50 million from the Lower Colorado River Basin System Conservation and Efficiency Program in <a href="https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-historic-consensus-system-conservation-proposal">each of the next three years</a> for improvements such as new pipelines. </p>
<p>It’s now up to California, Nevada and Arizona to divvy up the remaining 700,000 acre-feet of cuts. I expect that water reallocation, with water moving from lower-value to higher-value uses, will play a key role. Water marketing – negotiating voluntary sales or leases of water – is a tool to facilitate that transition. </p>
<p>Most of the water involved in the recent agreement will be freed up by one party paying another party to use less – for example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-water-strategy-for-the-parched-west-have-cities-pay-farmers-to-install-more-efficient-irrigation-systems-185820">cities paying farmers to conserve water</a> that the cities can then use. That’s the essence of water marketing. The agreement will provide funding to irrigation districts, tribes and water providers, who will then figure out how to generate the savings each organization has committed to deliver. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1661468606130196480"}"></div></p>
<h2>Negotiation, not litigation</h2>
<p>The next steps are for the states to begin discussions about replacing guidelines that currently govern the sharing of Colorado River water, which expire in 2026. These discussions will be more painful because federal funding will expire and cuts will be more severe. Thus far, the Upper Basin states – Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico – have not had to endure significant water use cuts. My hope is that the states will seize this three-year window as an opportunity to develop procedures and identify funding for major water reallocations. </p>
<p>Over the last couple of years, there have been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/us/colorado-river-water-california-arizona-climate/index.html">threats to solve these issues in court</a>. But litigation is a lengthy, costly process fraught with uncertainty. The original <a href="https://wrrc.arizona.edu/publication/sharing-colorado-river-water-history-public-policy-and-colorado-river-compact">Arizona v. California suit</a> was filed in 1930, and the Supreme Court did not enter its final decree until 2006. </p>
<p>Many legal arguments that individual basin states could present to a court rest on interpretations of vague or ambiguous Law of the River documents. The river can’t wait for the legal process to adjudicate gnarly, complicated claims made trickier by a century of statutory and case law embellishments. As I see it, negotiation and concessions leading to consensus are the only viable solution going forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206386/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Glennon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Southwest states have bought time with an agreement between California, Arizona and Nevada to cut Colorado River water use by about 14%. Now comes the hard part.Robert Glennon, Regents Professor Emeritus and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy Emeritus, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011562023-03-16T12:50:59Z2023-03-16T12:50:59ZIs the Western drought finally ending? That depends on where you look<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514982/original/file-20230313-16-kn6nns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C6000%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">California's snowpack was more than twice the average in much of the state in early March 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vehicles-pass-along-a-highway-snowplowed-through-deep-snow-news-photo/1458394332">Mario Tama/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After three years of extreme drought, the Western U.S. is finally getting a break. Mountain ranges are <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd1045012.html">covered in deep snow</a>, and water reservoirs in many areas <a href="https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain">are filling up</a> following a series of <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/stories/what-are-atmospheric-rivers">atmospheric rivers</a> that brought record rain and snowfall to large parts of the region.</p>
<p>Many people are looking at the snow and water levels and asking: Is the drought finally over?</p>
<p>There is a lot of nuance to the answer. Where you are in the West and how you define “drought” make a difference. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dloXR6MAAAAJ&hl=en">drought and water researcher</a> at the <a href="https://www.dri.edu/directory/dan-mcevoy/">Desert Research Institute’s</a> Western Regional Climate Center, here’s what I’m seeing.</p>
<h2>How fast each region recovers will vary</h2>
<p>The winter of 2023 has made a big dent in improving the drought and potentially eliminating the water shortage problems of the last few summers. </p>
<p>I say “potentially” because in many areas, a lot of the impacts of drought tend to <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca8bd/meta">show up in summer</a>, once the winter rain and snow stop and the West starts relying on reservoirs and streams for water. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aca8bd">Spring heat waves</a> like the ones we saw in 2021 or <a href="https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/metwatch/metwatch_mpd_multi.php?md=0093&yr=2023">rain in the mountains</a> could melt the snowpack faster than normal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A US map shows heavy rain across much of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Arizona" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515502/original/file-20230315-28-wlk89n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Atmospheric rivers in January brought heavy rain across large parts of the West. Another powerful storm system hit in March.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/atmospheric-rivers-take-chunk-out-california-drought">Climate.gov</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>California and the Great Basin</h2>
<p>In California, the state’s three-year precipitation deficit was <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/atmospheric-rivers-take-chunk-out-california-drought">just about erased by the atmospheric rivers</a> that caused so much flooding in December and January. By March, the snowpack across the Sierra Nevada was <a href="https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=PLOT_SWC">well above the historical averages</a> – and <a href="https://www.drought.gov/topics/snow-drought">more than 200%</a> of average in some areas. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced it was <a href="https://www.mwdh2o.com/press-releases/metropolitan-board-rescinds-emergency-conservation-mandate-imposed-on-dozens-of-communities">ending emergency water restrictions</a> for nearly 7 million people on March 15.</p>
<p>It seems as though most of the surface water drought – drought involving streams and reservoirs – could be eliminated by summer in California and the Great Basin, across Nevada and western Utah. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two images of Lake Oroville, from November 2022 to late January 2023 show a sharp decline in water levels and a wide ring around the edge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515503/original/file-20230315-352-zcwyhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The early 2023 storms likely could have filled Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs. But reservoirs are also essential for flood management, so managers balance how much water to retain and how much to release.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150953/reservoirs-rise-but-groundwater-woes-remain">NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that’s only surface water. Drought also affects groundwater, and those effects will <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126917">take longer to alleviate</a>.</p>
<p>Studies in California have shown that, even after wet years like 2017 and 2019, the groundwater systems <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030352">did not fully recover</a> from the previous drought, in part because of years of overpumping groundwater for agriculture, and the aquifers were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35582-x">not fully recharging</a>.</p>
<p>In that sense, the drought is not over. But at the broader scale for the region, a lot of the drought impacts that people experience will be lessened or almost gone by this summer. </p>
<h2>The Colorado River Basin</h2>
<p>Similar to the Sierra Nevada, the Upper Colorado River Basin – Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and northwestern New Mexico – has a healthy snowpack this year, and it’s looking like a very good water year there. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing highest snow water equivalent in California, the Great Basin and Arizona" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516972/original/file-20230322-24-pk37ff.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The snow water equivalent, a measure of snowpack, was over 200% of average in several areas on March 21, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.drought.gov/topics/snow-drought">Drought.gov</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But one single good water year is not going to fill <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150111/lake-mead-keeps-dropping">Lake Mead</a> and <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150249/lake-powell-still-shrinking">Lake Powell</a>. Most of the region relies on those two reservoirs, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-dead-pool-a-water-expert-explains-182495">have declined to worrying levels</a> over the past two decades.</p>
<p>Two good water years won’t do it either. Over the next decade, most years will have to be above average to begin to fill those giant reservoirs. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/colorado-river-is-in-danger-of-a-parched-future/">Rising temperatures and drying</a> will make that even harder. </p>
<p>So, that system is still going to be dealing with a lot of the same long-term drought impacts that it has been seeing. The reservoirs will likely rise some, but nowhere close to capacity.</p>
<h2>The Pacific Northwest</h2>
<p>The Pacific Northwest isn’t having as much rain and snow, and it’s a little drier there. But it’s <a href="https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/maps/wa_swepctnormal_update.pdf">close to average</a>, so there’s not a huge concern there, at least not right now.</p>
<p><iframe id="de2oY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/de2oY/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Forests, range land and the fire risk</h2>
<p>Drought can also have longer-term impacts on ecosystems, particularly forest health.</p>
<p>The Sierra Nevada range has seen <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0388-5">large-scale tree die-offs</a> with the drought in recent years, <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd1088611.pdf">including in northern areas</a> around Lake Tahoe and Reno that weren’t as affected by the previous drought. Whether the recent die-offs there are due to the severity of the current drought or lingering effects from the past droughts is an open question. </p>
<p>Even with a wet winter, it’s not clear how soon the forests will recover.</p>
<p>Rangelands, since they are mostly grasses, can recover in a few months. The <a href="https://gbdash.dri.edu/forecasts.php">soil moisture is really high</a> in a lot of these areas, so range conditions should be good across the West – at least going into summer. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Dead and dying trees with yellow needles on a forest ridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514984/original/file-20230313-23-va5wq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drought and bark beetles have killed millions of trees across California in recent years, contributing to wildfire risk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/dead-and-dying-trees-are-seen-in-a-forest-stressed-by-news-photo/472531110">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the West has another really hot, dry summer, however, the drought could ramp up again, particularly in the Northwest and California. And then communities will have to <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021AGUFM.H53G..06H/abstract">think about fire risk</a>.</p>
<p>Right now, there’s a <a href="https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/outlooks.htm">below-normal likelihood of big fires</a> in the Southwest for early spring due to lots of soil moisture and snowpack.</p>
<p>In the higher-elevation mountains and forests, the above-average snowpack is likely to last longer than it has in recent years, so those regions will likely have a later start to the fire season. But lower elevations, like the Great Basin’s shrub- and grassland-dominated ecosystem, could see fire danger starting earlier in the year if the land dries out.</p>
<h2>Long-term outlooks aren’t necessarily reliable</h2>
<p>By a lot of atmospheric measures, California appears to be coming <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/png/20230314/20230314_usdm.png">out of drought</a>, and the drought feels like it’s ending elsewhere. But it’s hard to say when exactly the drought is over. Studies suggest the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7513">West’s hydroclimate is becoming more variable</a> in its swings from drought to deluge.</p>
<p>Drought is also hard to forecast, particularly <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_discussion.php">long term</a>. Researchers can get a pretty good sense of conditions one month out, but the chaotic nature of the atmosphere and weather make longer-range outlooks less reliable.</p>
<p>We saw that this year. The <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/us-winter-outlook-warmer-drier-south-with-ongoing-la-nina">initial forecast</a> was for a dry winter 2023 in much of the West. But in California, Arizona and New Mexico, the opposite happened.</p>
<p>Seasonal forecasts tend to rely heavily on whether it’s <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html">an El Niño or La Niña year</a>, involving sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that can affect the jet stream and atmospheric conditions around the world. During La Niña – the pattern we saw from 2020 until <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml">March 2023</a> – the Southwest tends to be drier and the Pacific Northwest wetter.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wVlfyhs64IY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">NOAA explains El Niño and La Niña.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But that pattern <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/did-la-ni%C3%B1a-drench-southwest-united-states-early-winter-202223">doesn’t always set up</a> in exactly the same way and in the same place, as we saw this year. </p>
<p>There is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7513">a lot more going on in the atmosphere</a> and the oceans on a short-term scale that can dominate the La Niña pattern. This year’s <a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/atmospheric-rivers-hit-west-coast">series of atmospheric rivers</a> has been one example. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article was updated on March 22, 2023, with the latest snowpack map.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan McEvoy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reservoirs and streams are in good shape in California and the Great Basin, but groundwater and ecosystems are another story. And then there’s the Colorado River Basin.Dan McEvoy, Associate Research Professor in Climatology, Desert Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1824952022-05-12T12:14:25Z2022-05-12T12:14:25ZWhat is dead pool? A water expert explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462351/original/file-20220511-2672-ukm5xy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5656%2C3765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The white 'bathtub ring' around Lake Mead, shown on Jan. 11, 2022, is roughly 160 feet high and reflects falling water levels.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bathtub-ring-caused-by-the-drought-has-formed-in-the-news-photo/1365689217">George Rose/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Journalists reporting on the status and future of the Colorado River are increasingly using the phrase “<a href="https://www.cpr.org/2022/03/16/lake-powell-water-levels-drop-drought/">dead pool</a>.” It sounds ominous. And it is.</p>
<p><a href="https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/bureau-modifies-outflow-from-glen-canyon-dam">Dead pool</a> occurs when water in a reservoir drops so low that it can’t flow downstream from the dam. The biggest concerns are <a href="https://www.nps.gov/glca/index.htm">Lake Powell</a>, behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border, and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/overview-of-lake-mead.htm">Lake Mead</a>, behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. These two reservoirs, the largest in the U.S., provide water for drinking and irrigation and hydroelectricity to millions of people in Nevada, Arizona and California.</p>
<p>Some media reports incorrectly define dead pool as the point at which a dam no longer has enough water to generate hydroelectricity. The more accurate term for that situation is the <a href="https://lakepowellchronicle.com/article/bureau-modifies-outflow-from-glen-canyon-dam">minimum power pool elevation</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.doi.gov/ocl/colorado-river-drought-conditions">22-year drought</a> in the Colorado River basin lingers, reaching minimum power pool elevation is the first problem. Lakes Powell and Mead have turbines at the bases of their dams, well below the surface of the reservoirs. Water flows through valves in intake towers in the reservoirs and is channeled through the turbines, making them spin to generate electricity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2zkOhEZUueo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Water levels in the Colorado River’s major reservoirs are falling to levels not seen since the reservoirs were created.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This system relies on what hydrologists call <a href="https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Hydraulic_head">hydraulic head</a> – the amount of liquid pressure above a given point. The higher the level of water above the turbines in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the more hydraulic head they have and the more power they will generate. </p>
<p>When the level in a reservoir approaches minimum power pool elevation, the turbines lose capacity to produce power as they start to take in air along with water and must be shut down before they are damaged. A reservoir that reaches this point usually has quite a bit of water left before it drops to dead pool and water stops flowing from the dam.</p>
<p>The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently announced <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/gcd.html">unprecedented changes</a> in its regulation of the water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. First, the bureau will retain in Lake Powell 480,000 acre-feet of water that was scheduled to flow down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead for use by California, Nevada and Arizona. One acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons. </p>
<p>Second, the bureau will release an additional 500,000 acre-feet from <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/uc/rm/crsp/fg/">Flaming Gorge Dam</a> on the Wyoming-Utah border. Water from Flaming Gorge flows into the Green River and eventually into Lake Powell. The water level in Lake Powell was 3,522 feet on April 30, 2022 – just 32 feet above the minimum power pool elevation of 3,490 feet. Dead pool is 120 feet lower, at 3,370 feet.</p>
