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State privacy officers persist despite limited resources, report finds

Chris Teale — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

More than 30 states now have a chief privacy officer, according to a report released last week, but many challenges lie ahead if they want to be truly successful.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers found that 31 states now have a CPO or an equivalent role, and that many play an important role in governing artificial intelligence, risk management and procurement. Meanwhile, states are making progress with their own privacy laws and regulations in the absence of federal action.

But they face a number of challenges, including a lack of money, as well as an ill-defined role and insufficient staff considering the complex initiatives they must lead. Despite those obstacles, NASCIO said the CPO role is an important one and will continue to grow in state government.

“One thing is clear: privacy is no longer a back-office issue,” Amy Glasscock, NASCIO’s program director for innovation and emerging issues, said in a video accompanying the report. “It's front and center in state government. Digital services are expanding. AI is becoming more embedded in how states operate. And state CPOs are playing a bigger role than ever, especially in areas like AI governance and technology procurement.”

The growth of this role comes as states have taken the lead on privacy regulations while Congress’ attempts to form a federal framework have consistently fallen short. As of this year, 29% of states reported having an established privacy program — up from 24% in 2024 — with more than half reporting that their programs are in progress.

Implementing those programs have taken a lot of work from CPOs, who reported that they did so by, among other things, developing privacy rules, statements, policies and guidelines; establishing training and points of contact in every agency; implementing data sharing agreements; and conducting training and privacy assessments.

NASCIO found that CPOs are also heavily involved in setting AI policies for their states, as well as conducting AI risk assessments, procurement review, due diligence on vendors and incident response.

Coordination with other tech leaders remains something of a challenge, although the CPOs surveyed indicated that there is progress being made. One third said there is regular coordination with defined roles between the CPO, chief information officer and chief information security officer on AI-related tasks, while 26% said that coordination is more ad hoc or informal. Just 22% said it is highly integrated with shared decision making.

As it relates to other risks to state government IT, 39% of CPOs said privacy is treated on par with cybersecurity risks, showing the importance of protecting residents’ data and ensuring it is not leaked or abused. However, 21% said it is treated as less important than most other risks to the IT enterprise, again showing there is more work to do.

Forty-six percent of CPOs said they have authority over executive agencies, but enforcement is another matter, as 36% said they can enforce privacy policies on those agencies, while 29% said those policies are not enforced and 11% said they are enforced by another entity. Other reasons that appear to undermine the CPO’s enforcement authority include a lack of policies to enforce; enforcement taking place at the agency level; their agencies only providing recommendations; and authority only in the procurement process.

And the “real challenge,” the report said, remains having a defined budget for the state CPO. Just six states reported having a specific budget for privacy this year — up from three in 2024 — and three of those six states said their budgets have increased, while one remained the same and another decreased due to across-the-board budget cuts.

“We can see here the tough spot that privacy is in today,” the report says. “Almost half of state CPOs are given authority over the executive branch, over a third of them are tasked with enforcing privacy policies in the executive branch, but only 21 percent of them have a defined privacy budget. It’s understandable why they list lack of budget as their top challenge and funding as their top need.”

Sixty-four percent of CPOs said a lack of funding was their biggest challenge, while 54% said they still struggle with a lack of understanding about their roles among state employees. Half said the lack of authority was also a common challenge. They urged state governments to provide better funding; support from the CIO, governor or other senior leaders; more staffing; and enforcement ability.

Looking ahead, CPOs were split on what will happen in the future as AI takes hold, even as the technology was cited as the biggest force shaping privacy in the coming years. Some said AI will elevate privacy’s importance, while others were more skeptical.

“Honestly, I see AI crowding privacy out of the conversation and not much progress on privacy,” one CPO is quoted as saying in the report.

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As states spend millions to woo data centers, Colorado is having a reckoning

Jennifer Oldham, Colorado Newsline — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Colorado Newsline.

Community organizer Alfonso Espino stood near the newest industrial building rising in his north Denver neighborhood, which ranks among the nation’s most polluted ZIP codes. Now it’s the epicenter of a tense debate over data center expansion in Colorado.

Espino raised his voice over construction noise and a train horn and pointed to 14 shipping-container-sized diesel generators that line the building, just yards from a half-built senior living center. Exhaust from such engines, designed to provide backup power during an outage, is categorized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as “carcinogenic to humans.” Xcel Energy, which will provide power to the site, projected “large load” customers like data centers will comprise two-thirds of its new electricity demand.

The bank of generators also sits across the street from an affordable housing facility, a community park and a health clinic with a weeks-long waiting list.

Espino is concerned that particulate matter and poisonous gases emitted by these generators during electrical outages could increase hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses that residents in the neighborhoods of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea already experience at higher rates than the rest of the Denver metropolitan area.

“I have asthma, my little brother has asthma,” said the community organizer, who also sits on the board at the Tepeyac Community Health Center. “We want to do everything we can to protect the health of our neighborhood.”

Higher rates of such diseases are the legacy of this community’s location. The region’s two busiest highways bifurcate the area and a petroleum refinery with a history of air pollution violations sits nearby. More than two-thirds of the land here is occupied by industrial or commercial businesses, compared to one-third in Denver overall.

Given that its residents are disproportionately impacted by exhaust from vehicles and air toxics from the refinery, Espino said his community deserved a more transparent approval process when it came to the data center complex.

The city of Denver greenlit the facility administratively because the property was already zoned for an industrial use, bypassing the need for a public hearing before the planning board and the City Council and raising questions among residents.

“A lot of things are concerning about the way the city handled this,” Espino said.

Mounting tension around the CoreSite development led Denver Mayor Mike Johnston to call for a citywide moratorium on data center construction on Feb. 23. There are 46 data centers currently in the city. The Denver City Council’s Community Planning and Housing Committee approved a measure on March 31 that would seat a working group to define rules around land, energy and water use, as well as zoning and ratepayer protections. The City Council is expected to take up the one-year moratorium bill later this spring.

“We think we need to build more data centers,” Johnston said on Feb. 26 on the “City Cast Denver” podcast. “The key is we need a framework to figure out how and when and where to build them.”

AI Building Boom

The controversy around how the CoreSite facility was approved mirrors debates nationwide around how to ensure the approval of such developments is considered in the open and that such complexes don’t negatively impact resource-strained regions and ratepayers and undermine greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

Lawmakers from Wisconsin to Georgia, Oklahoma, New York and Maine are considering similar moratoriums to provide municipalities more time to design regulations governing data center construction.

The push comes on the heels of a building boom driven by the need to power artificial intelligence that caught public officials off guard and left communities reeling. The industry is projected to double in size globally by 2030 in an “infrastructure investment supercycle,” according to a January Jones Lang LaSalle IP Inc. report.

By 2028, U.S. data centers’ annual electricity consumption will exceed that of 28 million households, according to nonprofit Food & Water Watch. Such facilities’ water needs to cool computer servers could equate to the consumption of 18.5 million households by that year, the report found.

The data center gold rush is also taxing state budgets. About 37 states offered tax incentives for companies to locate their servers there. Some are reconsidering these offerings as such policies add up to millions of dollars in lost tax revenue.

In Colorado, dueling bills in the state Legislature reflect the nation’s fraught relationship with the industry. One would offer sales and use tax exemptions to attract data centers, and a second “guardrails” bill would require developers to use renewable energy, hold public hearings and forge community benefit agreements with disproportionately impacted communities such as Globeville and Elyria-Swansea. It would also set standards for backup systems.

