Counting people is vital to our democracy. Every ten years, the US government has a constitutional obligation to conduct a census that counts everyone living in the United States. This count determines how many Congressional representatives each state receives, the levels of Federal funding for state and local governments and federal programs, and serves as…
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There’s a new spin on hackathons, and it doesn’t involve technology. In the last month alone, Houston hosted two policy hackathons. They got people thinking creatively about our government and the laws they write. On March 5-6, Polithon and Young Invincibles held a policy hackathon about student debt. They brought together a few dozen people between…
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MobilityHouston is a website that crowdsources transportation policy ideas from Houstonians. The goal is to help lawmakers create smarter, more comprehensive transportation policies. They do it with a specific focus on mobility and a broad community engagement strategy. So Far, Policymaking is Offline Houston’s lawmakers have to get smart on a range of issues before they write the laws. They…
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Update: February 20, 2017 Beginning March 1, 2017 marijuana will be effectively decriminalized in Harris County. The DA estimates this will save $25 million a year. Congratulations to DA Kim Ogg, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, and everyone involved in this swift policy change. Back in February 2016, Texas Lyceum published the results of a survey that…
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Updated May 29, 2017. Last week, the Texas Legislature published bills filed by our newly elected House and Senate members. The Texas Legislature only meets for six months every two years. These bills are the raw materials for potential new state laws. You can browse the publicly available data here. I wanted to get a better…
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Today, Mayor Parker announced the launch of the Performance Improvement Portal, a City website that provides insight into how the City measures its departments and responds to citizen requests. The website also promotes open data and civic innovation projects (think hackathons, writeathons, and community challenges). We were really excited to work with the City on…
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Last week, I had the opportunity to accompany the Executive Director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to three roundtable meetings in Houston, Texas. We met with over 50 leaders from business, government, and academia. Together, they tell the story of Houston for the last 30 years, from boom and bust to recovery…
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Attracting Talent to the City With No Limits: Q&A with Jon Nordby of the Greater Houston Partnership
I sat down with Jon Nordby, the new director of Talent Attraction and Marketing for the Greater Houston Partnership. They are about to start on a new phase of the Houston: City With No Limits campaign. This time, there is a renewed focus on attracting skilled professionals to the Houston region. Jon is new to…
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If you have ever wondered where to find Houston’s landfills, look no further than the new environmental justice web tool released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this month. On June 10, 2015, EPA released EJSCREEN, an environmental justice screening and mapping tool. EJSCREEN uses high resolution maps with demographic and environmental data…
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