<p><iframe id="Ax93s" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ax93s/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The bureau acted suddenly because the levels in both lakes have dropped far faster than anyone forecast. In the last year, <a href="https://tucson.com/news/local/subscriber/water-officials-share-grim-outlook-for-cap-water-supply/article_b86a9a26-cd6f-11ec-a237-afa2e74f5cea.html">Lake Mead dropped 22 feet; Lake Powell, 40 feet</a>.</p>
<p>Extreme drought and climate change partly explain this rapid decline. Another factor is that Glen and Boulder Canyons are V-shaped, like martini glasses – wide at the rim and narrow at the bottom. As levels in the lakes decline, each foot of elevation holds less water. </p>
<p>For now, finding enough water to keep generating electricity is the focus. But unless California, Nevada and Arizona make big cuts in the amount of water they use, dead pool in Lake Powell and Lake Mead can’t be ruled out.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to clarify that Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Glennon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Colorado River provides water and electricity to 40 million people in the western US, but falling water levels threaten both of those resources.Robert Glennon, Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1751212022-05-04T12:34:08Z2022-05-04T12:34:08ZWestern river compacts were innovative in the 1920s but couldn’t foresee today’s water challenges<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461029/original/file-20220503-17-vndu14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C3600%2C2629&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colorado River water flows through a canal that feeds farms in Casa Grande, Ariz., on July 22, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ColoradoRiver-Drought-Farmers/04d2f3907a06491393db2a823720f137/photo">AP Photo/Darryl Webb</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Western U.S. is in a water crisis, from <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-water-shortages-california-colorado-river-a7fb27682222fd8ab23f60f04eecb75a">California</a> to <a href="https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/blogs/ag-policy-blog/blog-post/2022/04/19/nebraska-governor-signs-bill-build">Nebraska</a>. An ongoing drought is predicted to last <a href="https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_summary.php">at least through July 2022</a>. Recent research suggests that these conditions may be better labeled <a href="https://coloradosun.com/2022/02/14/tree-ring-drought-1200-years-colorado-southwest/">aridification</a> – meaning that warming and drying are long-term trends.</p>
<p>On the <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/40-million-people-rely-on-the-colorado-river-its-drying-up-fast">Colorado River</a>, the country’s two largest reservoirs – <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lake-powell-drought-hydropower-colorado-river-619790b577eabc81cfa2d9b9b6ca2fe1">Lake Powell</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2022/03/lake-mead-nra-managers-grappling-low-water-levels">Lake Mead</a> – are at their lowest levels in 50 years. This could threaten water supplies for Western states and electricity generation from the massive hydropower turbines embedded in the lakes’ dams. In August 2021 the federal government issued a first-ever <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts.html">water shortage declaration</a> for the Colorado, forcing supply cuts in several states.</p>
<p>The seven Colorado River Basin states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – signed a water sharing agreement, the <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/28698">Colorado River Compact</a>, in 1922. Some observers are now calling for renegotiating the compact <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-climate-change-parches-the-southwest-heres-a-better-way-to-share-water-from-the-shrinking-colorado-river-168723">to correct errors and oversights</a>. Nebraska and Colorado are also <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/nebraska-and-colorado-are-fighting-over-water-after-99-years-of-sharing-rights-11647860400?">arguing over water</a> from the South Platte River, which they share under <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/182259">a separate agreement signed in 1923</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo shows men in suits gathered around a desk covered with papers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461033/original/file-20220503-11804-bybdb6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Delph Carpenter, standing at center, at the signing of bills approving the Colorado River and South Platte River compacts in 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archives.mountainscholar.org/digital/collection/p17393coll150/id/1583">Colorado State University Water Resources Archive</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My work as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LQcyNSwAAAAJ&hl=en">head archivist</a> for Colorado State University’s <a href="https://lib.colostate.edu/find/archives-special-collections/collections/water-resources-archive/">Water Resources Archive</a> gives me a unique perspective on these conflicts. Our collection includes the papers of <a href="https://archives.colostate.edu/repositories/2/resources/193">Delph Carpenter</a>, a lawyer who developed the concept of interstate river compacts and negotiated both the Colorado and South Platte agreements. </p>
<p>Carpenter’s drafts, letters, research and reports show that he believed compacts would reduce litigation, preserve state autonomy and promote the common good. Indeed, <a href="https://www.internationalwaterlaw.org/documents/interstate_us.html">many states use them now</a>. Viewing Carpenter’s documents with hindsight, we can see that interstate river compacts were an innovative solution 100 years ago – but were written for a West far different from today.</p>
<h2>Water for development</h2>
<p>In the early 1900s, there was plenty of water to go around. But there weren’t enough dams, canals or pipelines to store, move or make use of it. Devastating floods in <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1920/topstory.html">California</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HY3uWHDUjU">Arizona</a> spurred plans for building dams to hold back high river flows. </p>
<p>With the Reclamation Act of 1902, Congress directed the Interior Department to develop infrastructure in the West to supply water for irrigation. As the <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/history/borhist.html">Reclamation Service</a>, which later became the powerful <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/">Bureau of Reclamation</a>, moved forward, it began planning for dams that could also generate hydropower. Low-cost electricity and irrigation water would become important drivers of development in the West.</p>
<p>Carpenter worried that downstream states, building dams for their own needs, would demand water from upstream states. He was especially attuned to this issue as a native of mountainous Colorado, the source of four major rivers – the Platte, the Arkansas, the Rio Grande and the Colorado. Carpenter wanted to see upper basin states “<a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/30070">adequately protected</a> before the construction of the structures upon the lower river.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of the Colorado River basin" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461034/original/file-20220503-19206-vwys3o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Colorado River flows through seven U.S. states and Mexico, ending at the Gulf of California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/colorado-river-basin-map">USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Carpenter also knew about interstate water conflicts. In 1916, a group of Nebraska irrigators <a href="https://www.journal-advocate.com/2022/03/09/century-old-documents-validate-benefits-for-nebraska-of-colorado-water-development/">sued farmers in Colorado</a> for drying up the South Platte River at the state line. Carpenter was already lead counsel for Colorado in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/259/419/">Wyoming v. Colorado</a>, a case involving the Laramie River that began in 1911 and would not be resolved until 1922.</p>
<p>Carpenter viewed such legal battles as wastes of time and money. But when he proposed negotiating interstate river compacts, he was met with “<a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/30073">skepticism, indifference, failure of comprehension or open ridicule</a>,” he recollected in a 1934 essay.</p>
<p>Eventually Carpenter persuaded his Colorado clients to resolve their litigation with Nebraska by negotiating a compact to share water from the South Platte. It took seven years of data collection and discussion, but Carpenter believed the agreement would ensure “<a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/41244">permanent peace with our neighboring state</a>.” </p>
<p>Or maybe not. Today Nebraska officials want to <a href="https://denver.cbslocal.com/2022/04/14/colorado-nebraska-push-obtain-water-rights-compact-canal-south-platte-river/">revive an unfinished canal</a> to pull water from the South Platte in Colorado, citing concerns about Colorado’s numerous planned upstream water projects. With Colorado officials pledging to <a href="https://coloradosun.com/2022/01/13/colorado-response-nebraska-south-platte-canal/">aggressively defend their state’s water rights</a>, the states could be headed to court.</p>
<h2>Portioning out the Colorado</h2>
<p>West of the Continental Divide, the Colorado River flows more than 1,400 miles southwest to the Gulf of California in Mexico. Once, its delta was a lush network of lagoons; now the river <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-environment/2020/04/19/how-mexicos-dry-colorado-river-delta-being-restored-piece-by-piece/5082051002/">peters out in the desert</a> because states take so much water out of it upstream.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6iqh_fRkhRg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2014, the U.S. and Mexico started collaborating to restore the ecosystems of the Colorado River Delta.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When settlers developed the West, their prevailing attitude was that <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/323685/cadillac-desert-by-marc-reisner/">water reaching the sea was wasted</a>, so people aimed to use it all. California had a bigger population than the other six Colorado River Basin states combined, and Carpenter worried that California’s river use could hinder Colorado under the <a href="https://corporate.findlaw.com/business-operations/water-rights-law-prior-appropriation.html">prior appropriation doctrine</a>, which dictates that the first person to use water acquires a right to use it in the future. With the U.S. Reclamation Service studying the Colorado to find good dam sites, Carpenter also feared that the federal government would take control of river development.</p>
<p>Carpenter studied international treaties as models for river compacts. He knew that U.S. states had a right under Article 1, Section 10 of the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript">U.S. Constitution</a> to make agreements with each other. And he believed that solving water conflicts between states required “<a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/30038">statesmanship of the highest order</a>.”</p>
<p>In 1920, officials agreed to try his approach. After the states and the federal government adopted legislation to authorize the process, representatives began meeting as the Colorado River Commission in January 1922, with then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as chair. <a href="http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/LawOfTheRiver/MinutesColoradoRiverCompact.pdf">Meeting minutes</a> show that negotiations nearly collapsed several times, but the end goal of rapid river development held them together. </p>
<p>The commissioners reached agreement in 11 months, adopting a final version of the compact in November 1922. It allocated fixed amounts of water – measured in absolute acre-feet, not percentages of the river’s flow – to the upper and lower basins. With water levels in the river declining, this approach has proved to be a <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-colorado-river-basin-states-confront-water-shortages-its-time-to-focus-on-reducing-demand-165646">major challenge</a> today.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/upt-Cvc1c3A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2021 the Interior Department declared a water shortage for the Colorado River, triggering supply cuts for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At their meetings, the commissioners discussed both the variability of the river’s flow and their <a href="http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/LawOfTheRiver/MinutesColoradoRiverCompact.pdf">lack of sufficient data</a> for long-term planning. Yet in the final compact they allowed for dividing up surplus water starting in 1963. We know now that they used optimistic <a href="https://archives.mountainscholar.org/digital/collection/p17393coll150/id/7366">flow numbers</a> measured during a particularly wet period. </p>
<h2>A hotter, more crowded West</h2>
<p>Today the West faces conditions that Carpenter and his peers did not anticipate. In 1922, Hoover imagined that the basin’s population, which <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/0395/report.pdf">totaled about 457,000 in 1915</a>, might <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/212419">quadruple</a> in the future. Today, the Colorado River supplies some <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/watersmart/bsp/docs/finalreport/ColoradoRiver/CRBS_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf">40 million people</a> – more than 20 times Hoover’s projection.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1519662977485520901"}"></div></p>
<p>The commissioners also didn’t anticipate climate change, which is <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-shrinking-the-colorado-river-76280">making the west hotter and drier</a> and shrinking the river’s volume. Some water experts say a new agreement is needed that <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-climate-change-parches-the-southwest-heres-a-better-way-to-share-water-from-the-shrinking-colorado-river-168723">recognizes an era of shortage</a>. Others say renegotiation is <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/century-old-colorado-river-compact-imperfect-but-immovable/">politically impossible</a>. The states <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-states-buy-time-with-a-7-year-colorado-river-drought-plan-but-face-a-hotter-drier-future-119448">signed a drought contingency plan</a> in 2019, but it runs through only 2026.</p>
<p>Testifying before Congress in 1926 about the Colorado River Compact, Hoover stated, “If we can provide for equity for the next 40 to 75 years we can trust to the generation after the next to be as <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/10217/28692">intelligent as we are today</a>.” In the face of extreme Western water challenges, it is now up to Westerners to meet – or exceed – that expectation.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=science&source=inline-science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia J. Rettig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Agreements negotiated a century ago to share water on Western rivers among states are showing their age in a time of water scarcity.Patricia J. Rettig, Head Archivist, Water Resources Archive, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1656462021-08-16T20:35:40Z2021-08-16T20:35:40ZAs Colorado River Basin states confront water shortages, it’s time to focus on reducing demand<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416147/original/file-20210814-25-15gdu54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3600%2C2338&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Water flows into a canal that feeds farms in Casa Grande, Ariz.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ColoradoRiver-Drought-Farmers/829f1440d70544f59500b090305b8d7a/photo">AP Photo/Darryl Webb</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. government announced its first-ever water shortage declaration for the Colorado River on Aug. 16, 2021, triggering future cuts in the amount of water states will be allowed to draw from the river. The <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/#/news-release/3950">Tier 1 shortage declaration</a> followed the <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/">U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s</a> forecast that the water in Lake Mead – the largest reservoir in the U.S., located on the Arizona-Nevada border – will drop below an elevation of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/overview-of-lake-mead.htm">1,075 feet above sea level</a>, leaving less than 40% of its capacity, by the end of 2021. </p>
<p>The declaration means that in January 2022 the agency will reduce water deliveries to the Lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona and Nevada and to Mexico, but not to California – yet. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Colorado River Basin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416148/original/file-20210814-25-18201z9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Colorado River Basin drains seven western states. The Lower Basin is more heavily developed than the Upper Basin and consumes more water.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/colorado-river-basin-map">USGS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arizona will lose the most water: 512,000 acre-feet, nearly a fifth of its total Colorado River allocation of 2.8 million acre-feet. Nevada will lose 21,000 and Mexico 80,000. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land, which is roughly the area of a football field, to a depth of one foot – <a href="https://www.watereducation.org/general-information/whats-acre-foot">about 326,000 gallons</a>.</p>
<p>Central Arizona farmers are the big losers in this first round of cuts. The cities are protected because they enjoy the highest priority in Arizona for water delivered through the <a href="https://azwaternews.com/2021/08/16/arizona-heads-into-tier-1-colorado-river-shortage-for-2022/">Central Arizona Project</a>, a 330-mile canal from the Colorado River. From my experience <a href="https://robertglennon.net/">analyzing Western water policy</a>, I expect that this declaration won’t halt growth in the affected states – but growth can no longer be uncontrolled. Increasing water supply is no longer a viable option, so states must turn to reducing demand. </p>
<p>Conservation remains the low-hanging fruit. Water reuse – treating wastewater and using it again, including for drinking – is <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-glennon-water-sewage-recycling-los-angeles-20190305-story.html">also viable</a>. A third option is using pricing and trading to encourage the reallocation of water from lower-value to higher-value uses. </p>
<h2>Interstate collaboration</h2>
<p>The Colorado River Basin states have formally negotiated who can use how much water from the Colorado River since they first inked the <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/pdfiles/crcompct.pdf">Colorado River Compact</a> in 1922. In 2007 they negotiated interim shortage guidelines that specified how much each state would reduce its use depending on the elevation of Lake Mead. A series of <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-states-buy-time-with-a-7-year-colorado-river-drought-plan-but-face-a-hotter-drier-future-119448">subsequent agreements</a> included Mexico, increased the scale of reductions and authorized the secretary of the Interior, ultimately, to impose truly draconian cuts.</p>