At a March 18 hearing on the guardrails bill, which offers no government incentives, state legislators expressed frustration with the process the city of Denver used to approve the CoreSite campus.

“Even local council members had no idea what was taking place, what plans were or were not being proposed,” said state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Democrat who represents Globeville and Elyria-Swansea, during six hours of testimony before the Senate Transportation & Energy Committee.

Denver City Council members who represent the area, including Councilman Darrell Watson, and two at-large members, Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Sarah Parady, did not return phone and email requests for information about the CoreSite approval process.

Another council member, Paul Kashmann, addressed the controversy at the council’s March 31 Community Planning and Housing Committee meeting.

“While you can point fingers at data centers, you can also point fingers at Denver city government,” he said. “We did not do enough advance regulation — I think we need to do better in the future.”

An environmental justice summary that CoreSite filed with the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment on Feb. 24 contains a page-long list of statistics that illustrate how the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood bears more environmental and socioeconomic risks than other census tracts.

About half of those who call Globeville and Elyria-Swansea home are low income and a majority are of color. The residents here are exposed to more air toxics than 93% of the state’s census tracts, more particulate pollution than 100% of such geographic regions, and more traffic.

Diesel Generators Among Chief Concerns

Espino, the community organizer, said to protect residents’ health, his coalition presented CoreSite with a binding Good Neighbor Proposal signed by 215 people living near the complex. The company plans to build three buildings to house servers. The first is under construction. It must apply for permits with the city for the other two.

Community organizers asked the firm to disclose its energy and water requirements, measure pollution emitted by its facility and conduct an independent health equity analysis that quantifies the center’s emissions, noise, traffic, water use and emergency plans.

Residents also asked that CoreSite use diesel generators designed to reduce particulate matter and poisonous gases that contribute to the formation of ozone — a haze that leads Colorado to violate federal air pollution standards each year and forces health officials to issue dozens of air alerts warning people to stay inside.

Public health researchers found that air pollutants associated with data center operations nationwide could contribute to about 600,000 asthma cases each year and lead to public health costs of more than $20 billion by 2028.

CoreSite said it began engaging with the community in June 2024 and hosted in-person meetings with GES Coalition members.

“We’re committed to continuing engagement,” CoreSite Vice President of Marketing and Sales Development Megan Ruszkowski wrote in an email. “We’ve begun a city-sponsored mediation process in the hope of fostering a constructive conversation with the community that could lead to an agreement all parties accept.”

Residents were upset, however, when representatives of the firm failed to show up at a community meeting in February. Among the chief concerns are diesel generators. A state-issued construction permit for the company’s 14 diesel generators limits emissions, allows only two engines to operate simultaneously, and caps the number of nonemergency hours each engine may run per year to 25.

The 17-page permit says the engines “must only be operated to provide back-up power to the facility when electric power is interrupted, or for periodic maintenance and testing purposes.”

The generators are “expected to run for less than 50 hours per year, though generators at our other Denver locations run on average as few as 10 hours per year,” Ruszkowski said.

CoreSite operates two other data centers in Denver. The building under construction in north Denver, designed for an 18-megawatt capacity, is its third. The new facility will use 230,000 gallons of water per day at its peak capacity. Both water and electrical use will likely be lower than this, Ruszkowski said, and will not impact consumers because the company ensured adequate supply with area utilities.

Eighteen megawatts can power up to 12,000 homes per day, depending on location and climate, and 230,000 gallons of water is equivalent to water used daily by 4,600 residential consumers. (Denver Water estimates its single family residential customers use 50 gallons per person per day.)

The facility will cater to customers who pay to use servers that CoreSite says will “provide common applications we all use in our daily lives, including e-commerce, online banking, telehealth, 911 and emergency services, remote work, video streaming and social media.”

The 14 generators approved in the construction permit issued by the state health department are not the cleaner options residents requested.

Similarly, most diesel backup generators installed at data centers nationwide are Tier 2, which allow higher levels of air pollutants than newer Tier 4 designs, according to a March report compiled by the nonprofit Better Data Center Project in collaboration with former employees of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Ruszkowski said that generators on the site are “positioned toward the center of the facility to minimize exposure to fence line neighbors.” She said additional generators “would only be needed if we developed the two additional buildings — if customer demand makes that necessary.” This probably wouldn’t occur until the 2030s, she wrote. The first building is scheduled to begin operation this summer.

Until then, Espino said coalition members are focused on working with CoreSite and state and city officials to devise protections “that will actually make a difference in protecting the health and integrity of our communities.”

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A bill would explore making NH a ‘technology first’ state on disability. Here’s what that means.

William Skipworth, New Hampshire Bulletin — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by New Hampshire Bulletin.

Some lawmakers and disability advocates are working to make New Hampshire the latest to adopt what’s called a “technology first” framework for state-administered services for people with disabilities.

The technology-first framework is designed to address a persistent issue within state services for people with disabilities: a nationwide shortage of professional disability caregivers, commonly known as direct support professionals. Adopting this framework would mean the state prioritizes new technologies that might be able to mitigate the need for hard-to-come-by caregivers.

For example, in Missouri which has adopted the framework, the state offers automatic medication dispensers instead of hiring a direct support professional to come to a disabled person’s home and administer medicine when possible. Washington, D.C., has a program that allows people with physical disabilities to receive smart speakers that can control household features, such as lights, with their voice. In Ohio, the state established 10 regional “tech hubs” where people can be trained on using these new assistive technologies.

Kansas University’s Lifespan Institute, which promotes this type of legislation nationwide and tracks its progress across different states, ranks Missouri and Ohio as leaders — or “expert states” — in the technology-first movement. The institute categorizes Washington, D.C., as “advanced.” All but 11 states have adopted some form of this framework, according to the Lifespan Institute. New Hampshire is one of those 11.

If enacted, House Bill 1685 wouldn’t go so far as adopting the framework, but it would establish a commission to study the issue and develop ideas on how to move forward with it. That committee would include lawmakers, disability advocacy organizations, people with disabilities themselves, and their families.

“We in the disability community believe in exploring options and giving opportunities for people to use technology as a way to solve some of the problems that they’re facing with some of the barriers that are occurring, especially around the workforce,” Vanessa Blais, policy and planning director for the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities, told state senators in support of the bill in March.

Rep. Heath Howard, who sponsored the bill, said the legislation would ensure New Hampshire becomes “a more inclusive and thoughtful state.” He also framed it in economic terms, saying it would “foster economic growth in (the) high-tech sector” that creates this assistive technology. The commission would also study ways to attract assistive technology companies to New Hampshire.

“Technology first is more than a phrase; it is a framework that ensures that technology is considered first in discussions of support options to promote meaningful participation, social inclusion, and self-determination for individuals and their families,” Howard, a Strafford Democrat, said. “Similar legislation has already passed and seen bipartisan support in other states, and it’s time for New Hampshire to join them.”

An amendment to the bill softened its original language, removing the term “technology first” in favor of “assistive technology.” Some advocates worry this will result in a less comprehensive system-wide approach, but Heath is still promoting the bill as a technology-first measure. HB 1685 has been passed by the House with the amendment and is now being considered in the Senate.

New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com.

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Getting privacy policy right in a competitive digital economy

Brendan Thomas — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0400

State and local leaders are working to protect residents’ privacy while keeping their economies competitive, affordable and innovative.

Those goals often reinforce one another, but some approaches to privacy policy risk undermining competitiveness if they limit how businesses and consumers use everyday digital tools. Getting the balance right matters, especially as more states move forward with their own rules.

