An Atheist's Alabama Invocation; California's Faulty 24-Story State Office Building
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Also in our State & Local roundup: Stories from Pennsylvania, Idaho and Michigan.
Here is today’s State & Local news roundup for Friday, September 26, 2014 . . .
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama: What happens when an atheist opens a city council meeting with a non-theist invocation? “90 seconds of thoughtful statements that began with ‘Dearly Beloved’ and ended with ‘Let it be so,’ and no reaction from a packed City Council chamber,” writes Kay Campbell of the Huntsville Times. City council members have been “remained firm in their determination” that spoken invocations opening council sessions “reflect the diversity of Huntsville's population.”
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania: State government in Pennsylvania is facing a problem with inappropriate email messages sent on the taxpayers’ dime, including one titled “Delta faucet commercial,” which “invited the viewer to follow a stream of running water in the private parts of a woman stretched out in a tub below,” as Charles Thompson of the Patriot News reports. A partial release of messages authorized by state Attorney General Kathleen Kane has showed how “sexually-charged emails became a source of embarrassment and anger . . . for a small set of former attorney general staffers—including two of Gov. Tom Corbett’s cabinet members—whose inboxes they landed in.”
TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan: A ban on medical marijuana collectives in the township surrounding this northern Lower Peninsula city is on track to face a court challenge and Brian McGillivary of the Traverse City Record-Eagle reports that “could set precedent for other area municipalities in a three-county region.” An attorney for a medical marijuana collective that opened in Garfield Township without applying for zoning and sign permits said the township’s “ordinance is void. It is prohibited by what the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act allows,” according to the Record-Eagle.
SACRAMENTO, California: A state auditor’s report is recommending that California’s Board of Equalization move out of its troubled 24-story building in Sacramento, which, according to Jon Ortiz of The Sacramento Bee, has had a costly “history of water leaks, toxic mold, plunging elevators, corroded plumbing and falling exterior glass panels.” Says one board member: “It just shows owning buildings and taking care of buildings are not in the skill set of the state.”
CANYON COUNTY, Idaho: What kind of message does severe road damage say about a state? If you travel along Interstate 84 in Idaho’s Canyon County, "It doesn't speak very well for the state, the county or the [Treasure] Valley to have that kind of road with the ruts and very severe cracks," says Garrett Nancolas, mayor of Caldwell. The mayor is frustrated that improvements made to other stretches of the highway don’t extend to other communities like his. As Cynthia Sewell of the Idaho Statesman reports, Nancolas calls I-84 in his community atrocious: “There is not another word for it,” he says. “It is simply atrocious."
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