<p>Arizona suffers the biggest cuts because it agreed in the 1960s that it would have <a href="https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=books_reports_studies">the lowest priority among the Lower Basin states</a>. </p>
<p>California does not take a cut until the level in Lake Mead drops even lower. But that could happen as soon as 2023. The water level is dropping partly because of the <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/png/20210810/20210810_usdm.png">Western drought</a> but also because of the shape of Lake Mead, which was created by damming Boulder Canyon in 1936. </p>
<p>Like most Western river canyons, Boulder Canyon is wide at the rim and narrow at its base, like a martini glass. As its water elevation drops, each remaining foot in the lake holds less water.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aUCsJTofACE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lake Mead, the largest U.S. reservoir, has lost 5 trillion gallons of water in the past 20 years.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lake Mead feeds <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/powerfaq.html">Hoover Dam</a>, one of the largest hydroelectric generating facilities in the country. The plant produces electricity by moving water through turbines. When Lake Mead is high, Hoover Dam’s generating capacity is <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/in-depth/news/local/arizona-environment/2021/05/27/hoover-dam-drought-water-levels-lake-mead/5134031001/">more than 2,000 megawatts</a>, which produces enough electricity to supply some 450,000 average households in Nevada, Arizona and California.</p>
<p>But the plant has lost 25% of its capacity as Lake Mead has dropped. If the water level declines <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/jun/27/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-lake-meads-falli/">below about 950 feet</a>, the dam won’t be able to generate power.</p>
<h2>Sending water south</h2>
<p>The Upper Basin states – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico – will also suffer. </p>
<p>That’s because the Colorado River Compact obligates the Bureau of Reclamation to release <a href="https://www2.kenyon.edu/projects/Dams/gsc01bob.html">an annual average of 8.23 million acre-feet</a> from Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, which extends from southern Utah into northern Arizona.</p>
<p>The Bureau of Reclamation predicted in mid-July that runoff into Lake Powell for 2021 will total just 3.23 million acre-feet, or 30% of average. To make up for this shortfall, <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/gcd.html">the bureau will release more water</a> from three Upper Basin reservoirs: Flaming Gorge in Utah, Blue Mesa in Colorado and Navajo on the Colorado-New Mexico border. </p>
<p>These releases will harm farmers and ranchers, who may be forced to <a href="https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/western_colorado/dry-times-dire-consequences-poor-runoff-adds-to-water-woes/article_a7ec3fb0-c573-11eb-bbe5-dfedf0633508.html">raise less-water-intensive crops or fewer animals due to water shortages</a>. The Upper Basin states get much of their water from snowpack, which has <a href="https://westernresourceadvocates.org/snowpack-in-the-west/">declined in recent years</a> as the West warms. </p>
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<h2>Doing the math</h2>
<p>The ultimate problem facing the Colorado River Basin states is simple. There are <a href="https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/advocatemag/spring-summer-2016/problem-math">more water rights on paper than there is water in the river</a>. And that’s before considering the impact of climate change and evaporation loss from Lakes Mead and Powell.</p>
<p>The urgency of the Tier 1 shortage declaration has generated wild-eyed proposals to import water from far-flung places. In May 2021, the Arizona legislature passed a <a href="https://www.azfamily.com/news/arizona-legislature-proposes-pumping-mississippi-river-water-to-help-with-drought/article_3cbf8858-b832-11eb-a76f-0f6bfebd2301.html">bipartisan resolution</a> calling on Congress to study <a href="https://www.cagle.com/david-fitzsimmons/2021/06/water-and-growth">a pipeline from the Mississippi River</a> that would augment the Colorado River. Space does not permit me to elaborate all the obstacles to this idea, but here’s a big one: the Rocky Mountains.</p>
<p>Similarly, the city of St. George in southwest Utah has proposed building a 140-mile pipeline from Lake Powell to augment its supply. St. George has some of the highest water consumption and lowest water prices in the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Downtown Phoenix with suburban homes in foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/416152/original/file-20210814-27-wi96ro.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">According to data released on Aug. 12, 2021, from the 2020 Census, Phoenix was the fastest-growing large city in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CensusArizona/bf2d484580f349b1a99443023e37e8e7/photo">AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The gospel of growth still motivates some cities. Buckeye, Arizona, on the west side of Phoenix, has a planning area of 642 square miles, which is larger than Phoenix. The city has approved 27 housing developments that officials project will <a href="https://www.hcn.org/issues/53.6/south-water-rapid-growth-in-arizonas-suburbs-bets-against-an-uncertain-water-supply">increase its population by 800,000 people</a> by 2040. Yet its water supply depends on unsustainable groundwater pumping.</p>
<p>Other communities have faced reality. In early 2021 Oakley, Utah, east of Salt Lake City, imposed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/us/utah-water-drought-climate-change.html">a construction moratorium on new homes</a>, sending shivers up the spines of developers across the West.</p>
<h2>Enabling farmers to be more efficient</h2>
<p>The Tier 1 declaration gives states and local communities reason to remove barriers to transferring water. Market forces are playing an increasingly critical role in water management in the West. Many new demands for water are coming from voluntary transfers between willing sellers and desperate buyers.</p>
<p>Water markets threaten rural communities because farmers cannot hope to compete with cities in a free market for water. Nor should they have to. Water remains a public resource. I believe the states need a process to ensure that transfers are consistent with the public interest – one that protects the long-term viability of rural communities.</p>
<p>As the West enters an era of water reallocation, most of the water will come from farmers, who consume <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/shopping-for-water-how-the-market-can-mitigate-water-shortages-in-the-american-west/">more than 70% of the region’s water</a>. Cities, developers and industry need only a tiny fraction of that amount for the indefinite future.</p>
<p>What if municipal and industrial interests created a fund to help farmers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/07/can-farms-survive-without-drying-up-california-13/modernize-irrigation-with-incentives">install more efficient irrigation systems</a> instead of simply <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/irrigation-methods-furrow-or-flood-irrigation?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects">flooding fields</a>, a low-tech approach that wastes a lot of water? If farmers could reduce their water consumption by 5%, that water would be available to cities and businesses. Farmers would continue to grow as much food as before, thus protecting the stability of rural communities. This could be a win-win solution to the West’s water crisis. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Glennon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A long-expected federal drought declaration underlines how serious the Colorado River water shortage has become for Western states.Robert Glennon, Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1590922021-04-19T12:28:39Z2021-04-19T12:28:39ZInterstate water wars are heating up along with the climate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395345/original/file-20210415-20-oo9nth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C4%2C2925%2C1912&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aerial view of Lake Powell on the Colorado River along the Arizona-Utah border.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ColoradoRiverManagement/d12a55f700714682baf7468c24e4aea4/photo">AP Photo/John Antczak</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Interstate water disputes are as American as apple pie. States often think a neighboring state is using more than its fair share from a river, lake or aquifer that crosses borders. </p>
<p>Currently the U.S. Supreme Court has on its docket a case between <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/texas-v-new-mexico-and-colorado/">Texas, New Mexico and Colorado</a> and another one between <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/mississippi-v-tennessee/">Mississippi and Tennessee</a>. The court has already ruled this term on cases pitting <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/65-orig">Texas against New Mexico</a> and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/20O0142">Florida against Georgia</a>. </p>
<p>Climate stresses are raising the stakes. Rising temperatures require farmers to use more water to grow the same amount of crops. Prolonged and severe droughts decrease available supplies. Wildfires are <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-year-the-west-was-burning-how-the-2020-wildfire-season-got-so-extreme-148804">burning hotter and lasting longer</a>. Fires bake the soil, reducing forests’ ability to hold water, increasing evaporation from barren land and compromising water supplies.</p>
<p>As a longtime <a href="https://robertglennon.net/">observer of interstate water negotiations</a>, I see a basic problem: In some cases, more water rights exist on paper than as wet water – even before factoring in shortages caused by climate change and other stresses. In my view, states should put at least as much effort into reducing water use as they do into litigation, because there are no guaranteed winners in water lawsuits.</p>
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<h2>Dry times in the West</h2>
<p>The situation is most urgent in California and the Southwest, which currently face “<a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/">extreme or exceptional” drought conditions</a>. California’s reservoirs are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-01/california-reservoirs-are-half-empty-recalling-historic-drought?sref=Hjm5biAW">half-empty</a> at the end of the rainy season. The Sierra snowpack sits at <a href="https://www.kxan.com/weather/spring-2021-nasty-drought-in-forecast-for-much-of-us/">60% of normal</a>. In March 2021, federal and state agencies that oversee California’s Central Valley Project and State Water Project – regional water systems that each cover hundreds of miles – issued “<a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article250145884.html">remarkably bleak warnings</a>” about cutbacks to farmers’ water allocations.</p>
<p>The Colorado River Basin is mired in a <a href="https://www.doi.gov/water/owdi.cr.drought/en/">drought that began in 2000</a>. Experts disagree as to <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-states-buy-time-with-a-7-year-colorado-river-drought-plan-but-face-a-hotter-drier-future-119448">how long it could last</a>. What’s certain is that the “<a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/lawofrvr.html">Law of the River</a>” – the body of rules, regulations and laws governing the Colorado River – has allocated <a href="https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/advocatemag/spring-summer-2016/problem-math">more water to the states than the river reliably provides</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/pdfiles/crcompct.pdf">1922 Colorado River Compact</a> allocated 7.5 million acre-feet (one acre-foot is roughly 325,000 gallons) to California, Nevada and Arizona, and another 7.5 million acre-feet to Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. A treaty with Mexico secured that country 1.5 million acre-feet, for a total of 16.5 million acre-feet. However, estimates based on <a href="https://www.environmentalscience.org/dendrochronology-tree-rings-tell-us">tree ring analysis</a> have determined that the actual yearly flow of the river over the last 1,200 years is <a href="https://www.doi.gov/water/owdi.cr.drought/treeringdata/index.html">roughly 14.6 million acre-feet</a>. </p>
<p>The inevitable train wreck has not yet happened, for two reasons. First, Lakes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead">Mead</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Powell">Powell</a> – the two largest reservoirs on the Colorado – can hold a combined 56 million acre-feet, roughly four times the river’s annual flow. </p>
<p>But diversions and increased evaporation due to drought are <a href="https://www.crwua.org/assets/downloads/2020-annual-conference/CRWUA-Federal-Friday-Presentation-2020-System-Status.pdf">reducing water levels in the reservoirs</a>. As of Dec. 16, 2020, both lakes were less than half full.</p>
<p>Second, the Upper Basin states – Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico – have never used their full allotment. Now, however, they want to use more water. Wyoming has several new dams on the drawing board. So does Colorado, which is also planning a new diversion from the headwaters of the Colorado River to Denver and other cities on the Rocky Mountains’ east slope. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Much of the U.S. Southwest and California are in extreme or exceptional drought." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395354/original/file-20210415-14-1e6n98a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drought conditions in the continental U.S. on April 13, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/data/png/20210413/20210413_conus_text.png">U.S. Drought Monitor</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Utah stakes a claim</h2>
<p>The most controversial proposal comes from one of the nation’s fastest-growing areas: St. George, Utah, home to approximately 90,000 residents and lots of golf courses. St. George has <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-18/st-george-utah-is-booming-and-guzzling-water">very high water consumption rates and very low water prices</a>. The city is proposing to augment its water supply with a <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/john-wesley-powell-great-explorer-of-the-american-west/">140-mile pipeline from Lake Powell</a>, which would carry 86,000 acre-feet per year.</p>
<p>Truth be told, that’s not a lot of water, and it would not exceed Utah’s unused allocation from the Colorado River. But the six other Colorado River Basin states have protested as though St. George were asking for their firstborn child. </p>
<p>In a joint letter dated Sept. 8, 2020, the other states implored the Interior Department to refrain from issuing a final environmental review of the pipeline until all seven states could “<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/475439148/Six-States-Letter-to-SOI-Sep-8-2020#from_embed">reach consensus regarding legal and operational concerns</a>.” The letter explicitly threatened a high “probability of <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/475439148/Six-States-Letter-to-SOI-Sep-8-2020#from_embed">multi-year litigation</a>.”</p>
<p>Utah blinked. Having earlier insisted on an expedited pipeline review, the state asked federal officials on Sept. 24, 2020 <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2020/09/24/after-insisting-expedited/">to delay a decision</a>. But Utah has not given up: In March 2021, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill creating a <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2021/03/04/utah-senate-backs-new/">Colorado River Authority of Utah</a>, armed with a US$9 million legal defense fund, to protect Utah’s share of Colorado River water. One observer predicted “<a href="https://tucson.com/news/local/colorado-river-outlook-darkens-dramatically-in-new-study/article_15e0185d-60d7-597d-ba7f-366b8e69920e.html">huge, huge litigation</a>.”</p>
<p>How huge could it be? In 1930, Arizona sued California in an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_v._California">epic battle</a> that did not end until 2006. Arizona prevailed by finally securing a <a href="https://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/pdfiles/scconsolidateddecree2006.pdf">fixed allocation from the water apportioned to California, Nevada and Arizona</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rWpui1P9cAY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Southwest Utah’s claim to Colorado River water is sparking conflict with other western states.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Litigation or conservation</h2>
<p>Before Utah takes the precipitous step of appealing to the Supreme Court under the court’s original jurisdiction over disputes between states, it might explore other solutions. Water conservation and reuse make obvious sense in St. George, where per-person water consumption is <a href="https://islandpress.org/books/unquenchable">among the nation’s highest</a>.</p>
<p>St. George could emulate its neighbor, Las Vegas, which has paid residents up to $3 per square foot to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/1d38cf067394498fac0f9f623892eab6">rip out lawns</a> and replace them with native desert landscaping. In April 2021 Las Vegas went further, asking the Nevada Legislature to <a href="https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/las-vegas-pushes-to-become-first-to-ban-ornamental-grass/article_1771f7c0-dde6-53e1-9ccc-3c27e0729eb6.html">outlaw ornamental grass</a>. </p>
<p>The Southern Nevada Water Authority estimates that the Las Vegas metropolitan area has eight square miles of “nonfunctional turf” – grass that no one ever walks on except the person who cuts it. Removing it would <a href="https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/las-vegas-pushes-to-become-first-to-ban-ornamental-grass/article_1771f7c0-dde6-53e1-9ccc-3c27e0729eb6.html">reduce the region’s water consumption by 15%</a>. </p>
<p>Water rights litigation is fraught with uncertainty. Just ask Florida, which thought it had a strong case that Georgia’s water diversions from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin were harming its oyster fishery downstream. </p>
<p>That case extended over 20 years before the U.S. Supreme Court ended the final chapter in April 2021. The court used a procedural rule that places the burden on plaintiffs to provide “clear and convincing evidence.” Florida <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/20O0142">failed to convince the court</a>, and walked away with nothing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Glennon received funding from the National Science Foundation in the 1990s and 2000s.</span></em></p>The Supreme Court recently dealt defeat to Florida in its 20-year legal battle with Georgia over river water. Other interstate water contests loom, but there are no sure winners in these lawsuits.Robert Glennon, Regents Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law & Public Policy, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1492512020-11-06T16:38:12Z2020-11-06T16:38:12ZHow to read U.S. election maps as votes are being counted<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367842/original/file-20201105-15-1f7x3vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3800%2C2912&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where were the best electoral maps to be found during the 2020 U.S. presidential election?