Today, more than 20 states have enacted comprehensive consumer data privacy laws. Where laws share common approaches to transparency, consumer choice and responsible data use, businesses can operate with greater certainty while consumers benefit from clearer, consistent privacy protections.

This is consistent with the research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau showing that many people are willing to share information when companies protect it. Consumers also expect transparency about how their data is used and meaningful choices about sharing it. Taken together, these findings suggest people want both protection and clarity.

Businesses’ use of data to understand customers and serve them better supports much of modern commerce, particularly for small businesses that increasingly reach customers they may never meet in person.

A national survey of small businesses conducted by TechnoMetrica for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council found that online advertising generates an estimated $163 billion in annual savings and efficiencies, helping small firms lower marketing costs, reach new customers and reinvest in growth. For many entrepreneurs, data-driven tools have made modern commerce possible.

But that progress can be undone by inconsistent or outlier privacy rules. As commerce and marketing move online, fragmented privacy rules can undermine the tools small firms now depend on — raising costs, shrinking reach and creating compliance challenges.

A study by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that, without a consistent baseline, different state rules could impose $98 billion to $112 billion in annual compliance costs, exceeding $1 trillion over a decade. As much as $20 billion to $23 billion of that burden would fall on small businesses. Independent reporting shows many small firms already face compliance costs topping $50,000 a year, often more than they spend on hiring.

Take “data minimization” definitions. Maryland’s Online Data Privacy Act illustrates how principles that sound reasonable can create challenges in practice. By tying what is considered “reasonably necessary” to providing or maintaining a product or service requested by the consumer, the law can limit how businesses collect and use information for other common purposes, including advertising, even when consumers might otherwise expect it.

When routine commercial activity triggers heightened restrictions by default, businesses lose flexibility and communities lose valuable connections between local businesses and the people they serve.

Other states have taken a more balanced approach. Privacy laws in states such as Virginia, Colorado and Connecticut focus on transparency, consumer choice and responsible data practices while allowing businesses to continue using common digital tools to reach and serve customers. Thoughtful privacy rules can strengthen trust online while preserving the tools that make the modern internet useful, affordable and accessible.

Enforcement matters as much as definitions. Fortunately, most states have avoided creating broad private rights of action that would allow individuals to sue businesses directly over alleged violations. One need only look at how plaintiffs’ lawyers in California have used the private right of action in the California Invasion of Privacy Act to file countless lawsuits based on common digital advertising activities.

Instead, states have wisely placed enforcement in the hands of attorneys general and regulators, allowing officials to focus on serious problems while working with businesses to correct issues and improve compliance. That approach helps protect consumers while avoiding costly litigation that can discourage innovation and growth.

In a global, digital, data-intensive economy, privacy laws will help determine whether small businesses can grow and whether communities see new jobs and opportunities. The good news is that many states have already shown the path forward. By building on the common elements shared across existing laws like clear notice requirements, meaningful consumer choice and reasonable data minimization practices, policymakers can ensure people understand how their information is used and can easily access, delete, or opt in or out of data use when they choose.

Privacy policy that strikes this balance can strengthen consumer trust while preserving the digital tools that help small businesses grow, attract investment and compete in today’s economy.

Brendan Thomas is the executive director of Internet for Growth, a national coalition of small businesses and online creators that champions access to the digital tools Americans need to succeed in the modern economy.

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Human review, responsibility should be the ‘core feature’ of AI solutions, official says

Kaitlyn Levinson — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:06:29 -0400

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a tool to help agencies issue parking fines and tickets more efficiently, particularly as many cities have understaffed enforcement teams, but well-trained human reviewers remain critical to the approval process, experts say.

Across the U.S., cities and towns are expanding, but, in many cases, their parking and curb real estate is not, said Subhash Challa, CEO of SenSen, an AI platform provider. As more residents and visitors pass through communities where apartments, businesses and other facilities vie for curb space, AI-enabled camera systems and sensors are helping traffic authorities more efficiently catch people who stay parked past their meter time or drop their vehicle in a restricted area.

Indeed, cities like Philadelphia, Boston, and Santa Monica, California, have recently installed surveillance systems onto street signs or government vehicles to enforce parking regulations that help reduce traffic build up on public streets. For many municipalities, more streamlined parking enforcement can be an additional revenue stream for cities grappling with declining budgets.

It can be tempting to incorporate an AI solution into parking enforcement, like an automated ticketing or fine system, but “everybody adopting any of these [artificial intelligence] technologies needs to address the risks … and develop appropriate risk reduction or mitigation strategies,” said Marc Pfeiffer, senior policy fellow at Rutgers University’s Center for Urban Policy Research.

“That’s where subject matter expertise becomes important. AI seems so confident, and the language [the tech] uses is intended to build confidence in you,” he said. That’s where being trained on how AI works and its limitations can help agency staff be more attuned to double-checking AI-enabled results or identifying potential errors that need further evaluation.

Without that expertise, more mistakes, like incorrectly issuing fines to drivers, can occur, “and there will be times when there is an egregious error made, and it’s going to snap back into the agency’s face,” Pfeiffer said.

Indeed, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority faced backlash against the agency’s use of AI-enabled cameras on certain public buses that mistakenly flagged and ticketed approximately 3,800 vehicles for blocking bus lanes in 2024. More than 870 of those tickets were issued to vehicles that were legally parked. Similar challenges unfolded in Alameda, California, after reports emerged of the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District incorrectly issuing $110 tickets to some cars that were parked in legal spaces away from a bus stop.

Both agencies claimed the ticket cases were being reviewed by human staff, but such incidents underscore the value of proactive risk assessment and management before deploying AI for enforcement purposes.

For example, potential lawsuits, negative pushback from the community and other impacts are where prevention and risk management upfront could have saved agencies from trouble, Pfeiffer explained.

“Technology alone does not determine success,” Maria Tamayo-Soto, parking services manager for Las Vegas, said in an email to Route Fifty. “Implementation strategy, staff training, clear public communication and well‑defined processes play an equally important role.”

Las Vegas has been leveraging a platform from SenSen to enable AI-driven parking enforcement through license plate reader units throughout the city since 2020. The system enables LPRs to flag vehicles that are violating parking regulations in zones based on GPS data, which generates an “evidence package” that includes images of the vehicle, nearby signage, its license plate and relevant geolocation data, Tamayo-Soto said.

Officers also receive training so they can responsibly leverage the platform and better decipher whether a case flagged by AI was a valid violation or not, at which point “the decision to issue [a ticket], change [it] to a warning or dismiss the citation remains entirely human,” she said.

Ultimately, “the officer is responsible for the outcome,” Tamayo-Soto said.

Officers may also be required to evaluate the scene in person and take additional pictures to validate citations, particularly since “AI cannot fully interpret unique circumstances such as temporary signage, unusual conditions or exceptions which fall outside typical patterns,” Tamayo-Soto explained.

The city’s cautious approach to AI-enabled parking enforcement could be paying off, she said. “To date, we have not received community concerns regarding the use of the technology. What the community does see is more consistent and equitable enforcement, which is exactly what the system was designed to support.”

“Human oversight prevents errors and ensures each citation is accurate and defensible,” Tamayo-Soto said, which is why “human review should be treated as a core feature rather than a safeguard for AI limitations. It is fundamental to legal, public and operational defensibility.”

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Gen Z increasingly skeptical of — and angry about — artificial intelligence

Jo Napolitano, The 74 — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

While some might envision Gen Z welcoming artificial intelligence into their lives, a new Gallup survey finds people between the ages of 14 and 29 are becoming increasingly skeptical of — and downright mad at — AI.