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Clay Banks/Unsplash)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the world awaited a winner in the U.S. presidential election, people were glued to screens big and small for the latest results to be flashed on electoral maps. But not all maps are created equal. </p>
<p>I tracked 10 election maps from Canadian and U.S. news outlets such as <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/us/2020/results/">the CBC</a>, <em><a href="https://www.macleans.ca/politics/u-s-election-2020-live-results-map-projections-and-updates/">Maclean’s</a></em>, the <em><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-us-election-results-map-watch-donald-trump-and-joe-bidens/">Globe and Mail</a></em>, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results">Fox News</a> and the <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html">New York Times</a></em>. While maps have long been used for political propaganda, even maps from sources <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/65b5df0e-49ff-11e8-8ee8-cae73aab7ccb">without a partisan bent “lie.”</a> They are, at best, partial representations of reality — statistical and design choices about what to illustrate and how. </p>
<p>So what did this year’s election maps rightly or wrongly tell us?</p>
<h2>Mapping on the web</h2>
<p>Since so many of us consume the news online, it was interactive maps embedded in websites that offered the most important windows onto the vote. Professional mapmakers — cartographers — know these tools are both promising and limited.</p>
<p>Unlike print maps, web maps often allow their users to customize design. For instance, web maps might allow “<a href="http://www.josis.org/index.php/josis/article/view/105">re-symbolization</a>” to show the data in a different way. Some interactive maps also let users drill deeper to get “<a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/%7Eben/papers/Shneiderman1996eyes.pdf">details on demand</a>” — to see county level rather than just national level results. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.josis.org/index.php/josis/article/view/105">“Affordances” such as legends</a> that appear when users hover over parts of the map also help put more information on the map and into readers’ hands. Web maps can automatically reload with fresh data, but such updates <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#no-joe-biden-wasnt-suddenly-awarded-138000-votes-in-michigan">may be misunderstood</a> if care isn’t taken to contextualize them.</p>
<p>With all this in mind, we should ask ourselves two questions when we look at any U.S. election map.</p>
<h2>How complete is the data?</h2>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented mail-in voting and delays in ballot counting. We knew that many states <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/23/926258497/when-will-mail-in-ballots-be-counted-see-states-processing-timelines">would take days</a> to fully report their results.</p>
<p>Cartographers use a variety of “<a href="https://gistbok.ucgis.org/bok-topics/symbolization-and-visual-variables">visual variables</a>,” such as texture and brightness, in order to represent this kind of information. For instance, Fox News changed the brightness of its map’s reds and blues to illustrate the estimated number of votes counted, with darker colours representing areas that had reported more of their ballots.</p>
<p>The <em>New York Times</em> used multiple approaches to characterize uncertainties in election results. Some states appear textured, or hatched, because it wasn’t possible to say who had won yet. The percentage of votes counted is indicated in text, as well as in a legend available when users hover over the map. Map readers could click on the state to see which counties were still processing ballots, and the rest of the page provided even more detail.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The New York Times map of the U.S. election as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367760/original/file-20201105-17-vdfacv.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The <em>New York Times</em> map of the U.S. election as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020. It uses texture — hatches — to illustrate where the vote is still undetermined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The New York Times)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>But what does the map actually show?</h2>
<p>The most common American election maps <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/is-us-leaning-red-or-blue-election-maps/">overstate results</a> from rural areas because these consist of large but relatively unpopulated counties and states. The most infamous example is this map of the 2016 election that Trump supporters <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/01/politics/trump-impeach-this-map-fact-check/index.html">brought to his defence</a> during his impeachment, and which the president reportedly framed for the Oval Office:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"862669407868391424"}"></div></p>
<p>It shows 2016’s results by shading counties according to the party that won them, illustrating that the vast majority voted for Trump. It’s a good indicator that his support in 2016 was widespread in a geographic sense, but it does not actually show that he was popular, because the map does not account for how few people voted in these counties. It’s people who vote, not land.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Fox News view of 2020 election results by county as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367765/original/file-20201105-15-bzup1k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=662&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fox News view of 2020 election results by county as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Fox News)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 2020 election, the conservative Fox News was the only outlet I reviewed that allowed its readers to see results in this way. Less misleading approaches showed county-level results using circles coloured by the vote winner and sized according to the number of voters or margin of victory.</p>
<p>But a presidential election map depicting county-level results gives the wrong impression anyway, since this is not how U.S. elections are decided. Trump wasn’t elected in 2016 because he won more ballots than Hillary Clinton, but because he earned more <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-is-the-american-president-elected-67632">electoral college</a> votes.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-is-the-american-president-elected-67632">How is the American President elected?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Each state has two electoral college votes, plus more based on its share of the total population. What matters is who wins the most votes across the entirety of each state, not in individual counties (though vote-rich counties can certainly sway a state’s final outcome).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A cartogram that appeared in _The Globe and Mail_ of U.S. election results as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367766/original/file-20201105-19-1mgsct.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cartogram that appeared in The <em>Globe and Mail</em> of U.S. election results as of the morning of Nov. 5, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Globe and Mail</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many election web maps — such as the <em>Globe and Mail</em>’s and <em>Maclean’s</em> (but not CBC’s) — allowed readers to toggle between a more standard view of the U.S. and a view of the states sized by their weight in the Electoral College. These “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/208794">cartograms</a>” provide the most informative view of who is ahead in the election, even if they are not the most intuitive.</p>
<p>Interactive web maps offer readers a sense of commanding results in real time. But they don’t always tell their readers much about the veracity of those results or how to understand them. </p>
<p>Web maps — whether of elections or pandemics — are not going away, so we would do well to better understand how to make and read them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Nost does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What did this year’s election maps rightly or wrongly tell us?Eric Nost, Assistant Professor in Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1319832020-02-21T12:34:18Z2020-02-21T12:34:18ZThe Culinary Union of Nevada takes a pass on endorsing – here’s why that may be a winning political strategy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316469/original/file-20200220-92497-1qpy4j0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C6%2C4219%2C2802&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rather than cooking up a storm, the Culinary's role in the Democratic primary could be a recipe for success.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Amy-Klobuchar/cb45a3a4d704461db0f874d30ec2d876/4/0">Patrick Semansky/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A picket line outside the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas proved to be a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/19/nevada-debate-2020-democrats-join-picketing-culinary-union/4812292002/">hot ticket for most Democratic hopefuls</a> aiming to pick up a vote or two ahead of the Nevada caucuses.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Warren turned up with donuts to support workers demanding a union contract, while fellow presidential candidates Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer also found time in their busy schedules to meet workers, pose for pictures and express solidarity.</p>
<p>One candidate <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-02-19/the-latest-2020-democrats-join-picketing-union-members">notable by his absence</a> was Bernie Sanders. The reason may be related to a recent dust-up between the Vermont senator’s campaign and the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, known in Las Vegas as “the Culinary.”</p>
<p>Concern about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/13/why-bernie-sanders-fight-with-nevada-union-really-matters/">damage to Sanders</a> and the eagerness of his rivals to curry favor with the Culinary underscores the importance of the union in Nevada. Moreover, the political clout the Culinary possesses serves as an example of how unions can prosper at a time when legislators and politicans are working to limit labor rights.</p>
<p>So who is the Culinary backing in the Nevada Democratic caucus? Nobody.</p>
<p>The flash point in the Culinary’s decision <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/16/806417317/culinary-workers-union-officer-discusses-decision-not-to-endorse-candidate">not to endorse</a> was the “Medicare for All” proposals of Sens. Sanders and Warren.</p>
<p>In a leaflet distributed to members, the union stated that Sanders’ plan would “<a href="https://twitter.com/Culinary226/status/1227445058053562369/photo/2">end Culinary Health Care</a>” – the generous zero-deductible plan that <a href="https://www.culinaryhealthfund.org/about-us/">serves 55,000</a> Culinary members and 70,000 of their dependents.</p>
<p>Some of Sanders’ backers countered that the union had betrayed progressive values by <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/culinary-union-nevada-sanders/">protecting its members</a> while sacrificing higher standards of care for all working-class families. </p>
<p>Online, the fight quickly <a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/culinary-union-officials-face-profanity-laced-attacks-after-scorecard-says-sanders-would-end-their-health-care">turned ugly</a>. The Vermont senator <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/18/bernie-sanders-internet-attacks-115920">disavowed supporters</a> who “attack trade union leaders” during a televised debate with other candidates, but not before being accused by Pete Buttigieg of being <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/19/21142592/nevada-culinary-union-nevada-caucuses-sanders-medicare-for-all">“at war”</a> with the Culinary.</p>
<p>The online fracas harkened back to an old trope about labor unions that is relentlessly exploited by employers: that they don’t care about workers, only themselves and their own power. </p>
<h2>Which side are unions on?</h2>
<p>The spotlight on union power in Nevada comes at a time of debate within the labor movement over whether it needs to turn away from “business unionism” in order to survive. Business unionism, which organizes around specific goals for employees rather than a wider class struggle, was the dominant orientation of the labor movement in the U.S. though much of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Some labor historians like <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160276/state-of-the-union">Nelson Lichtenstein</a> and David Montgomery point to business unions’ tendency to take care of their own rather than organizing new workforces as a primary reason for the decline of the labor movement to its current nadir, representing just <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm">6.2% of the private sector workforce</a> from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/22union.html">nearly 35% in the 1950s</a>.</p>
<p>They have argued that in order to attract more members, unions need to adopt the tactics and strategies of new social movements and become engaged in political struggles for broad-based changes that affect all workers, not just those in unions.</p>
<p>In a recent book, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-us-labor-law-for-the-twentyfirst-century/politically-engaged-unionism/0833FA25CD1A2A4A6BC5516540575C9D">I argue that the Culinary bridges this traditional divide</a> between business and social unionism.</p>
<p>The union has been successful despite Nevada being a “right-to-work” state where employees don’t have to pay union dues to join a workforce and receive benefits. Culinary has grown its membership by touting the benefits that a strong union can bring, such as <a href="https://www.culinaryhealthfund.org/urgent-care-centers/">24-hour health clinics</a>, <a href="https://www.culinaryunion226.org/blog/newsletter-november-2017">back-pay awards</a> totaling hundreds of thousands dollars, and protections that have seen the return of terminated workers. </p>
<p>At the same time, the Culinary has made political engagement a cornerstone of its value, both to its members and the wider public. In the 2016 election, the union <a href="https://www.culinaryunion226.org/news/press/unite-heres-culinary-union-election-week-2016">knocked on more than 250,000 doors</a> and was instrumental in <a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/a-blue-night-steve-sisolak-triumphs-over-republican-adam-laxalt-appears-to-bring-fellow-democrats-in-statewide-races-on-coattails">getting Democrats elected</a> to the state legislature, the governor’s office, and the U.S. House and Senate in Nevada.</p>
<p>The social movement aspect of the union’s work is also seen in other policy areas that it used to compare the candidates: organizing rights and immigration reform. Policy changes on these issues will benefit members of the union, which include large numbers of recent immigrants. But it would also help many low-wage workers outside of the union.</p>
<h2>A brave face on Janus</h2>
<p>Under President Trump, the National Labor Relations Board appears more intent on finding ways to <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/unprecedented-the-trump-nlrbs-attack-on-workers-rights/">limit labor rights</a> than expand them. And the labor movement faced a major setback in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-1466">Janus v. ASCME</a> that nonunion public sector workers could not be compelled to pay dues for services they receive. After that decision, the Culinary shows how the labor movement can adapt to the hostility of employers, government agencies and courts.</p>
<p>It has been facing these headwinds for more than 80 years in Nevada. Today, Culinary members have wages and health care that are the envy of nonunion workers in the hospitality industry. But that standard came only as a result of <a href="https://www.culinaryunion226.org/news/press/unlv-project-documents-culinary-unions-frontier-strike-as-25th-anniversary-is-celebrated">historic strikes</a> and hard-fought campaigns with multinational corporations like <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/04/las-vegas-union-mgm-resorts-reach-a-tentative-deal-for-a-new-labor-contract.html">MGM Resorts</a> and <a href="https://news3lv.com/news/local/culinary-union-says-deal-reached-with-caesars-rest-still-in-negotiations">Caesars Entertainment</a>.</p>
<p>Other locals of the Culinary’s parent union Unite Here have backed Sanders, including in Boston. The Los Angeles local co-endorsed Sanders and Warren. But they are in states with very different politics than Nevada.</p>
<p>The Culinary has always had a good sense of where the electorate is in Nevada, sometimes leading the union to endorse Republicans like former two-term Gov. Kenny Guinn. And it has been successful at helping to keep Nevada blue in the last three presidential elections, countering one of the more predictive variables for how a state will vote for president – whether or not it has a right-to-work law. My <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042951">research</a> has shown a correlation between right-to-work laws in red states and a vote for the Republican candidate for president. In the last election, Nevada and Virginia were and the only states to buck that trend. </p>
<p>Far from being a referendum on Medicare for All, the Culinary’s non-endorsement returns the focus where they want it: getting the biggest turnout possible to meet the union’s goals of immigration reform, workers’ rights and better health care. The mixture of business and social unionism that made the Culinary a political force in Nevada can now serve as a model for other unions in the post-Janus era.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruben J. Garcia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An ugly spat involving some supporters of Bernie Sanders harkens back to old tropes about the labor movement. But the Culinary is showing itself to be a model for unions in the ‘right-to-work’ era.Ruben J. Garcia, Professor of Law, Co-Director of UNLV Workplace Law Program, University of Nevada, Las VegasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099392019-04-01T10:38:52Z2019-04-01T10:38:52ZHow state power regulators are making utilities account for the costs of climate change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266604/original/file-20190329-70999-nariwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has ordered state agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Climate-Change-New-Mexico/c6c9e4b5de5843c7ba35988594e31063/1/0">AP Photo/Morgan Lee</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The electricity powering your computer or smartphone that makes it possible for you to read this article could come from one of <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=electricity_in_the_united_states">several sources</a>. It’s probably generated by burning natural gas or coal or from operating a nuclear reactor, unless it’s derived from hydropower or wind or solar energy. Who gets to choose?</p>
<p>In many states, it’s up to the utilities, the companies that bill you for electricity. Costs often weigh heavily in their decisions. But deciding which costs to consider is a very subjective process.</p>
<p>If your utility accounts for the toll taken by climate change, like <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/colorado-regulators-seize-the-climate-fight-in-landmark-ruling-on-carbon-co/443186/">Xcel Energy in Colorado</a> does, your state electricity regulator probably <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/energy-proceedings">makes the company do that</a>. This approach is one behind-the-scenes way that a growing number of states are addressing global warming.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://policyintegrity.org/about/bio/denise-grab">scholars</a> who <a href="https://policyintegrity.org/about/bio/iliana-paul">study</a> the <a href="https://policyintegrity.org/">intersection between policies that deal with climate change and energy</a>, we have studied the rules that govern electric utilities across the nation. <a href="https://policyintegrity.org/files/publications/Pricing_Climate_Impacts.pdf">Our new report</a> sheds light on where state regulators have the ability to make rules that mandate action on climate change.</p>
<h2>States, electricity and climate change</h2>
<p>Every additional ton of the greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity contributes to climate change. This carbon pollution has many <a href="https://policyintegrity.org/publications/detail/social-costs-of-greenhouse-gases">negative consequences</a>, both to the physical world and also to global social and economic systems.</p>