Compared to a similar survey last year, they’re less excited and hopeful about the change it could bring and more angry at its existence, citing concerns about AI’s impact on their cognitive abilities and professional opportunities.

Respondents said they used AI at nearly the same rate they did before — they reported only a slight increase in daily and weekly exposure — but when asked how it makes them feel, the answers revealed growing misgivings.

Thirty-one percent said it made them angry, up 9 percentage points from 2025. And just 22% said it made them feel excited, down 14 percentage points from last year. Only 18% of respondents said it made them feel hopeful, marking a nine-point drop. Forty-two percent said it made them feel anxious, roughly the same as last year.

Zach Hrynowski, senior education researcher at Gallup, said the switch was swift.

“One of my working theories is that (it’s) the high schoolers, who are in their senior year, or especially those college students, who are maybe thinking, ‘AI is taking my job. I just went to college for four years: I spent all this money and now it’s turning my industry upside down,” he said.

Only 46% of respondents believed AI would help them learn faster, down from 53% the prior year, Gallup found. Fifty-six percent of respondents said it would help them to expedite their work compared to 66% last year.

Hrynowski notes, too, that users’ unease wasn’t entirely tied to the amount of time they spend engaging with AI.

“Year over year, among that super user group, they’re much less excited, they are much less hopeful — and they are more angry,” he said. “So this is not a case of some people who are adopting it and loving it and some people who are just avoiding it and feel negatively about it.”

Nearly half of respondents said the risk of the technology outweighs the benefits in the workforce. Just 37% believed it would help them find accurate information, down from 43% the prior year and only 31% believed it would help them come up with new ideas compared to 42% in 2025.

(Gallup)

The survey also notes some disparities by age and race. For example, older Gen Zers are more likely than younger ones to voice concerns about AI’s impact on learning in general.

Asked how likely is it that AI designed to mainly complete tasks faster will make learning more difficult in the future, 74% of K-12 respondents said it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” compared to 83% of Gen Z adults who said the same. Men and Black respondents were also less concerned about learning impact than their peers overall.

Results are based on a survey of 1,572 people spread throughout every state and Washington, D.C., conducted between Feb. 24 and March 4, 2026. It was commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation and GSV, Global Silicon Valley. Together, Walton Family Foundation and Gallup are conducting ongoing research into Gen Z’s attitudes toward AI.

Hrynowski believes there might be a link between recent revelations about the harmful nature of social media and AI-related distrust: Many of the respondents came of age, he notes, just as former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy called for a warning about its use.

Generative AI shapes the user experience in social media. Just last month, a California jury found social media company Meta — owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads — and YouTube injured a young woman’s mental health by design in a landmark case that could encourage untold others.

This was the second of two critical decisions: Just a day earlier, a New Mexico jury found Meta knowingly harmed kids’ mental health — and hid what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

“I’ve always been very impressed from the start of this work with Gen Z that across the board, not just with AI, they are keenly aware of the risks of technology, whether it’s social media, whether it’s AI or screen time,” Hrynowski said.

They are not the only generation to harbor these worries. A growing number of parents of K-12 students are pushing back on their screen time, not just at home, but at school.

Despite respondents’ skepticism about AI, they’re also readily aware that the technology won’t be walked back: 52% acknowledge that they will need to know how to use AI if they go to college or take classes after high school, while 48% think they will need to know how to use AI in the workplace.

An earlier Gallup study, released just last week, shows 42% of bachelor’s degree students have reconsidered their major because of AI.

Gen Z, in its reluctant acceptance of the technology, wants help in how to navigate it, both in an academic setting and in the workplace. Schools are stepping up, the survey revealed: The share of K-12 students who say their school has AI rules moved from 51% in 2025 to 74% this year.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

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Fewer phones and more books — Utah governor commends new education laws

Alixel Cabrera, Utah News Dispatch — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Utah News Dispatch.

From taxing social media companies in the state, to banning cellphones during the full school day and implementing policies to improve literacy, Utah leaders’ K-12 theme in the past legislative session centered on students going back to basics. The vision, some of them say, is to see children talking more with each other face to face, or working on increasing the list of books they have completed.

Surrounded by classic literature, works of fantasy and Harry Potter decorations at Valley Elementary’s library in Eden, Gov. Spencer Cox ceremoniously signed a set of bills that he, first lady Abby Cox and lawmakers hope can encourage more kids to get off their phones and open their attention spans for books.

“As we’ve seen social media uptick over the last decade, we’ve seen literacy decline, and that is not unrelated, and we need to make sure that, as we’ve done as a state, pull that out of the classrooms, out of the hands of kids, and get us reading again,” Abby Cox said on Thursday in front of a group of fourth through sixth graders, lawmakers and lobbyists that contributed to the new laws.

The governor took a few minutes to explain to the students the legislative process these bills went through and commended teachers for their work, which he said has made a substantial contribution to the high rankings the state has scored in recent years.

“One of the reasons that we’re number one is because we have one of the best education systems in the state. One of the reasons we have one of the best education systems in the state is because we have the best teachers in the state,” Cox said. “And so make sure you thank your teachers for the good work that they’re doing.”

Some of the bills Cox signed in the ceremony were among his biggest priorities, like the bell-to-bell cellphone ban, which establishes a default policy prohibiting phones but that individual schools are free to change. Another was a $16 million investment to boost early literacy among K-3 students, after a report showed that almost half of the state’s third-graders don’t read at grade level.

However, other education bills that didn’t have as big of a spotlight during the legislative session were celebrated at the Eden school, including one that had unanimous approval among lawmakers, creating a required course for seventh and eighth grades on digital skills.

South Jordan Republican Rep. Jordan Teuscher, the bill sponsor, said during the Thursday event the legislation stemmed from parents’ concerns about their kids’ lack of tools to navigate digital spaces.

“One of the areas that was lacking was helping kids understand how to navigate in this important space. I hope none of you get on social media anytime soon,” Teuscher told the kids at the library. “If you can hold out until after you’re adults, that is way better, and you’re going to be healthier and happier and stronger. But for those that are getting involved in that, how can they safely navigate there?”

Gov. Spencer Cox, Utah first lady Abby Cox, lawmakers and students pose during a bill signing ceremony at the Valley Elementary library on April 9, 2026. (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch)

The course won’t be about “just how bad the technology is,” Teuscher said. It will also tackle the benefits of digital technologies, and help students to balance the virtual and real world.

But the state remains interested in disincentivizing social media use in other ways, like taxing platforms that collect user data for targeted advertising. It’s a law that according to Teuscher, who sponsored the bill on the House floor, may be the most controversial of the set the governor signed Thursday.

“In Utah we don’t like raising taxes, right? We want to keep taxes as low as we possibly can,” he said. “But in this case, when you see that there’s opportunities where we need to get less of something, the best thing that we can do is tax it.”

The funds collected by the 4.7% tax will pay for youth sports and recreation, and volunteerism and mental health programs for young Utahns, a model Cox said he felt “very passionate about.”

“The money that we’ll collect will go back to helping our young people who have been so damaged by social media and the wealthiest (companies) in the history of the world, we think that they should be able to pay a little bit to make up for the harms that they’ve caused,” Cox said about the bill.

Another law Cox highlighted during the ceremony also involved students’ interaction with digital technologies, but focused specifically on artificial intelligence use in public classrooms.

Kaysville Republican Rep. Ariel Defay, who sponsored the legislation, said it limits the use of technology in elementary schools so students can develop foundational skills in literacy and math.