<p>But utilities don’t always tally the costs of these consequences. Because dealing with climate change is astronomically expensive, we believe that this should change.</p>
<p>Utilities still largely rely on <a href="https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3">coal, natural gas and nuclear energy</a> to keep the lights on. These companies rely on older technologies in part because those facilities are already built and, to a degree, because of how much it costs to start up and shut down power plants. What’s more, fossil fuels have generally been cheaper than other energy sources <a href="https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Historical-Mean-LCOE-Values.jpg">until somewhat recently</a>.</p>
<p>But when state regulators require utilities to factor in the effects from burning fossil fuels, a big investment to get a large-scale wind or solar operation up and running becomes a better bargain. And since making electricity from cleaner energy sources has been steadily getting cheaper, factoring in climate costs could help speed up the process of phasing out climate-altering fossil fuels. </p>
<p><iframe id="Qf3BY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Qf3BY/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Different ways to do it</h2>
<p>Some utilities are voluntarily including a line item in their balance sheets that estimates what their impact on the climate will be in monetary terms. Others are going this route due to the growing number of state electricity regulators that <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11082017/states-climate-change-policy-calculate-social-cost-carbon">make it mandatory</a>. We have determined that 10 states now account for climate costs in some way by regulating power companies.</p>
<p>Other states are starting to make <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-mexico-regulation-energy/new-mexico-governor-moves-to-limit-methane-emissions-combat-climate-change-idUSKCN1PN35R">bold proposals</a> to <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24012019/great-lakes-governors-climate-change-clean-enegy-pipelines-michigan-illinois-attorney-general-clean-power-plan-lawsuits">reduce their emissions</a> too.</p>
<p>A number of <a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/new-governors-accelerate-clean-energy-action-propelled-by-democratic-midte/547994/">newly elected</a> governors are making climate change a centerpiece of state policy in places <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24012019/great-lakes-governors-climate-change-clean-enegy-pipelines-michigan-illinois-attorney-general-clean-power-plan-lawsuits">where it had been an afterthought</a>.</p>
<p>Some of these proposals focus on limiting carbon pollution to a certain level, others on increasing the generation of wind, solar and hydroelectric power, and others on making buildings and appliances more energy-efficient. All of these policies can be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But there are plenty of states in which a command-and-control policy where a regulator basically makes industries do a certain thing – like <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30032018/california-hfc-ban-short-lived-climate-pollutants-global-warming-refrigerators-air-conditioners">banning climate-warming chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners</a> – might be unpopular.</p>
<p>There are also market-based options, where regulators encourage companies to do certain things without outright requiring them. In the U.S., this is mainly through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/state-cap-and-trade-systems-offer-evidence-that-carbon-pricing-can-work-101428">carbon-trading programs</a> underway in places like <a href="https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/capandtrade.htm">California</a> and the East Coast states that belong to the <a href="https://www.rggi.org/program-overview-and-design/elements">Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative</a>.</p>
<p>Americans in general support a <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/9/14/17853884/utilities-renewable-energy-100-percent-public-opinion">shift toward more renewable energy</a>, and energy regulation increasingly reflects that sentiment. Even in many of the so-called “<a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx">purple states</a>” like Nevada and Colorado, where leadership is divided between Democrats and Republicans, utility companies must tell the public how much their fossil-fuel pollution will cost because electricity regulators require it. </p>
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<h2>Who makes the rules?</h2>
<p>Electric utilities, like ConEd if you live in New York, or PacifiCorp if you’re in California, Washington State, Utah, <a href="https://www.pacificorp.com/about/co.html">and other western states</a>, have to follow a set of rules. These rules are created on a state-by-state basis by regulators, who are usually members of <a href="https://www.consumeraffairs.com/links/state_pucs.html">public utilities commissions</a>. And because individual states are making these policy decisions, what each state chooses to do matters.</p>
<p>These regulators get their marching orders in multiple ways. State legislatures may pass laws that must be carried out by the commissions. Governors may ask them to make policy directly, through executive orders. Sometimes regulators end up making decisions in one proceeding that then change the rules across the board. </p>
<p>This avenue really depends on what the commissions are allowed to do in the first place, which is either set out in a law or set of laws – many states have whole sections of public utilities codes – or in the state constitution. Some regulators have a lot of freedom and autonomy, others not so much. In some cases, public utilities commissions are coming up with policies that reduce carbon pollution without any other statewide climate plan.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=299&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260488/original/file-20190222-195873-13pmblj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All of the new utility-scale electricity capacity coming online in the U.S. in 2019 will be generated through natural gas, wind and solar power, as coal, nuclear and some gas plants close.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37952">U.S. Energy Information Administration</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>New approaches</h2>
<p>A growing number of states have established policies that make power companies account for the costs of climate effects caused by pollution they create. The list spans the nation, from <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/new-york">New York</a> to <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/california">California</a> and <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/entry/washington-state-utc-directs-utilities-to-use-robust-scc-estimate">Washington state</a>, plus many places in between.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/entry/colorado-puc-requires-utility-to-use-scc-in-electric-resource-plan">Colorado</a> and <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/entry/puc-of-nevada-uses-scc-to-fulfill-new-mandate-on-integrated-resource-plans">Nevada</a>, utilities must estimate how much carbon pollution their electricity generation produces, and include this information in the plans they submit to state regulators. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/states/entry/minnesota-puc-requires-scc-use-for-utilities">does something similar</a>. Other examples of states accounting for climate change behind the scenes, can be found on our <a href="https://costofcarbon.org/">Cost of Carbon Project</a> website. </p>
<p>In these states, regulators have ordered utilities to estimate the harm caused by their greenhouse gas emissions when deciding between which sources to use. </p>
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<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/energy-transitions-are-nothing-new-but-the-one-underway-is-unprecedented-and-urgent-104821">electricity business is changing rapidly</a>. We get that state regulators might not matter so much once <a href="https://theconversation.com/market-forces-are-driving-a-clean-energy-revolution-in-the-us-95204">market forces</a> make solar and wind not just a better deal than coal but also more affordable than natural gas.</p>
<p>In the meantime, while the economy transitions to the point where it no longer generates greenhouse gas pollution, we believe that state utility regulators can make a big difference.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iliana Paul's employer, Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, receives funding from the Energy Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation for work including research on state climate and energy policy.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denise Grab's employer, Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, receives funding from the Energy Foundation and the Heising-Simons Foundation for work including research on state climate and energy policy.</span></em></p>States are folding the social and economic costs of burning fossil fuels into their electricity policies, giving utilities a financial incentive to reduce greenhouse emissions.Iliana Paul, Policy Analyst, Institute for Policy Integrity, New York UniversityDenise Grab, Western Regional Director, Institute for Policy Integrity, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/967002018-05-29T10:41:14Z2018-05-29T10:41:14ZThe federal government has long treated Nevada as a dumping ground, and it’s not just Yucca Mountain<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220671/original/file-20180528-80653-cnqrmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 2015 tour of an entryway into the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Yucca-Mountain/fb26da9be78c4d2c854f991aa053ff45/3/0">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nevadans can be forgiven for thinking they are in an endless loop of “The Walking Dead” TV series. Their least favorite zombie federal project refuses to die.</p>
<p>In 2010, Congress had abandoned plans to turn <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125740818">Yucca Mountain</a>, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into the nation’s only federal dump for <a href="https://www.oecd-nea.org/brief/brief-03.html">nuclear waste so radioactive</a> it requires permanent isolation. And the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3053/all-actions?overview=closed&q=%7B%22roll-call-vote%22%3A%22all%22%7D">House recently voted by a wide margin</a> to resume these efforts.</p>
<p>Nevada’s U.S. Senators <a href="https://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=526CDC21-D0DB-40ED-AF19-7A3A737E9B98">Dean Heller</a>, a Republican, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPlEUm7WeXI">Catherine Cortez Masto</a>, a Democrat, have made <a href="https://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/3/heller-and-cortez-masto-administration-s-yucca-request-is-dead-on-arrival">their determination to block the latest Yucca proposal</a> clear since <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/yucca-mountain-trump/519972/">the Trump administration</a> first proposed resurrecting the project in early 2017.</p>
<p>While teaching and <a href="http://www.unevadapress.com/books/?view=series&seriesid=5956">writing about the state’s history</a> for more than 30 years, I have followed the Yucca Mountain fight from the beginning – as well as how Nevadans’ views have evolved on all things nuclear. The project could well go forward, but I believe that it probably won’t as long as there are political benefits to stopping it.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto expresses her concerns about the storing nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The roots of statewide resentment</h2>
<p><a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/independent-poll-yucca-stadium-taxes-unpopular-voters">Two-thirds of Nevadans oppose this plan</a>, according to a 2017 poll. The state’s experience with federal actions, including nuclear weapons and waste, may help explain the proposed repository’s <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevadas-congressional-group-unites-against-yucca-mountain-bill/">long-standing unpopularity</a>.</p>
<p>When Nevada became a state in 1864, it had to <a href="http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/nevada-statehood">cede all claims to federal land within its boundaries</a>. This left the federal government owning more than 85 percent of the state, reducing its potential tax base, and angering ranchers who have <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/19397/reviews/121467/garone-carr-childers-size-risk-histories-multiple-use-great-basin">chafed at federal controls and fees for grazing their livestock</a> ever since.</p>
<p>In 1873, the U.S. adopted the gold standard, reducing the value of silver – large amounts of which came from Nevada, known as the “The Silver State.” After the “Crime of ’73,” Nevadan state leaders dedicated themselves to restoring silver as <a href="https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/mint-history-crime-of-1873">an anchor of monetary policy</a>, to no avail.</p>
<p>A series of boom-and-bust cycles ensued. Nevadans sought other means of prosperity, including some that other states shunned. In 1897, for example, <a href="http://unevadapress.com/books/?isbn=9780874179286">Nevada hosted a world heavyweight boxing championship</a> when other states refused.</p>
<p>That decision and the state’s declining population prompted the <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1897/05/22/101105383.html">Chicago Tribune to suggest revoking Nevada’s statehood</a>. Similar calls cropped up over Nevada’s <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/legalizing-casino-gambling-helped-revive-nevada-80-years-ago/">permissive divorce and gambling</a> laws.</p>
<h2>A magnet for federal projects</h2>
<p>Tourism, however, became central to Nevada’s economy. So did federal projects, like <a href="https://www.snwa.com/where-southern-nevada-gets-its-water/the-colorado-river/index.html">Hoover Dam</a>, which enabled southern Nevada to obtain most of the water it needs to survive. </p>
<p>World War II and the Cold War prompted numerous federal projects that benefited southern Nevada. A wartime gunnery school evolved into <a href="http://www.nellis.af.mil/">Nellis Air Force Base</a>, and a magnesium plant led to the founding of the <a href="http://www.cityofhenderson.com/news/city-history">city of Henderson</a>.</p>
<p>In 1951, seeking a cheaper domestic location for nuclear tests and research, the Atomic Energy Commission chose part of Nellis. Until 1963, the Nevada Test Site was the scene of about 100 aboveground atomic tests, with more than 800 additional underground tests to follow until <a href="http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/">nuclear testing ceased in 1992</a>.</p>
<p>When aboveground testing began, Nevada cashed in. The governor welcomed the chance to see the desert “<a href="http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/blasts-from-the-past">blooming with atoms</a>.” Las Vegas marketed the mushroom cloud as a tourist attraction, as well as <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2004/jun/23/titus-discusses-nuclear-symbolism/">an atomic hairdo and cocktail</a>. Atomic Energy Commission pamphlets and videos declared the tests to be harmless to those living nearby. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An official atomic testing video cautioned Nevadans to keep their homes tidy as a precaution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Distrusting government</h2>
<p>After learning more about the <a href="https://www.ctbto.org/specials/testing-times/18-december-1970-the-baneberry-incident/">health dangers associated with nuclear fallout</a>, Nevadans began to trust the government less. Repeated leaks and safety issues at the nation’s first <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/waste.html">low-level</a> nuclear waste dump, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/25/radioactive-waste-dump-fire-reveals-nevada-troubled-past">opened in 1962 in Beatty, Nevada</a>, eventually led to its closure in 1992.</p>
<p>Distant nuclear incidents also stoked concerns. The nation’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/30/530708793/three-mile-island-nuclear-power-plant-to-shut-down-in-2019">worst nuclear accident</a> to date at the <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html">Three Mile Island</a> plant in Pennsylvania, as well as <a href="http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/what-is-chernobyl/">the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl meltdown</a>, rang alarm bells.</p>
<p>Separately, some rural Nevadans came to resent federal regulations overall, especially after the federal government increased the Bureau of Land Management’s regulatory powers in the mid-1970s. Their <a href="https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-back-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion">Sagebrush Rebellion</a> sought state control over almost all federal lands within Nevada’s borders and spread throughout the rural West.</p>
<h2>The ‘Screw Nevada’ bill</h2>
<p>As nuclear testing waned, the federal government scrambled to find somewhere to stow the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-moves-to-revive-the-mothballed-nuclear-waste-dump-at-yucca-mountain/">spent fuel from nuclear power plants that had piled up in 39 states</a>. In 1982, Congress approved a plan for the consideration of sites in <a href="https://www.energy.gov/downloads/nuclear-waste-policy-act">Washington, Texas and Nevada</a>.</p>
<p>But five years later, without getting conclusive findings based on those studies, lawmakers voted to consider only one site – <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/twenty-five-years-later-screw-nevada-bill-elicits-strong-feelings/">Yucca Mountain</a>, about 20 miles west of the dump for less- radioactive nuclear waste in Beatty. The state’s leaders and pundits protested this “Screw Nevada” bill, which they ascribed to the state’s lack of political clout.</p>
<p>Around that time, Nevada created <a href="http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/about.htm">a new state agency to deal with nuclear issues</a> and a state commission charged with warding off nuclear waste. A bevy of new state laws made it harder for federal officials and private contractors to obtain and pay for licenses needed for work on Yucca Mountain, and the state filed numerous lawsuits.</p>
<p>Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat first elected in 1986, crusaded against the measure. So did his Nevada colleagues in Congress.</p>
<p>To make their case, Nevadans pointed out the safety risks in moving nuclear waste along highways and railroads to their state, and how terrorists might take advantage of that opportunity. They cheered when a <a href="http://www.westwingepguide.com/S3/Episodes/62_STIRRED.html">“West Wing” episode zeroed in on these dangers</a>. </p>
<p>Reid eventually moved up through Senate ranks as one of the nation’s most powerful lawmakers, serving as the majority and minority leader. When former President Barack Obama took office and had to depend on Reid’s help, he <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101689489">ended funding for Yucca Mountain</a>.</p>
<h2>What to expect this time</h2>
<p>Obama and Reid are no longer calling any shots, and Nevada’s congressional delegation is more junior than it’s been in decades. The overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House suggests that Democrats may be less interested in protecting Nevada than they were when Reid had so much power in the Senate.</p>
<p>But Heller is up for re-election this year, and his is one of the few Republican Senate seats that Democrats feel confident that they can win in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/2/17303554/senate-elections-2018-midterms-democrats-beto-orourke-kyrsten-sinema-dean-heller-jacky-rosen">2018 mid-terms</a>.</p>
<p>If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decides that enabling Heller to claim that he saved Nevada from hosting the nation’s nuclear waste will help re-elect him, protecting the GOP’s slim majority, I think Yucca Mountain will be dead again. At least for the moment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Green is affiliated with the Institute for a Progressive Nevada.</span></em></p>If recent history repeats itself, the proposed repository for extremely dangerous nuclear waste will stay dead.Michael Green, Associate Professor of History, University of Nevada, Las VegasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/966102018-05-16T10:27:29Z2018-05-16T10:27:29ZSupreme Court delivers a home run for sports bettors – and now states need to scramble<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219069/original/file-20180515-195321-ljma8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People line up to place bets in the sports book at the South Point hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nev.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Supreme-Court-Sports-Betting/1b82c966901b4e96a0fa4531bfa1e6e2/8/0">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On May 14, the United States Supreme Court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/us/politics/supreme-court-sports-betting-new-jersey.html">invalidated the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act</a>, a federal law that prohibited states, aside from a few exemptions like Nevada, from allowing sports betting operations. </p>
<p>In a victory for states’ rights, the court ruled that the law unconstitutionally interfered with states’ ability to implement their own legislation on the issue.</p>
<p>So now what? As someone who studies sports wagering and gambling law, I’ve been following the case closely. While the decision marks an end to years of legal action to challenge the federal law, it also now creates a host of issues for states that are considering sports betting legislation and regulation. </p>
<h2>To legalize or not to legalize</h2>
<p>First and foremost, it’s now on states to decide whether to legalize sports betting. Many, like Pennsylvania and New York, have preemptively <a href="http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/19740480/gambling-sports-betting-bill-tracker-all-50-states">introduced or passed legislation</a> to do just that. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"996151873529925632"}"></div></p>
<p>But for those that have already legalized sports betting or end up doing so in the coming months, there’s a lot of work to be done – and decisions to be made.</p>
<p>The states that do legalize sports betting will have to decide whether it will be operated by the state, <a href="https://statelaws.findlaw.com/gambling-and-lotteries-laws/details-on-state-state-lottery-laws.html">like lotteries</a>, or if private enterprises will be allowed to offer sports bets. If private businesses are permitted, states must consider whether sports betting will be limited to certain types, such as casinos and racetracks, or if online operators and smaller retailers will also be able to participate. </p>
<p>Then there are the types of wagers that will be permitted and prohibited. Does the legalization of sports betting allow for wagering on events that are related to professional sports, such as the NBA draft? Do esports count as a “sport” for wagering purposes? Will betting on events beyond sports be legalized, too? For example, in Nevada, you can’t bet on the outcome of elections, but you can bet on approved esports events and the NBA draft. </p>
<p>States will also need to determine whether <a href="https://www.oddsshark.com/sports-betting/how-live-betting-works">live betting</a> – also known as in-running, live-game or in-game betting – will be offered. This type of wager, <a href="http://www.lootmeister.com/betting/live-betting-revolution.php">which has become increasingly popular in Nevada</a>, allows you to bet on certain aspects of the game as it unfolds. For example, at halftime of a game, you could bet on the outcome regardless of what happened in the first half.</p>
<p>There’s also the issue of how bettors will establish betting accounts and place their bets. Will they be able to do so through an app on their phones? Or must it be done in person at a licensed location?</p>
<h2>Building a regulatory framework</h2>
<p>Some elected officials think the federal government could play a role by building a regulatory template for states to follow. Before the decision, Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey had <a href="https://www.actionnetwork.com/politics/article/sports-betting-gambling-now-legal">already introduced legislation</a> to create one. However, Congress might not have the appetite to tackle the issue, given other priorities and the upcoming midterm elections.</p>
<p>Moreover, Nevada’s system could easily serve as a starting point for states from which to build. <a href="https://www.gamblingonline.com/laws/nevada/">Since 1949</a>, the state has been auditing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsbook">sports books</a>, resolving patron disputes, approving technology for use in sports books, and approving wagering options.</p>
<p>So far, little has been said about the benefit the federal government will receive from an expansion of sports wagering throughout the United States. The current tax code imposes a <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2018/03/20/leagues-casinos-legal-sports-bets/">0.25 percent federal tax</a> on the total amount wagered on sports.</p>
<p>However, the sports leagues also want a cut of the bets – and have pushed for what they call an “<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-the-supreme-courts-pending-sports-gambling-decision-states-are-already-prepping-for-legalization-95360">integrity fee</a>.” But it’s really just a share of all wagers made. This could prove detrimental to sports book operators, since sports betting, by its nature, <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/todd-dewey/oddsmakers-cry-foul-over-nbas-proposed-integrity-fee/">is a relatively low-margin business</a> – after all, they do have to pay out on winning wagers. If states aren’t careful, integrity fees, burdensome taxes, license fees and regulatory costs might push out suitable, experienced operators – and force patrons to remain in the illegal market.</p>
<p>These are just a snapshot of issues that states will have to grapple with, and a careful, cautious and informed approach must be undertaken. But in the long term, it will serve states and bettors well: A legal, regulated market is much better than the illegal, unaccountable system that’s been operating for years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96610/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Roberts works for UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation, William S. Boyd School of Law, and S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah. She owns her own boutique law firm, Roberts Gaming Law, Ltd., and is a Director of Nevada Esports Alliance, Futuro Academy charter school, and Clark County Bar Association.</span></em></p>With leagues lobbying for their share, a thriving illegal market that needs to be stifled, and bettors chomping at the bit, the headaches are just beginning.Jennifer Roberts, Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las VegasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/953602018-04-27T13:12:08Z2018-04-27T13:12:08ZWith the Supreme Court’s pending sports gambling decision, states are already prepping for legalization<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216559/original/file-20180426-175054-fanmwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A screen shows a baseball game next to various betting lines at the Westgate Superbook in Las Vegas, Nevada.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/World-Series-Odds-Baseball/0f6c8df3a51147e59d5e82c99a931e2d/53/0">John Locher/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The gambling world is waiting with bated breath for the United States Supreme Court decision that could result in an expansion of sports betting. The decision could be announced anytime between today and the end of June.</p>
<p>Since I teach sports betting regulation and gambling law, I’ve been closely watching the developments as well. Although Nevada has had a robust sports betting industry for decades, New Jersey has been at the forefront of the push to legalize sports betting. </p>
<p>In recent years, many other states have prepared for a ruling from the Supreme Court that would overturn the prohibition of sports betting. Even professional sports leagues – which have emerged as the leading opponents of efforts to legalize and regulate sports betting – are looking to cash in. </p>
<h2>How we got here</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/tenth_amendment">10th Amendment</a> of the United States Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”</p>
<p>For this reason, states have traditionally overseen and regulated casino gambling. The Nevada Supreme Court specifically recognized, <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/nevada/supreme-court/1977/9301-1.html">in a case</a> involving the infamous Frank Rosenthal (portrayed as Ace Rothstein by Robert De Niro in the movie “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/">Casino</a>”), that gaming is “a matter reserved to the states within the meaning of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.” </p>
<p>However, in 1992, responding to concerns about the spread of state-sponsored sports wagering, Congress enacted the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/part-VI/chapter-178">Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act</a>, also known as the Bradley Act, named after its lead sponsor, then-U.S. Senator Bill Bradley.</p>
<p>The Bradley Act made it unlawful for any governmental entity, such as states, municipalities or Indian tribes, to “sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact” any sports betting. In addition, the act prohibited any individual from operating any sort of sports betting enterprise.</p>
<p>However, the Bradley Act exempted four states from the prohibition: Nevada, Oregon, Delaware and Montana. Of these four states, Nevada was – and remains – the only one with full-scale sports wagering. New Jersey was given a one-year window to legalize sports wagering, but the state legislature failed to take action within the allotted time. </p>
<p>Fast forward to 2011. That year, New Jersey government officials decided they wanted to have regulated sports wagering, so the state introduced <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/New_Jersey_Sports_Betting_Amendment,_Public_Question_1_(2011)">a referendum on a statewide ballot</a> that would amend the state Constitution to permit wagering on college, amateur, and professional sports at Atlantic City casinos and racetracks across the state.</p>
<p>New Jersey voters <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-11-08/sports/chi-new-jersey-voters-endorse-making-sports-betting-legal-20111108_1_amateur-sports-protection-act-legal-bets-oregon-and-montana">supported the ballot referendum</a>, and in 2012 the New Jersey legislature <a href="https://www.foxsports.com/other/story/nfl-mlb-nba-nhl-ncaa-file-lawsuit-to-stop-sports-betting-in-new-jersey-092914">passed a law</a> to legalize sports wagering. </p>
<p>However, the major professional and college sports leagues – NCAA, NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL – opposed the legislation and <a href="https://www.foxsports.com/other/story/nfl-mlb-nba-nhl-ncaa-file-lawsuit-to-stop-sports-betting-in-new-jersey-092914">filed a lawsuit</a> to stop New Jersey from regulating sports wagering. </p>
<p>In response, New Jersey claimed that the Bradley Act was unconstitutional because it violated the state’s 10th Amendment rights to regulate gambling in the form of sports wagering. In 2013, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20130917115">ruled in favor of the leagues</a>, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case. The Bradley Act remained intact. </p>
<p>New Jersey pressed on. Having lost on the argument that legalizing sports wagering is equivalent to “authorizing” it under the existing Bradley Act, New Jersey got creative and decided to simply repeal the state’s criminal laws and regulations that prohibited sports book operations in casinos and racetracks. </p>
<p>Once again, the sports leagues sued to stop New Jersey. In response, New Jersey <a href="http://thesportsesquires.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Brief-of-Appellees-NCAA-v.-Christie-Feb-13-2015.pdf">argued</a> that it would be a violation of the 10th Amendment if the state were prevented from repealing an existing law. Again, the lower courts and Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the leagues – but for the first time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided it would weigh in.</p>
<h2>Prepping for the inevitable?</h2>
<p>Now we await the decision. </p>
<p>It’s important to note that this case is about more than sports betting, which is simply the subject matter before the Supreme Court. It has more to do with states’ rights, and the decision has the potential to affect other areas of dispute, from marijuana legalization to the ability of cities to protect undocumented immigrants to gun control. </p>
<p>There are several possible outcomes. The U.S. Supreme Court could decide in favor of the leagues, which would mean New Jersey – and any other nonexempted state – would remain prohibited from allowing any sports wagering.</p>
<p>At the other end of the spectrum, the court could declare the Bradley Act unconstitutional, and states and Indian tribes would no longer be blocked from authorizing and regulating full-scale sports wagering.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that the court sides with New Jersey and allows the state to decriminalize sports wagering – on an either limited basis (in casinos and racetracks) or entirely – but not regulate it. </p>
<p>Finally, the Supreme Court could strike the prohibition that prevents states and tribes from permitting sports wagering, but keep the restriction so that individuals cannot conduct legal sports wagering. If this were to happen, sports betting could be permitted by states, but individuals would be prevented from operating their own sports betting business. </p>
<p>About 20 states <a href="http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/19740480/gambling-sports-betting-bill-tracker-all-50-states">are already preparing for the event</a> that the Bradley Act gets overturned and are gearing up to pass laws (or have already done so) that will give them the ability to offer regulated sports wagering.</p>
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<p>However, there are many unknowns and issues that will need to be addressed: Will state-sponsored sports wagering be run by state lotteries or private enterprise such as casinos or racetracks? Will amendments be needed to permit Indian tribes to offer sports wagering? And will information on sporting events for wagering purposes – such as scores, outcomes or game statistics – be restricted to data generated from the leagues? </p>
<p>There are already disagreements over something called an “<a href="https://www.legalsportsreport.com/integrity-fee/">integrity fee</a>.” In states where sports betting will likely become legal, leagues have been pressing to receive 1 percent of all amounts wagered on a sporting event. </p>
<p>In Nevada – where legal, regulated sports wagering has taken place since 1949 – such a fee has never been in place. Instead, casinos simply pay the state <a href="http://gaming.unlv.edu/abstract/nv_main.html">up to 6.75 percent</a> in a tax on revenues (which is the same tax paid by casinos on other forms of gambling), in addition to a federal tax of 0.25 percent on amounts wagered. States looking to legalize sports betting are proposing varied rates of taxation.</p>
<p>So how might an integrity fee affect sports books?</p>
<p>If we look at the most recent Super Bowl, <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/betting/super-bowl-lii-generates-record-shattering-betting-handle-of-158-6m/">over US$158 million</a> was wagered in Nevada on the game. If there was a mandated integrity fee, this means that the NFL would have received $1.58 million from Nevada sports books. </p>
<p>But in the case of the Super Bowl, Nevada sports books <a href="http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=12742">only made $1.17 million</a>, or 0.7 percent of the total amount wagered. So that means that if Nevada sports books had to pay an integrity fee on the Super Bowl, it would have lost money even before having to pay state and federal taxes, rent, employee salaries and the other costs of operating a sports book. From the industry’s perspective, sports wagering isn’t always as lucrative as it’s often portrayed to be. </p>
<p>For this reason, states must be educated and informed when considering whether to legalize sports betting. If they think they’ll get a tax windfall for schools and roads, they could be sorely mistaken – especially if the leagues end up getting a cut.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Roberts works for UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation, William S. Boyd School of Law, and S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah.
Jennifer Roberts owns her own boutique law firm, Roberts Gaming Law, Ltd., and is a Director of Nevada Esports Alliance, Futuro Academy charter school, and Clark County Bar Association.</span></em></p>But those hoping for a boon in tax revenues could be sorely mistaken: Sports betting isn’t as lucrative as it’s often portrayed to be.Jennifer Roberts, Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las VegasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/553042016-02-24T18:19:46Z2016-02-24T18:19:46ZTrump’s winning streak reveals bigotry’s appeal in GOP<p>Donald Trump’s path to the Republican nomination gained crucial momentum in Nevada on Tuesday night. </p>
<p>Trump <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/nevada-caucus-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">won the Nevada caucuses</a> with 46 percent of the vote and defeated his closest challengers by more than 20 points, his largest victory margin yet. Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-nevada-caucuses-are-trumps-to-lose--and-he-still-could/2016/02/23/687a3550-da44-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_trump-nevada-1225pm_1%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">third straight win</a> in the GOP presidential race makes clear that the New York billionaire has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nv/Rep">broad and deep support</a> from all wings of the party. </p>
<p>A sense of inevitability is settling over Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination. The latest polls show <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/">he will likely win nearly all of the 10 states</a> that will vote in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1. He also benefits from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/upshot/how-trump-could-pile-up-delegates-with-modest-percentages-of-the-vote.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_up_20160219&nl=upshot&nl_art=0&nlid=69180613&ref=headline&te=1">the complex and front-loaded nature</a> of the Republican delegate apportionment process, which gives him a clear path for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/23/donald-trump-is-on-course-to-win-the-1237-delegates-he-needs-to-be-the-gop-nominee/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b">securing the GOP nomination</a>. </p>
<p>The fact that a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/02/08/donald-trump-repeats-crowd-members-ted-cruz-insult-hes-a-pussy/">vulgar</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/07/donald-trump-calls-for-banning-muslims-from-entering-u-s/">xenophobic</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/02/22/why-donald-trumps-glitzy-style-is-attracting-evangelical-voters/">twice-divorced</a> New York <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/nyregion/donald-trump-nyc.html?rref=politics&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Politics&pgtype=Blogs">real estate developer</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/arts/television/donald-trump-campaign-the-apprentice.html">TV celebrity</a> with no conservative credentials is on the verge of <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-24/trump-gets-third-win-in-nevada-as-rubio-cruz-battle-for-second?cmpid=BBD022416_POL">winning the GOP nomination</a> is highly revealing. It shows how deep <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-supporters-for-intolerance.html">racial and religious prejudice</a> runs in the Republican Party of 2016.</p>
<h2>Trump is not a traditional conservative</h2>
<p>By any traditional measure, Donald Trump is the least conservative candidate in the GOP race. </p>
<p>On one issue after another, Trump <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/politics/the-more-trump-defies-his-party-the-more-his-supporters-cheer.html">defies conservative orthodoxy</a>. During the most recent GOP debate, Trump <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/02/15/donald-trump-escalates-rhetoric-before-south-carolina-primary/">condemned George W. Bush</a> for invading Iraq and for not preventing the September 11 terrorist attacks. Trump also opposes the longstanding conservative goal of reforming <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/02/17/trump-blasts-bush-on-iraq-and-911-and-gop-voters-shrug/">Social Security</a>, and he has even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/us/politics/ted-cruz-ad-goes-after-donald-trumps-stance-on-planned-parenthood.html">defended Planned Parenthood</a>, a women’s health organization despised by social conservatives. He advocates protectionist policies, such as a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/07/donald-trump-says-he-favors-big-tariffs-on-chinese-exports/">huge tariff on imports from China</a>, that would reverse decades of Republican support for free trade.