“And then as you move on to junior high and high school, there’ll be more and more and more technology, because it will be important for you to use technology and to navigate it, but in a very balanced way,” she said.

Other laws highlighted during the event included some aiming to intervene earlier in cases of dyslexia by funding tests to detect it, not only in schools but with therapists, as well as partnering with the University of Utah to develop a statewide dyslexia intervention plan.

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The overlooked reentry tool for veterans: Prison tablets

Tammy Ferguson — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Incarcerated veterans live at a difficult intersection: military service, involvement in the justice system and a society where nearly every step of reentry — from applying for benefits to securing housing, health care and employment — requires digital access.

Today, even basic reentry tasks often demand navigating online forms, identity verification tools like ID.me and other web-based systems that are hard to reach from inside a prison.

For governors, corrections leaders and policymakers, this is not just a human story; it is a public safety, fiscal and moral question: Are we using the technology infrastructure we already control to support successful reentry for those who have served?

According to recent federal estimates, roughly 181,000 veterans are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. As they return home, they are expected to navigate a modern, digitally driven benefits and service system, often with limited support.

The Department of Veterans Affairs deploys Veterans Justice Outreach specialists to engage justice-involved veterans through outreach, assessment and case management. These specialists help veterans understand and access benefits during incarceration and after release — support that improves institutional adjustment and, as evidence shows, can reduce recidivism.

Yet too many veterans remain cut off from the digital tools and structured information they need to navigate a digital‑first VA benefits system.

Unlike the public, incarcerated individuals do not have open internet access or the ability to independently search for employment, housing, health care, or benefits. Many correctional facilities instead rely on secure-network tablets as the primary source of digital access. These devices offer a critical opportunity to deliver accurate, structured information that can shape reentry outcomes.

When these tablets are underutilized, veterans leave incarceration without timely or credible information about VA benefits — a gap no amount of post-release intervention can fully close.

State and local corrections leaders play a decisive role in determining whether this digital access and reentry information gap persists. They control the content on secure-network tablets and influence the technology providers selected to deliver those services. They are not passive users of technology, but gatekeepers of information that can influence public safety, recidivism and long-term stability for veterans and their families.

In many jurisdictions, secure-network tablets are already deployed at scale. Using them to deliver structured, VA-aligned reentry content requires no new infrastructure — only leadership direction.

This is not about providing open internet access inside corrections facilities; it is about using existing systems more strategically. While tablets already support communication and entertainment, a critical opportunity is missed if they are not also used to deliver targeted, rehabilitative content. When loaded with accurate, relevant resources — including VA benefits information — these systems become extensions of institutional programming rather than disconnected add-ons.

Two sets of leaders are positioned to close this gap.

The VA should ensure that information on benefits, health care, housing assistance, employment programs and reentry resources is available in nonproprietary formats that can be easily deployed across tablet systems. Video modules, step-by-step guides and plain-language explanations should work across different secure tablet platforms without proprietary barriers or licensing hurdles.

Technology should reinforce, not replace, human expertise. Clear, standardized digital content can provide veterans with a foundation of knowledge about eligibility, enrollment and available support, so that when they meet with VJO specialists or other case managers, time can be spent on problem-solving rather than on basic orientation.

State and local corrections leaders, in turn, can ensure that this information reaches the veterans in their custody by:

Requiring high-quality, VA-approved reentry content for justice-involved veterans in secure-network tablet contracts — with the same standards applied to any vendor.
Formalizing partnerships with VA and VJO programs to coordinate content, training and dissemination.
Directing procurement teams, chief information officers and IT leaders to prioritize vendors that can deliver vetted, nonproprietary public content and update it as policies change.
Integrating tablet-based resources into case management and reentry planning and tracking indicators such as how many veterans start VA benefits applications or health care enrollment before release.

These are vendor-neutral expectations that any technology provider serving corrections should be able to meet.

Aligning tablet content with the work of VJO specialists offers a practical, scalable way to strengthen the service network that supports justice-involved veterans. It allows veterans to absorb information at their own pace, revisit it and prepare informed questions before engaging with service providers. It moves reentry preparation upstream — into the period of incarceration — reducing delays, confusion and missed opportunities after release.

Early access to accurate digital information narrows gaps in care upon release, lowers the risk of food insecurity, homelessness and unemployment and supports continuity of treatment for physical and mental health needs. Intentional use of existing digital tools during incarceration becomes a public safety strategy — one that can improve reentry outcomes, reduce recidivism and reinforce the broader veteran support infrastructure.

If we are serious about honoring service, reducing recidivism and building stronger communities, then ensuring justice-involved veterans leave incarceration informed, prepared and connected must be a shared responsibility. Governors, corrections commissioners, VA leaders and technology partners can align tablet contracts, content standards and reentry planning so that every justice-involved veteran leaves custody with clear information and a digital bridge to the benefits they have earned.

The infrastructure already exists. What is still needed is alignment on leadership.

Tammy Ferguson is director of Operation Veteran Reentry at ViaPath Technologies, and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. She is a former executive deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and now works in the corrections and reentry space, where she also serves on a governor’s advisory council on veteran services. Her views here are focused on public policy, emphasizing standards that any correctional technology provider should meet.

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New Jersey uses data to improve population health

Margaret Arnesen — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Data helps state agencies and policymakers make informed decisions about the policies and practices that protect the health and safety of their communities. In New Jersey, the Integrated Population Health Data Project (iPHD) aims to improve the overall well-being of residents and the efficiency of state government by securely linking administrative datasets to support research.

The New Jersey Department of Health contributed the initial funding and datasets to support the design and implementation of the iPHD. Now, the project is working to meet researchers’ needs by expanding its data to include other departments and agencies.

To learn more about this work, The Pew Charitable Trusts spoke to Margaret Koller, executive director at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, and Rachel Hammond, the chief ethics, data privacy, and research integrity officer for the New Jersey Department of Health. As part of their roles, Koller directs the implementation of the iPHD and Hammond chairs the iPHD’s governing board.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

So Margaret, you’re one of the leads on the iPHD. Can you give me a brief overview of the project and the goals it was established to meet?

Koller: The iPHD is an integrated data system New Jersey created by statute in 2016. The goal of the project is to harness the capability of health and administrative datasets to create a more comprehensive look of a person’s interactions with New Jersey’s health services systems.

A lot of data that can be used to better understand individual and community health are siloed across various departments and agencies. But with the iPHD, we’re able to link some of that data and break down some of those siloes to improve population health and the efficiency of state government programs. We already have more than 90 million records that have been linked at the person level.

What role did that legislation play in establishing the iPHD?

Hammond: Legislation is probably the most vital component to getting something like the iPHD project up and running. It lays out clearly how datasets that are shared with the iPHD will be used and, importantly, how they’ll be protected.

Koller: Being able to point to the legislation when speaking to agencies outside of the Department of Health is important. Other agencies are not compelled to put their data in the iPHD, so it’s much easier to initiate conversations when you have legislation that clearly defines our goals and mandates.

It also acknowledges the capacity of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy to lead this work because we are named in the legislation as the entity that will oversee the operation of the iPHD.

What is the value of linking multiple data streams from the New Jersey Department of Health under this one umbrella?

Koller: It creates a more complete understanding of how people navigate and use different services in New Jersey’s health care delivery system. It also helps us identify underlying conditions or barriers to accessing care.

Hammond: Data lends itself to being divided into siloes. Data collected by different agencies can have different confidentiality requirements, different funding streams, different legislative mandates, and so on.

The iPHD helps break down these siloes by collecting data from across departments and agencies and making it available in a limited dataset or without identifying information. That way, you still have the value and holistic picture that the data creates, but you’re protecting people’s data privacy as well.