He has signaled <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/trump-team-struggles-with-candidate-who-wont-adjust-218983">support for state Medicaid expansion</a> that GOP governors across the country oppose. And he supports <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/donald-trump-2016-tax-plan-214139">tax hikes on the wealthy</a>. </p>
<p>It is not surprising that Trump’s populist policies attract support from <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/donald-trumps-strongest-supporters-a-certain-kind-of-democrat.html">working-class voters</a> who oppose trade liberalization and tax policies that benefit the rich.</p>
<p>But Trump’s appeal extends far beyond blue-collar Republicans. He is winning among both <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/sc/Rep">high-income voters and low-income voters</a>. He is winning <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/sc/Rep">evangelical Republicans</a> and non-evangelical Republicans. Most striking of all, he is carrying <a href="http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/nv/Rep">all educational levels</a>, including college graduates, professionals and voters with no education beyond high school. In his Nevada victory speech, Trump declared: “<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2016/02/24/80842732/">I love the poorly educated</a>.” But the truth is, highly educated Republicans support him too. </p>
<p>So what is the common theme that binds Trump’s supporters together? </p>
<p>The disturbing but undeniable answer is entrenched xenophobia, racial prejudice and religious <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/02/17/trump-blasts-bush-on-iraq-and-911-and-gop-voters-shrug/">bigotry among a large segment of Republican voters</a>.</p>
<h2>GOP voters opting for prejudice over conservatism</h2>
<p>As the 2016 election demonstrates, Republicans <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/politics/the-more-trump-defies-his-party-the-more-his-supporters-cheer.html">no longer have a shared set of political ideas</a> or a coherent ideological philosophy.</p>
<p>Instead, the only thing that seems to hold the party together is a deep-rooted fear of the social, economic, cultural and <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32701.pdf">demographic change</a> the United States has experienced in recent decades. </p>
<p>It is certainly true that the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/120370/five-graphics-show-why-post-white-america-already-here">pace of change</a> in American life is occurring at an accelerating rate. In 2008, the United States elected its first African-American president, an enormous step forward for a nation that upheld racial segregation as recently as the 1960s. Social attitudes are changing, too. A majority of Americans now <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2015/07/29/graphics-slideshow-changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/">support same-sex marriage</a>, <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/29/nation/la-na-nn-poll-women-military-combat-20130129">combat roles for women in the military</a> and implementation of international treaties to battle <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/world/americas/us-climate-change-republicans-democrats.html">climate change and protect the environment</a>. Meanwhile, immigration from Latin America and Asia is transforming the racial demographics of the nation. In <a href="https://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4.pdf">1980</a>, over 83 percent of Americans were white; today only <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html">62 percent of Americans are white</a>. The percentage of whites will fall rapidly in the decades ahead. Already a majority of American children are <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/07/06/its-official-the-us-is-becoming-a-minority-majority-nation">nonwhite</a>, and racial minorities will constitute a majority of the nation’s population as a whole by <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/04/390672196/for-u-s-children-minorities-will-be-the-majority-by-2020-census-says">the 2040s</a>. </p>
<p>From any objective perspective, these developments should be welcomed. America’s extraordinary capacity for change is an enormous source of national strength. </p>
<p>But that is not how Republicans see the changes under way in the nation. As America becomes a more diverse and tolerant nation, Republicans have embraced apocalyptic views of the nation’s future. Almost <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-americans-optimism-is-dying/2014/08/12/f81808d8-224c-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html">90 percent of Republicans</a> believe the country is in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/politics/iran-nuclear-deal-sanctions-cnn-orc-poll/">poor shape</a>. In an effort to pander to Republican pessimism, nearly all of the GOP candidates have described the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/politics/transcript-of-the-republican-presidential-debate.html">state of the country</a> in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/28/7th-republican-debate-transcript-annotated-who-said-what-and-what-it-meant/">alarming</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/13/the-cbs-republican-debate-transcript-annotated/">catastrophic terms</a>. </p>
<p>But none of the candidates peddle fear as well as Trump. When he <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/transcript-donald-trump-2016-presidential-announcement-article-1.2260117">announced his presidential candidacy</a> last summer, he declared that “the American dream is dead” and “we’re becoming a Third World country.” Since getting into the race, Trump’s rhetoric has only gotten grimmer. He mixes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/23/early-data-suggest-an-angry-nevada-electorate-that-should-favor-donald-trump/">anger</a>, paranoia and xenophobia more skillfully than any modern presidential candidate. </p>
<p>Trump is thus the perfect vehicle for expressing the poisonous spirit that animates Republicans in 2016. He wants to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/12/07/e56266f6-9d2b-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html">ban Muslims</a> from the United States. He calls Mexican immigrants <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/election-2016-donald-trump-defends-calling-mexican-immigrants-rapists/">“rapists”</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/">“drug dealers”</a> and he has declared that immigrants “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/politics/donald-trump-immigration-gay-marriage-2016/">from all over</a>” are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">“killers and rapists</a>.” He even wants to strip the constitutional right of <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform">birthright citizenship</a> from American-born children of foreign parents.</p>
<p>In short, the billionaire TV star is not running on a coherent set of political ideas. He is running on irrational fear, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/23/early-data-suggest-an-angry-nevada-electorate-that-should-favor-donald-trump/">rage</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-supporters-for-intolerance.html">prejudice</a>. And, to an appalling degree, that’s exactly what a critical mass of Republican voters want, as Trump’s victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada demonstrate. </p>
<h2>Party of Lincoln is now the party of Trump</h2>
<p>Trump’s divisive campaign reflects how far the GOP has drifted from its roots. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, saved the Union and ended slavery. In the process, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/the-words-that-remade-america/308801/">he argued</a> in eloquent fashion that freedom and equality for all constituted America’s most important founding principles.</p>
<p>Today the Republican Party is in a very different place. Dividing Americans, not uniting them, is the dominant mood within the GOP. The momentum gathering behind Donald Trump’s campaign makes it starkly apparent that Lincoln’s legacy has no home in the modern Republican Party.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony J. Gaughan is a registered independent. </span></em></p>Nevada gave Trump his third victory and a widening lead over his GOP rivals. It’s not his conservative values winning votes.Anthony J. Gaughan, Associate Professor of Law, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/543702016-02-22T14:35:28Z2016-02-22T14:35:28ZWhy Las Vegas is the ultimate American city<p>The action of the US presidential primaries has shifted to Nevada, where Hillary Clinton’s campaign received a <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-reasons-why-clintons-nevada-victory-is-important-55002">major boost</a> – especially in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, the state’s largest city.</p>
<p>That Clinton apparently <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-sweeps-casino-caucuses-las-vegas/story?id=37088052">saved her struggling campaign in Vegas’s hotel casinos</a> is somehow fitting. Las Vegas is the ultimate American city: it constantly confounds reality – and it never stops dreaming up new versions of itself.</p>
<p>This desert town’s very existence has long beaten the odds. For a city with an average rainfall of just <a href="http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/las-vegas/nevada/united-states/usnv0049">4.17 inches a year</a>, water and the need for it have been constant themes as Vegas persistently defies its environment. </p>
<p>Originally <a href="http://vegasseven.com/2014/06/04/how-the-mormons-made-las-vegas/">settled by Mormons</a> as part of their trek west but abandoned in 1857, the settlement became a railroad repair stop, which almost ceased to exist in the 1920s, when the Union Pacific Railroad reacted to the town’s support of the <a href="http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10197&context=annals-of-iowa">national railroad strike of 1922</a> by closing its Vegas operations. The building of the Boulder – later <a href="http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/">Hoover</a> – dam 30 miles to the southeast kept Vegas afloat. World War II brought the Nellis airforce base (including its infamous and top secret <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/15/declassified-the-cias-secret-history-of-area-51/">Area 51</a>) to the north. Along with its neighbour, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/sep/21/building-the-atom-bomb-the-full-story-of-the-nevada-test-site">Nevada Nuclear Test Site</a>, the base helped supply a steady customer base for the embryonic modern Vegas. </p>
<p>The mob reinvented Vegas as “Sin City” in the 1950s and 60s. <a href="http://lasvegassun.com/news/2008/may/15/how-vegas-went-mob-corporate/">Howard Hughes</a> overhauled the Strip in the late 1960s and 1970s, famously buying the Desert Inn for US$13m instead of leaving its penthouse suite when asked to by its owners. Hughes would remain a recluse for four years in that penthouse, accruing four more casino properties: the Frontier for US$14m, the Sands for US$14.6m, Castaways for US$3m, and the Landmark for US$17m.</p>
<p>Yet anyone visiting Las Vegas today would find little, if any, evidence of that history. </p>
<h2>Build again, build bigger</h2>
<p>New buildings and billion-dollar hotel resorts prove the past is readily disposable in Las Vegas. Old Vegas has been expunged from memory just as it has been cleared from the four-mile Las Vegas Boulevard Strip, as the city demolishes itself to build again, and build bigger. </p>
<p>Of the four hotels that opened in spring 1955, only one still stands: the <a href="http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tourism/cost-riviera-demolition-grows-184-million">Riviera</a>, where much of Martin Scorsese’s Casino was filmed. On April 20 2005, it became only the fifth Las Vegas Boulevard hotel casino to reach its 50th birthday. But it closed its doors as a going concern in May 2015, and demolition is slated for spring 2016.</p>
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<p>At each stage of its redevelopment, Las Vegas has been willing to obliterate its history. Where vice and corruption once ruled, the Las Vegas revamp began with Steve Wynn’s <a href="https://www.mirage.com/en.html">Mirage Hotel & Casino</a> in 1989. Late-century Vegas was remodelled as a family entertainment zone, more theme park than vice den. This dictum was at the heart of the architectural fantasy lands created in the 1990s: <a href="https://www.excalibur.com/en.html">Excalibur</a>, <a href="http://www.treasureisland.com/">Treasure Island</a>, <a href="https://www.luxor.com/en.html">Luxor</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorknewyork.com/en.html">New York New York</a>, <a href="https://www.caesars.com/paris-las-vegas">Paris</a>, <a href="http://www.venetian.com/">The Venetian</a>. </p>
<p>This new Vegas only came about thanks to the implosion of previously iconic monuments of 1950s’ and 1960s’ Vegas glamour. In a perfectly postmodern turn, the implosions themselves became part of the city’s new spectacular narrative.</p>
<h2>9/11 and the crash</h2>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Las Vegas was hit hard by the disaster’s economic impact. Hotel occupancy <a href="http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1365&context=articles">dropped sharply</a>; <a href="http://lasvegassun.com/news/2002/sep/03/9-11-job-losses-in-vegas-nation-less-than-feared/">job losses</a> ran into the thousands, as Nevada’s unemployment rate rose sharply to <a href="http://www.ledgerdata.com/unemployment/nevada/2001/december/">surpass 6%</a> by 2001’s end. The fact that federal investigations revealed that some of the 9/11 terrorists had visited Las Vegas between May and August 2001 didn’t help either. </p>
<p>And while these statistics were alarming at the time, they paled in comparison with the effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the ensuing economic crash. </p>
<p>Before October 2008, Vegas was the fastest growing city in the US: by 2006, the metropolitan area population had reached 2m, having been just 8,000 in 1940. But while <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LAUMT322982000000003?data_tool=XGtable">unemployment</a> in the city was as low as 3.8% in 2006, it rose to 12.2% by August 2009, peaking at just over 14% in December 2010. </p>
<p>But with the effects of the recession now easing, the Vegas wheels are beginning to turn once more. Unemployment has now been brought all the way down to 6.2%. The abandoned Echelon casino project on the site of the famous Stardust Hotel is <a href="http://vegasinc.com/business/gaming/2013/mar/04/old-stardust-site-sold-new-strip-casino/">due to be redeveloped at last</a> by the Genting Group as the Chinese-themed Resorts World Las Vegas in late 2018, complete with panda exhibit and indoor waterpark. Other Strip owners have invested their future hopes in more home-grown attractions. </p>
<p>In 2013 the <a href="https://blog.vegas.com/las-vegas-shows/mandalay-bay-to-be-mecca-for-michael-jackson-fans-in-vegas-14005/">Mandalay Bay Hotel</a> opened a Michael Jackson-themed lounge, an interactive museum of Jackson memorabilia and a replica of his reclusive Neverland ranch. The original Santa Barbara Neverland Ranch had been a private theme park and fairytale wonderland replete with rides, a zoo, ferris wheel and its own train, the Neverland Express. That a second one now exists in 21st century theme-park Vegas is more than apt: it completes a circle of cultural interactions only possible in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>By creating a public theme-park exhibit of a former theme park that was for the most part closed to the public, Vegas welcomes the promise of another reclusive and controversial individual with open arms. Jackson never played Vegas while he was alive, unlike Sinatra or Elvis. Yet in death he offers Las Vegas, a Neverland that has discarded so many versions of its own history, both a permanent attraction and another route into its future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip McGowan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Every time Las Vegas looks like it’s about to die, it demolishes itself and rebuilds as something bigger and better.Philip McGowan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/550022016-02-21T02:04:34Z2016-02-21T02:04:34ZFour reasons why Clinton’s Nevada victory is important<p>A liberal tidal wave is building within the Democratic Party, but Bernie Sanders is no longer the only candidate riding it. </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton’s crucial victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday showed that Sanders does not have a monopoly on liberal voters. Clinton held her own with liberals while winning big among moderates. In the process, she has moved firmly back into the lead in the Democratic presidential race. </p>
<p>On Saturday Clinton won about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/us/politics/nevada-caucus.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region">52 percent of Nevada’s county convention delegates</a>. Although Nevada has a Byzantine delegate award process, Clinton’s margin of victory will likely give her a majority of the state’s 43 presidential delegates. </p>
<p>The ultimate importance of Clinton’s victory, however, does not really lie in the delegates at stake in Nevada. The state has only a tiny fraction of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html?_r=0">2,382 delegates</a> necessary to win the Democratic presidential nomination.</p>
<p>The real significance of the Nevada results lies in the fact that Clinton demonstrated she can do well enough among liberals to win key states. Her success with liberal voters spells trouble for Sanders, particularly as the campaign moves to the South, where Clinton’s base of support runs deepest. </p>
<p>Here are four reasons why Clinton has reason for optimism after Nevada. </p>
<h2>1. Clinton is making inroads with liberal voters</h2>
<p>By any measure, the Democratic Party is becoming more liberal. Last year the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/183686/democrats-shift-left.aspx">Gallup Poll</a> found that nearly half of all Democrats describe themselves as liberal or left-leaning, a 17 percent increase since 2001.</p>
<p>On Saturday, Nevada Democrats reflected that trend. The entrance polls found that an <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/primaries/NV">astounding 70 percent</a> of Nevada caucus-goers identified themselves as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/20/politics/nevada-caucus-entrance-polls/index.html">liberal</a>. Eight years ago, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-live-updates-nevada-caucuses-south-carolina-primary-trailguide-02202016-htmlstory.html">only 45 percent of Nevada Democrats</a> described themselves as liberal.</p>
<p>On paper that should have meant a big victory for Sanders. A self-described socialist, he is one of the most liberal presidential candidates in recent history. His <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/">campaign platform</a> calls for tax hikes on the rich, free college for everyone, a single-payer healthcare system, and heavy regulation of business and industry.</p>
<p>But despite the large liberal turnout in Nevada, Sanders did not win the state. Clinton attracted enough support from liberal voters to carry her to victory. Although she is a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/hillary-clinton-democrat-progressive/">self-described moderate</a>, the Nevada results indicate that Clinton’s unpopularity with liberal Democrats is greatly overstated.</p>
<p>The fact that Clinton <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/primaries/NV">won moderates by a huge margin</a> is also crucially important for the general election. Moderates constitute <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/180452/liberals-record-trail-conservatives.aspx">34 percent of the American population</a> overall. In contrast, liberals constitute only <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/180452/liberals-record-trail-conservatives.aspx">24 percent of the country</a>. </p>
<p>Clinton’s strength among moderates strongly suggests that she would be a more formidable candidate in the general election than Sanders. </p>
<h2>2. Minorities and union members back Clinton</h2>
<p>Clinton’s victory in Nevada would not have been possible without support from Latinos, African Americans, and union members of all races. </p>
<p>Nevada is one of the <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/32000.html">most diverse states</a> in the country. It is 28 percent Latino, 9 percent African American, 8 percent Asian American, and 2 percent Native American. Whites make up just over 51 percent of the population, far below the national average of 62 percent. Nevada also has a heavily unionized casino workforce. </p>
<p>All of those constituencies helped carry Clinton to victory in Nevada, particularly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/us/politics/nevada-caucus.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-abc-region&region=span-abc-region&WT.nav=span-abc-region">African Americans and casino workers</a>. Clinton won by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/contests-in-south-carolina-nevada-to-test-the-appeal-of-the-outsiders/2016/02/19/db65af30-d77f-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_campaignweb%3Ahomepage%2Fstory">10 percent in Clark County</a>, home to 75 percent of Nevada’s population, as well as Las Vegas, the state’s largest city. </p>
<p>Clinton’s strength in heavily urban Clark County bodes well for her chances in large urban states like New York, California and Illinois.</p>
<h2>3. Liberal economists side with Clinton</h2>
<p>Clinton also benefits from liberal intellectuals’ growing criticism of the Vermont senator’s economic proposals. </p>
<p>Last week a group of highly regarded liberal economists warned that Sanders’ proposals would drive up federal government spending by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/us/politics/left-leaning-economists-question-cost-of-bernie-sanderss-plans.html?_r=0">US$2 to $3 trillion annually</a>. The dramatic increase in spending would far exceed the revenues generated from Sanders’ proposed tax increases. </p>
<p>Austan Goolsbee, a former top economic adviser to President Obama, declared last week that “<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2016/02/18/liberals-against-sanders-on-health-economics/#7a14bec770c9">the numbers don’t remotely add up</a>” in Sanders’ economic plans. Similarly, the prominent liberal economist Jarad Bernstein warned that defenders of the Sanders’ economic proposals are engaged in “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/us/politics/left-leaning-economists-question-cost-of-bernie-sanderss-plans.html?_r=0">wishful thinking</a>.” Ironically, even the University of Massachusetts economist who publicly defended Sanders’ economic proposals recently revealed that he plans to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/the-economist-who-validated-bernie-sanders-big-liberal-plans-is-voting-for-hillary-clinton/">vote for Hillary Clinton</a>. </p>