Koller: That’s a great point. Data privacy and security is not a secondary priority. It is of equal value to collecting data and putting it together in limited datasets that are de-identified for research purposes.

So what kind of challenges has the iPHD faced since its inception and how have you overcome them?

Koller: Funding is a big one, and we’re lucky to have Rachel advocating for us in the administration. She’s spearheaded the continuous support from the New Jersey Department of Health. We’ve been through five or six commissioners since the iPHD started, and Rachel has been able to really advocate for us and make sure that the funding support for the iPHD has been preserved in the annual budget.

One more thing we’re always thinking about is forecasting what’s coming down the pike. What data should we really prioritize integrating into the iPHD that’ll be interesting and meet our researchers’ needs? It takes time to build the relationships and trust to get data from other departments, and then it takes time to process the data and create those de-identified datasets. So, we’re always trying to think ahead.

Have there been any challenges that surprised you?

Koller: The one thing that has surprised us is the kind of data researchers are asking for. When we started the iPHD, we just focused on data from the Department of Health, which was our legislative mandate.

But over the last year and a half, we started seeing more requests for third-party linkage. People are saying, “OK, the iPHD dataset is great, but we also want to connect it to a Medicare CMS dataset or a Child Protective Services file at a geographic level or the Medicaid data.”

That’s where data linkage is going, so we’re trying to find the balance between what is feasible to include in the iPHD and where users’ needs are headed. It’s all about setting priorities.

Rachel, you chair the governing board that oversees the iPHD. What role does the governing board serve?

Hammond: The governing board is responsible for oversight of the entire project. The team at the Center really does all the heavy lifting of operationalizing and managing the project, and the governing board does the lifting relative to overseeing it.

Specifically, the governing board determines what data is appropriate for inclusion in the iPHD project. That’s one of our statutory charges. We’re also responsible for policy development and adoption relative to our data governance, access, privacy, and security. We also adopted and implemented the criteria for approving researcher applications requesting to release data, pilot projects, and fee waivers.

Koller: I think something that really works is the environment of trust that the governing board creates. We’re always talking about process improvement—things that we think we could do better or differently or more efficiently, so that we can continue to grow the iPHD and still be able to service it as we do now. As part of that, we at the Center have the freedom to go to the governing board and give feedback on what we think could work better. That environment of trust and accessibility to the board members is a great benefit for our team at the Center.

Can you give an example of a recent research finding that used data linked by the iPHD?

Koller: We have a faculty member in the School of Public Health at Rutgers, Slawa Rokicki, who used the iPHD for her research on perinatal depression associated with increased pediatric emergency department (ED) use. Using hospital discharge records and birth records, she found that, compared with infants who had mothers with no symptoms, infants with moms with mild or moderate-to-severe depression symptoms had significantly higher overall non-emergent ED use.

The positive association between depressive symptoms and ED charges were particularly striking for kids on Medicaid, which pays a disproportionate share of the pediatric ED costs in in the United States.

This research contributes to thinking about the importance of perinatal depression screening and how that correlates to pediatric ED use and outcomes for infants. It can help inform Medicaid policy and policies around preventive programs, such as perinatal depression screening.

Why did you see value in expanding the datasets beyond the New Jersey Department of Health?

Hammond: Determining what data is appropriate for inclusion in the project is one of the governing board’s specific charges. I think we’re always thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion because we want to make sure that we’re including vulnerable populations in our effort to link data in a way that creates this whole-person view.

So, for example, with data from the Department of Children and Families, we want to make sure that we understand the health challenges that are faced by vulnerable populations such as foster children because addressing those challenges could be incredibly helpful in providing better services and better care.

The iPHD legislation specifically envisions this as a statewide integrated data project, so this is part of the natural evolution beyond Department of Health data.

In the future, we look forward to integrating administrative data from other state agencies that can paint an even more vivid picture of the services and programs that New Jersey residents use and how that might impact health and well-being.

How does integrating these additional datasets contribute to better outcomes for New Jersey agencies and New Jersey residents?

Hammond: Ultimately, the data can and should lead to better policymaking. We want the state to be able to optimize resources and cost efficiency. We’re hoping to use insights from this research to enhance our public health interventions and improve health equity.

What would you tell other states who are interested in either setting up or better leveraging their own cross-sector data integration projects?

Hammond: One thing to me that’s incredibly important is having a data privacy officer, especially in health and human services agencies, who works to protect the privacy of people whose information is sitting within those agencies and to facilitate the data’s legal and ethical use and sharing.

The other piece of advice, as we discussed earlier, is having legislative authority to fall back on, and I would hold up New Jersey’s legislation for the iPHD as a really great example.

Koller: Setting up a project like this takes time. It’s not a sprint, and if you think it is, you’re likely not going to succeed. I can almost guarantee you of that.

It’s about relationship building and trust building. Don’t expect that people are going to trust you just because you flash your academic credentials. Understanding how to do these kinds of data linkages is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Cultivating the relationships and trust with other agencies, departments, and researchers that is required for making the iPHD successful takes time.

One of the things I’ve learned is that when data is in a silo, it’s not because people don’t care about the impact of using it. Most of the time, the people I interact with are well-meaning, well-intentioned, and care deeply about doing good for our state. The siloing within departments or agencies is often a consequence of staff being overworked and under-resourced. If the iPHD can be a bridge and create that connective tissue, that will be our definition of success.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Hammond: This is such an amazing project, and I’m so honored to be a part of it. I know that someday when I retire, this will be one of those projects I look back on with immense pride—a true highlight of my career.

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How tech is helping improve avalanche forecasting

Chris Teale — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

In February, an avalanche in Big Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City in Utah led to the death of an 11-year-old from Massachusetts who was skiing in the area.

A report from the nonprofit Utah Avalanche Center found that the victim was carried more than 200 vertical feet by the snow and ice that was between 400 and 600 feet wide. The report estimated she was buried four feet below the snow surface for around 17 minutes, and was later declared dead at the hospital despite the efforts of local ski patrol and rescuers.

The incident highlighted the risks of avalanches and the efforts of the Utah Avalanche Center and others to not only rescue the stranded but forecast the disasters and educate the public so they can stay safe. The risk of avalanche is only increasing as climate and weather pattern shifts change snowpack, and technology can play a role in helping make forecasting easier.

“If we can create more accurate avalanche forecasts that help people understand those changing conditions, our goal is to always save lives of people who live, work and play in snow covered mountains, and so we're always looking at, how can we get better at that?” said Chad Brackelsberg, the UAC’s executive director emeritus and special projects lead. “Using some of these technologies to help our forecast team be more accurate, more efficient, and getting the word out to more people is our end goal.”

Avalanche forecasting is a fairly manual procedure for staff at the UAC, which was founded in 1980 in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service before the nonprofit Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center was founded a decade later to help raise money and operate the center. Staff members must go out and manually inspect the snowpack and test it, determining whether it is weak enough to potentially slide downhill.

Technology can help collate and analyze the data they collect on the slopes, however.

Brackelsberg said UAC has a “big history of innovation in the avalanche world,” including consolidating its data from various databases and producing online dashboards for their team to study. The center was also an early adopter of publishing forecasts online and making them more visual, rather than text based. Now, UAC leans on social media to deliver its public communications, and they have also embraced television.

Having the staffing availability to analyze the data is a challenge, and that is where artificial intelligence and machine learning can come in.