<p>Although Sanders will continue to inspire progressive dreams, the sharp critique of liberal economists takes a bit of the luster off the Sanders campaign. </p>
<h2>4. Clinton’s strongest states lie ahead</h2>
<p>The biggest ally Clinton has over the next two weeks is the Democratic primary calendar. It unfolds in almost perfect fashion for her. </p>
<p>Next up is the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 27. A majority of South Carolina Democrats are <a href="clintons-firewall-black-voters-the-key-in-south-carolina">African Americans</a>, a vital constituency that has provided rock solid support for Clinton. She currently leads Sanders <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-18/clinton-strong-in-south-carolina-but-warning-signs-ahead-bloomberg-poll-shows">3-to-1 among African-American voters</a>. Not surprisingly, therefore, the polls indicate that Clinton will <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/sc/south_carolina_democratic_presidential_primary-4167.html">likely win a landslide victory</a> in South Carolina. </p>
<p>Things only get worse for Sanders on March 1, the date of the “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html?_r=0">Super Tuesday</a>” primaries. Nearly a dozen states vote that day, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Most of the Super Tuesday states have demographics highly favorable to Clinton, so much so that her campaign views those states as a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-2016-super-tuesday-firewall-121781">firewall</a> against Sanders. </p>
<p>Clinton’s campaign has clear reason for confidence in her southern firewall. Although he has a strong base of support among white northern liberals, Sanders has thus far failed to make any inroads in the South. </p>
<p>If Sanders can’t find a way to appeal to southern voters, the next two weeks could be a very rocky and dangerous stretch for his campaign.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony J. Gaughan is a registered independent. </span></em></p>Hillary’s narrow victory in Nevada could be the beginning of a winning streak. Here’s why.Anthony J. Gaughan, Associate Professor of Law, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/548722016-02-18T10:46:17Z2016-02-18T10:46:17ZJohn Kasich’s rhetoric versus his record in Ohio<p>Since coming in a surprisingly strong <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/john-kasich-says-he-feels-gratified-after-new-hampshire-primary-n515611">second</a> in the New Hampshire Republican primary last week, Ohio Governor John Kasich has been on a roll. His campaign has reported “<a href="http://observer.com/2016/02/kasich-camp-fundraising-has-been-gangbusters-since-strong-new-hampshire-showing/">gangbusters</a>” fundraising and Kasich’s national poll numbers posted a <a href="http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-gop-primary">sizable bounce</a>.</p>
<p>More Republican voters are giving the Ohio governor a second look, and some appear to like what they see. But does reality match Kasich’s rhetoric?</p>
<p>As <a href="http://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/research/">a political scientist from Ohio</a>, I’d like to offer some perspective on Kasich’s self-described strengths – his role in balancing the state budget and improving the Ohio economy, his moderate policy outlook and his record of electoral victories in the most purple of America’s swing states. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YIy5YoMFp5Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">John Kasich makes his pitch.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my view, Kasich’s campaign is significantly overselling the governor’s record, claiming credit for successes at least partially beyond the governor’s control while downplaying a number of significant policy failures and disappointments.</p>
<h2>Balancing the budget and creating jobs</h2>
<p>When Kasich was sworn in as Ohio’s governor in 2011, the state’s public and private sectors were both a mess. Kasich inherited a huge budget deficit, and the unemployment rate was near a <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/07/how_accurate_is_the_kasich_cam.html">historic high</a>. Today, the state’s budget is balanced and unemployment, at 4.7 percent, is <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST390000000000003">the lowest</a> it’s been in more than a decade.</p>
<p>To be sure, Kasich made job creation a top priority in his years in office. Under his watch, the state <a href="http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-state-economic-development-privatization.html">privatized</a> its economic development agency, offered private companies significant tax incentives to create (or relocate) jobs in Ohio, and <a href="http://www.tax.ohio.gov/ohio_individual/individual/annual_tax_rates.aspx">reduced</a> its income tax rates substantially.</p>
<p>But is it fair for Kasich to take credit for Ohio’s economic recovery?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111843/original/image-20160217-19232-1yjit1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unemployment in California and Ohio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bureau of Labor Statistics (Graph created by author)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To answer this question, it is useful to compare Ohio with California, another state that experienced significant pain during the Great Recession and where a new governor also took office in January 2011. Compared to Ohio, however, California has pursued very different policies. Under Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, California <a href="http://www.dailynews.com/social-affairs/20131110/proposition-30-a-year-later-california-schools-seeing-benefits-of-tax-measure">increased</a> its income taxes and <a href="http://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2013/nov/clinic-story-10.html">eliminated</a> several economic development programs.</p>
<p>Since January 2011, interestingly, California’s economy has <a href="http://www.bls.gov/lau/">outperformed</a> Ohio’s. Unemployment has fallen by 6.2 percent in California compared to 4.5 percent in Ohio, and the number of people with jobs has increased 11 percent compared to 4 percent in Ohio. </p>
<p>The main lesson from this comparison is that state economic fortunes are, to a large extent, tethered to the national economy. National recessions batter state economies. National recoveries, like the one that has benefited both Ohio and California over the past half-decade, help them. This occurs largely regardless of what policies are adopted at the state level. At minimum, it should make clear that Kasich cannot credibly claim that his policies alone are responsible for Ohio’s improving economy. Like Brown, Kasich was just lucky enough to be in the right office at the right time.</p>
<h2>A predictable cycle</h2>
<p>The robust national economy also helps explain Ohio’s (and California’s) much-improved state finances over the past five years. </p>
<p>As I’ve <a href="https://u.osu.edu/kogan.18/files/2015/10/etrds0035-2lmm154.pdf">written elsewhere</a>, state government budgets are locked into a permanent cycle of feast and famine. State governments get much of their revenue from income and sales taxes, and these revenues boom predictably when the economy is strong.</p>
<p>Yet, a large fraction of state expenditures go to pay for welfare services such as Medicaid. This year in Ohio, Medicaid will make up over <a href="http://www.lsc.ohio.gov/fiscal/budgetinbrief131/budgetinbrief-hb64-en.pdf">50 percent</a> of Ohio’s operating budget. Enrollment in social welfare programs tends to shrink when the economy is doing well – for example, people tend to enroll in private health insurance when they have jobs. As a result, states frequently post large surpluses during good economic times, as their revenues go up even as expenditures on many programs shrink. The flip side is that during recessions, revenues fall even as demand for government programs goes up, creating massive cyclical deficits. The national economic recovery, in other words, has greatly helped Kasich balance the state budget.</p>
<h2>Mr. Moderate?</h2>
<p>Kasich is often described as one of the most moderate presidential contenders in his party – a Republican who works with the other side to achieve bipartisan policy victories. To a certain extent, these accolades are deserved, although they exaggerate the the governor’s record of legislative success.</p>
<p>More than other Republican candidates, the governor has taken controversial positions on a number of public policies that remain deeply unpopular within his party. For example, Kasich supported legislative reforms to fix Ohio’s <a href="http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/OH_CHARTER%20SCHOOL%20REPORT_CREDO_2009.pdf">underperforming</a> charter schools, has been an outspoken advocate of the <a>Common Core</a> education standards and aggressively defends his decision to <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/08/06/republican_presidential_debate_john_kasich_gives_an_incredibly_stirring.html">expand Medicaid in Ohio</a> under the Affordable Care Act. </p>
<p>Despite their unpopularity among the grassroots, however, many of these issues have enjoyed strong support from other Republican elites, who deserve some of the credit (or blame depending on your perspective) for these achievements. Ohio’s Medicaid extension offers a useful example.</p>
<p>When Kasich announced that Ohio would participate in the expansion, the decision attracted a great deal of (often behind-the-scenes) support from other top Republican officials and major campaign contributors. Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce <a href="http://ohiochamber.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Ohio-Chamber-Backs-Medicaid-Expansion-press-release-1.pdf">endorsed</a> the move. Just days before a pivotal state commission was set to consider the proposal, the Republican speaker of Ohio’s House of Representatives <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2013/10/medicaid_expansion_likely_to_p.html">reshuffled several appointments</a> on the commission to ensure that Kasich would get the sufficient number of “yes” votes.</p>
<p>For issues lacking similar support among his party’s leaders, the governor has had much less luck – even though Republicans have enjoyed huge supermajorities in Ohio’s state legislature during his entire tenure. Last spring, for example, the legislature <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/04/22/ohio-house-passes-budget.html">rejected</a> the governor’s proposal to increase cigarette and fracking taxes to pay for an income tax cut. They also voted down a Kasich-backed overhaul of Ohio education funding that sought to redirect state aid to poor school districts.</p>
<p>In many cases, when the governor and the legislature have agreed, they have adopted policies that put them well to the right of the average Ohio (and national) voter. </p>
<p>Since Kasich took office, for example, the state has adopted many new abortion regulations that have reduced the number of abortion providers in the state by <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article20147466.html">more than half</a>. These regulations have had their intended effect of limiting access, reducing the number of abortions to <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/09/abortion_total_for_2014_was_oh.html">historic lows</a>.</p>
<p>One of Kasich’s first policy priorities upon taking office in 2011 – an overhaul of Ohio’s public sector union laws – proved <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2456809">so unpopular</a> among not only Democrats but also many Republicans that many observers at the time predicted he would be a one-term governor. Fortunately, an improving economy and embarrassingly scandal-prone opponent proved these predictions wrong, helping Kasich win reelection by a large margin. </p>
<h2>Electability in a purple state</h2>
<p>Kasich’s self-proclaimed electability is perhaps his biggest trump card. But on this score, the evidence is again not particularly favorable.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111705/original/image-20160216-19232-1vz12dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Comparing Ohio’s electorate in 2012 and 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Catalist (Graph created by author)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is true that Kasich has won two gubernatorial elections in Ohio, a state that voted for President Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012. But Kasich’s name did not appear on the ballot in those years. Instead, the governor’s two elections came during the midterms, when turnout was <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2014/11/05112014---low-turnout.html">substantially lower</a> and the partisan composition of the voters was much different. Detailed voter data on Ohio voters from a big <a href="http://catalist.us/">national vendor</a> show that conservatives made up a minority of Ohio voters in 2012 when Obama carried the state but a sizable majority two years later when Kasich was reelected. </p>
<p>The voters who turn out in Ohio this year are much more likely to resemble the electorate in 2008 and 2012 than 2010 and 2014. That may explain why poll numbers have shown Kasich <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/oh/ohio_kasich_vs_clinton-4079.html">trailing</a> Hillary Clinton in his home state until fairly recently.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vladimir Kogan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Republican presidential candidate John Kasich likes to tout his record as governor of Ohio. Is it a case of oversell?Vladimir Kogan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/463142015-09-03T10:06:01Z2015-09-03T10:06:01ZScientists score one over celebrities in battle to decriminalize sex work<p>On August 11 2015, Amnesty International passed a historic <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/policy-on-state-obligations-to-respect-protect-and-fulfil-the-human-rights-of-sex-workers-internatio">resolution</a> in favor of decriminalizing all consensual commercial sex work.</p>
<p>A few weeks earlier, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women <a href="http://www.catwinternational.org/">(CATW)</a> – an organization that seeks to abolish prostitution – received a leaked version of the proposal. CATW lobbied against Amnesty’s impending decision. Several Hollywood celebrities including Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Angela Bassett, and Lena Dunham joined <a href="http://www.catwinternational.org/Home/Article/617-global-advocates-issue-a-call-to-amnesty-international-in-open-letter">CATW in opposing decriminalization</a>. They argued this change would only empower pimps and clients in their oppression of women.</p>
<p>But many others supported Amnesty’s proposal, including leading global health researchers and human rights advocates. In their <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dr-kate-shannon/decriminalizing-sex-work_b_7950936.html">op-ed for The Huffington Post</a>, Dr Kate Shannon, Anna-Louise Crago, and Dr Chris Breyer wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The science is there and unequivocal – criminalization has devastating effects on sex workers’ health and human rights, including widespread rights violations against sex workers including discrimination and violence against sex workers by policing agents.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While celebrities typically capture more attention than scientists, Amnesty listened to the latter. After two years of consulting with global health and human rights researchers as well as sex workers and victims of human trafficking, the largest and arguably most respected human rights organization in the world made its game-changing declaration. Amnesty International will now develop policy on nation-states’ ethical obligation to decriminalize sex work. They seek to “ensure that sex workers enjoy <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/global-movement-votes-to-adopt-policy-to-protect-human-rights-of-sex-workers">full and equal legal protection</a> from exploitation, trafficking and violence.”</p>
<p>It is unclear what, if any, impact this will have on policies across the world. But as a researcher who has studied the politics of sex work for more than 20 years, I was not surprised by the range of strong emotional responses.</p>
<h2>Initial reactions</h2>
<p>Immediately following the vote, CATW issued a <a href="http://www.catwinternational.org/Home/Article/624-catw-responds-amnesty-interantional-turned-its-back-on-women">press release</a> declaring that Amnesty International “turned its back on women.” They wrote that the decision constituted a “willful and callous rejection of women’s rights and equality.” CATW’s press release also mocked Amnesty’s research process:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Throughout the deliberation and “research” process that Amnesty claims led them to its resolution, they deliberately excluded the voices and expertise of survivor-leaders and women’s rights organizations working to end violence and discrimination at the local, regional and international levels.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To be sure, research is never a value-free process. But given the rigorous and prestigious research cited by Amnesty, in combination with a dearth of medical and academic researchers affiliated with either CATW’s board of directors or petition, <a href="http://www.catwinternational.org/Home/Article/617-global-advocates-issue-a-call-to-amnesty-international-in-open-letter">this particular accusation</a> may ring hollow.</p>
<p>Notably, the celebrities who helped sell CATW’s campaign to the media have remained silent. Even <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/8/11/9130329/lena-dunham-sex-work-decriminalization">Lena Dunham</a> – one of the most outspoken of the anti-prostitution actor-activists – has, for now, withdrawn from public discussion on sex work.</p>
<p>In contrast, reactions on social media from sex worker rights advocates were celebratory. Meg Valee Munoz identifies as a former sex worker and a survivor of domestic sex trafficking. She is the founder and executive director of <a href="http://www.abeni.org">Abeni</a> – a rights-based organization that provides support to individuals in the sex trade. Upon hearing the news, Munoz tweeted:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"631143922668929024"}"></div></p>
<p>Despite their jubilation, sex workers and their advocates also noted that the work was now just beginning. As advocate Melissa Gira Grant explained in <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/amnesty-international-is-finally-on-the-right-side-of-the-sex-work-struggle/">The Nation</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>By backing decriminalization, of course, Amnesty has not changed any law; their policy sets the groundwork for campaigning by Amnesty’s members and national sections. It’s this that could be a substantive boost for sex workers’ rights advocates.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Global health evidence</h2>
<p>Regardless of one’s opinion about the exchange of sexual services for money, the research is clear. When sex work is criminalized (including clients), sex workers of all ages, races, classes, and genders are harmed.</p>
<p>For example, criminalization of sex work has been shown to increase harm to <a href="http://bit.ly/1Uo7R9i">children</a> involved in the sex industry. It also increases rates of <a href="http://bit.ly/1s5QJYe">HIV/AIDS</a> and <a href="http://bit.ly/1KsxQaS">violence</a> against sex workers. Criminalization, aggressive policing and forced “rescues” <a href="http://www.sexworkersproject.org/downloads/swp-2009-raids-and-trafficking-exec-summary.pdf">also harm the human rights</a> of individuals in the sex industry, their children and families.</p>
<p>And despite stated political concern for protecting female sex workers, sex workers in criminalized sections of the US suffer from far higher rates of police abuse, violence and mortality compared to locations where sex work is either legalized, as in parts of <a href="http://esplerp.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Violence-and-Legalized-Brothel-Prostitution-in-Nevada.pdf">Nevada</a>, or decriminalized, as in <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/07/31/3686698/sex-work-legalize/">New Zealand</a>.</p>
<h2>The future of US sex work policies</h2>
<p>For some political observers, Amnesty’s vote has helped to highlight the current hyper-criminalization of sex work in the US. This includes the invasion by US Homeland Security of the male escort agency RentBoy. This raid resulted in several arrests and $US1.4 million seized in <a href="http://www.endforfeiture.com">civil forfeiture</a>. It was conducted exactly two weeks after Amnesty’s vote and has been condemned by many sex worker and LGBTQ organizations, including the <a href="http://www.swopusa.org/male-sex-workers-condemn-raid-on-rentboy-com/">Sex Workers Outreach Project</a> and the <a href="http://www.thetaskforce.org/statement-on-rentboy-com-raid-by-homeland-security">National LGBTQ Task Force.</a></p>
<p>Many will now be watching the US to see if, and how, its anti-prostitution policies will change. The road to decriminalization is likely to be bumpy, uneven and frustrating. The US is notorious for exporting conservative sexual politics to aid-dependent countries via the <a href="http://www.genderhealth.org/the_issues/us_foreign_policy/global_gag_rule/">Global Gag Rule</a> and the <a href="http://www.genderhealth.org/the_issues/us_foreign_policy/antiprostitution_pledge/">Anti-Prostitution Pledge</a>. The US is also home to both a profitable criminal punishment system and an enthusiastic and well-funded <a href="http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/node/21457">rescue industry.</a></p>
<p>Once presented with global evidence, though, I believe that reasonable individuals will turn away from the belief that consensual sex work should be criminalized, as they turned away from the notion that homosexual sex should be criminalized. Yet for transformative justice to occur for all individuals in the sex industry, advocates must also directly challenge the US criminal punishment machine.</p>
<p>Amnesty International’s announcement has clarified at least this: it is no longer acceptable to prioritize the opinions of celebrities over those of sex workers and the scientists who advocate for them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kari Lerum has received funding from the Pride Foundation and the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at University of Washington. </span></em></p>Ignoring the protests of Hollywood actresses, Amnesty International has come out for the decriminalization of prostitution.Kari Lerum, Associate Professor, Cultural Studies; Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies, University of Washington, BothellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.