A recent ShipSummit event in Park City, Utah, hosted by Rise8, a software development company that typically works in the defense sector and for the federal government, showed what’s possible in how data aggregation and emerging tech can help improve avalanche forecasting.

Through various hands-on sessions, 200 participants who used over 1 million AI tokens came up with solutions to some of the UAC’s most pressing challenges. One of those, said Adam Furtado, Rise8’s director of enablement, included an idea to analyze satellite imagery for topography changes that may indicate if an avalanche is about to happen. Brackelsberg said a full prototype could happen in the future.

“With the introduction of these types of technologies, we can iterate on experiments super rapidly,” he said. “We were able to see that in real time and in more of a training environment, from what we were putting together. They were able to see these things and come up with their own ideas.”

And Brackelsberg said the unique public-private nature of the UAC, which is a nonprofit backed in part by state, local and federal help, as well as donations, shows what is possible too.

“The private side allows us to be nimble and flexible, and even cutting edge when it applies,” he said. “It allowed us here, historically, to not get sidetracked through so much process and instead take that tech route of failing fast and testing things to see what works. It's important for us to be able to quickly put a post on social media or a blog on the website, or get in front of a news station or a radio station, to continually get that message out. This partnership helps that be successful.”

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Treasury is creating a database with pandemic aid recipients’ sensitive information

Natalie Alms — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

The Treasury Department is pooling information about people who received benefits from pandemic-era relief programs in a new, central database it says will be used to conduct program audits.

It’s the latest front in the Trump administration’s efforts to centralize government data, including information typically held by states about people who receive nutrition benefits and jobless aid. Many of the administration’s previous attempts have been subject to lawsuits.

Critics say the department’s required notice for the system is imprecise, overly broad and runs afoul of privacy laws governing the federal government. Treasury is amassing addresses, financial data, Social Security numbers and other data in the new system, which it says it may cross-match with other government data.

Typically, these types of notices are “routine matters that do not warrant comment,” Steve Sharpe, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement. “But the scope of this notice is an astonishing and dramatic departure from prior Treasury practice.”

The NCLC, a nonprofit focused on economic justice, called the new system a “baseless violation of privacy” in a comment on the February notice that it submitted with over 40 other organizations, including many state and local legal aid groups.

Treasury’s plan “could be construed to reach millions of individuals,” the comment reads.

The database will include information about the individuals and entities, like small businesses, receiving benefits from eight department programs, Treasury’s notice says. Congress created many of these during the pandemic to provide emergency relief.

Other programs feeding data into the new system, like one created to rebuild the Gulf Coast after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, have no relation to the pandemic. The new system could also include other programs administered by the Treasury in addition to those listed in the formal filing, the notice says.

Local governments administer some of these programs, and they’re already required to report subrecipient and vendor information, the National League of Cities, the United States Conference of Mayors and National Association of Counties say in a comment, which also emphasizes the cost that reporting new data would entail, especially after some of these programs have been shuttered following the end of the pandemic.

Treasury did not respond to a request for comment. But if it moves forward with the new system as described in the notice, it will be saving information about a long list of people — not only those who receive assistance, but also people “associated” with the nonprofits, small businesses and other entities that received or delivered aid. The system will also house application information, which could include sensitive financial information.

The nonprofit Association of Public Data Users wrote in its comment that the notice “seems designed particularly to obfuscate the purpose of the collection and potential uses of the data.”

Although the stated purpose of the system is for audits, “we suspect the unstated purpose of the system of records is not to audit at all, but to get access to the information held by states that Treasury cannot otherwise directly compel them to submit to the federal government,” continues APDU’s comment, which it submitted with nine other organizations.

The Trump administration has pressured a range of state and local entities to share data with the federal government since the beginning of last year, including voter files.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center argues in its comment, which got sign-on from other organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, that the new system runs afoul of the Privacy Act’s principles of minimizing data collection, calling the proposed program “illegal and reckless.”

The notice signals more of the same “data grab playbook” from the administration, John Davisson, litigation director for EPIC, told Nextgov/FCW.

“Time and again we've seen this administration exploit personal data to construct wildly exaggerated narratives of waste and fraud, to carry out brutal immigration enforcement tactics, and attempt to undermine the right to vote,” he said.

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Pennsylvania senators weigh consumer protections from cryptocurrency scams

Whitney Downard, Pennsylvania Capital-Star — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Millions of Americans fell prey to scammers in 2025, losing nearly $21 billion in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence scams. It’s an ever-growing industry that takes advantage of society’s most vulnerable, according to the FBI.

In Pennsylvania last year, over 31,000 people lost $538 million.

An increasing number of those victims lose their money after withdrawing cash and depositing funds into scammers’ cryptocurrency wallets at an unknown number of kiosks around the state. Lawmakers hope that by regulating these ATM-like machines, they can protect Pennsylvanians.

“As with all new technologies, we have a responsibility to ensure that these advances are not exploited by the bad actors that seem to pop up when new technology emerges,” said Sen. Pennycuick (R-Montgomery). “We don’t want to stifle innovation. We want to make sure that our policies keep pace with innovation and encourage progress, while protecting the consumers’ safety, privacy and confidence.”

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Pennycuick is the sponsor behind Senate Bill 1015, a proposal that would require virtual currency kiosks to display anti-fraud warnings and enhance their safeguards against financial exploitation. Operators would also need to establish a 24/7 customer service support line and obtain a money transmitter license.

Two companies with machines in the commonwealth endorsed the bill as written, detailing before a Senate committee on Wednesday how their systems flag such abuse.

“We have a physical warning to start on every single machine,” said Chris Edwards, the assistant general counsel of Bitcoin Depot, which operates 462 kiosks throughout the commonwealth.

“We ask folks, ‘Are you sending this Bitcoin that you’re about to purchase to a (digital) wallet that you own and control?’ … the only correct answer to that is ‘yes,’” continued Edwards. “If you answer ‘no,’ the transaction is cancelled and taken back to the start.”

Others recommended further action, saying the current effort would “markedly improve the regulatory market,” but that the machines served “no purpose.”

Paul Edger, a senior deputy state attorney general, said that the office’s Bureau of Consumer Protection had received 90 complaints specifically about cryptocurrency fraud totalling $12.3 million in losses. Of those, 85% of the victims were 60 or older.

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“Our office believes that kiosk operators know scams are occurring at dangerously high numbers and provide only minimal warnings for consumers,” said Edger. “As my office sees it, these kiosks serve no other purpose than for scam. I don’t see a legitimate purpose for these kiosks when an individual, in my opinion, can do (these transactions) online, through a computer, through their bank or through a legitimate service.”

In March, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed a bill banning the kiosks entirely, making it the first state to do so after lawmakers said they couldn’t think of “legitimate reasons” for their operation.

How Do the Scams Work?

According to new research from AARP, nearly four in 10 U.S. adults have already experienced fraud and millions more “are worried about becoming victims.” Though 82% of those surveyed could readily identify gift card payments as scams, just 19% could recognize a cryptocurrency kiosk.

According to testimony, a victim might withdraw large amounts of cash from a bank and deposit it into someone else’s virtual wallet using a kiosk, instantly losing thousands of dollars that are nearly impossible to recover — all while on the phone with a scammer who talks them through the process.

Teresa Osborne, the state advocacy director of AARP’s Pennsylvania chapter, said that any fraud estimates are likely an undercount, noting the shame many victims feel means many losses go unreported.

“Until we collectively recognize that fraud victims are crime victims, we will continue to fall short in confronting fraud as the serious and pervasive threat that it is,” said Osborne.

According to Osborne, roughly 1,000 Pennsylvanians called the AARP’s national Fraud Watch Network hotline, reporting losses of nearly $11 million last year.

Digital currency advocates say that kiosks give people the ability to convert cash into cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Altcoins or Stablecoins. As adoption of these forms of currency increases, so too will the demand for kiosks, said Edwards.

At right, Chris Edwards, the assistant general counsel of Bitcoin Depot, said his company operates 9,000 digital currency kiosks in the country, including 462 in the commonwealth. (Photo by Whitney Downard/Pennsylvania Capital-Star)

“The original ethos behind Bitcoin was that it provides you the ability to move money using the Internet without involving a centralized intermediary,” said Edwards

Edwards said consumers in cash-intensive industries gravitated toward cryptocurrencies, but that his company had a “robust compliance regime” for identifying bad actors and blocking their digital wallets.

When asked specifically about illegal operations, such as laundering money used to purchase drugs, Edwards noted it’d be “a bad idea” to use their kiosks, which photograph each consumer and require a scanned driver’s license to use.

“We of course want to fight the fraud, but we want to do so in a way that allows legitimate business to continue to thrive and continue to exist,” said Edwards. “I think there are a number of smaller operators — and whether they’re bad actors or they just don’t have the ability to do some of these things that we’re doing, I don’t know.

“But I think some of these smaller operators don’t necessarily have that robust compliance regime that we have built … and that makes a difference,” said Edwards.

He pointed to an August 2025 report from the U.S. Treasury which reported that some kiosks don’t register with the proper banking authorities or advertise the ability to do transactions using only a phone number or email address.

What Can Be Done To Protect Pennsylvanians?

Edger, with the state Office of Attorney General, said that many scammers worked overseas, making them difficult to find and prosecute.

He called for more precise regulation on kiosks, requiring that anti-fraud warnings occur at multiple steps and “appear in large, unavoidable print.”

Operators should collect more information before allowing someone to open an account and check it against publicly available services, he continued, while also identifying blacklisted wallets associated with criminal activity.

He also recommended regulations for the owners of convenience stores, gas stations and bars hosting the machines, who he said received rent or other financial incentives, to place the kiosks in well-lit, highly visible locations with anti-fraud signage.

“Stores should also be required to obtain mandatory training on how to spot a scam, as well as the authority to refuse access to a kiosk should the employee reasonably think a scam has occurred,” added Edger.

While the Older Adult Protective Services Act includes some banking regulations, Edger said that “many” victims withdrew cash from their local financial institution before depositing into a cryptocurrency wallet and urged allowing banks to temporarily “freeze” suspect withdrawals.

“We further recommend that if the transaction is temporarily frozen, that the bank immediately notify law enforcement to perform a welfare check on the consumer within 24 hours in order to speak with them and assist in stopping the potential scam,” Edger continued.

Additionally, if someone using a kiosk is on the phone, Edger said the transaction should be denied.

“In more than 95% of the consumer transactions reviewed by our office, the consumer engaged in a scam was on the phone,” he added.

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AI framework aims to help criminal justice agencies adopt the tech responsibly

Kaitlyn Levinson — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:11:13 -0400

Artificial intelligence is changing government operations significantly, and while the technology can pose numerous benefits to agency efficiency and service delivery, its impacts are often unclear and uncertain, which is why helping agencies establish AI basics for assessing, procuring and adopting the tech is critical, one expert says.

Indeed, while AI has the potential to help court rooms and other legal professionals sift through or draft documents, it can also generate false information, quotes or cases. Such was the case in Illinois after a judge from Williams County last year realized a legal brief that he was reviewing referenced a case that never existed.

Growing exploration of AI’s place in the criminal justice system has pushed several states to consider laws and policies aimed at regulating AI’s safe and responsible use in legal, law enforcement and court systems.

But there remains “a hunger for reliable information and aid to guide decision-making and implementation,” particularly as the stakes of using AI in criminal justice operations “are very high … everybody wants to do a good job,” said Jesse Rothman, director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence.

That’s why the Council on Criminal Justice has released a framework to help criminal justice agencies and professionals evaluate purpose-built AI systems before adopting and deploying them into their workflows.

The user-decision framework aims to actualize the benefits of AI for criminal justice agencies while also helping them mitigate the technology’s risk, Rothman said. The framework includes five phases for agencies to refer to as they assess and implement AI systems.

Criminal justice leaders should first define a specific problem or opportunity for improvement within their agency that they want to resolve, according to the first phase. From there, officials should determine how AI could address an issue — such as reducing document backlogs — better than non-AI solutions, according to CCJ.

“Technology should not be a solution looking for a problem,” the report states.

During this phase, criminal justice agencies should also conduct an internal assessment to determine if their organization has the capacity to adopt an AI-based system. For instance, agency leaders should consider if data governance policies exist or need to be established, and whether they need to bring in additional resources, such as technical expertise, to deploy AI, according to the report.

Similarly, the second phase suggests that criminal justice agencies assess risks and opportunities of an AI system. The framework, for example, prompts users to consider the risk level of a particular AI tool, including how it could impact a resident’s procedural or legal rights, create errors in legal proceedings and documents or negatively influence decisions like arrests, sentencing, parole determinations and others.

To help evaluate AI systems, the report also suggests that criminal justice agencies establish a review team that includes a diverse array of staff, like legal experts, IT employees and operational managers, that can help develop a comprehensive assessment, the framework states.

Collaboration among staff, from law enforcement to technologists, is vital to creating an agencywide understanding of an AI system, Rothman said. For example, some staff may support the use of AI-enabled surveillance tools in public spaces, while others could propose the security and privacy risks of such tools. This communication and idea sharing is critical for shaping agencies’ decisions on what are acceptable and prohibited AI use cases for their jurisdiction, Rothman said.

A diversified team approach to AI can also strengthen a criminal justice agency’s approach to procuring the tech, according to the report. The third phase under the framework underscores how “procurement is a key safety point for agencies to make sure they really understand what they’re getting into” because the procurement process is where they “have leverage” to set standards and requirements for vendors’ AI solutions,” Rothman said.

Indeed, “the procurement phase establishes the contractual foundation that protects your agency, ensures accountability, and maintains compliance throughout the system’s lifecycle,” the report states.

Criminal justice agencies should, for example, consider including contractual agreements that require vendors to offer documentation of their AI system testing and validation, comply with accuracy and reliability standards, adhere to relevant privacy laws and regulations, accept liability for system errors or failures and other factors.

The fourth and fifth phases of the framework offer guidance for responsible implementation and monitoring of AI systems once agencies are ready to leverage functional AI tools. In the former phase, criminal justice leaders should “pay careful attention to how the system will function in your environment and how you’ll ensure it performs as intended,” the report states.

That means agency leaders can deploy the AI system under a pilot program first to test the tech in a realistic environment. Criminal justice users can, for example, more closely evaluate an AI system’s usability in areas like its design interface and how that impacts staff’s ability to fully leverage the tech.

The implementation phase also offers leaders the chance to establish AI training for staff, which can help agency officials better understand the system's functionality, limitations and other characteristics, according to the report.

The fifth and final phase of the AI framework suggests that criminal justice agencies should prepare ongoing monitoring and periodic reassessments to ensure the AI systems they pursue continue to function properly and accurately, the report states. The framework recommends that agencies evaluate high-risk systems annually, but lower-risk AI tools can be reassessed as contract renewals occur.

However, more comprehensive assessments should be conducted if an AI system undergoes any major changes or updates, is applied to a new use case than its original purpose, creates performance issues or spawns other significant challenges, according to the report.

AI systems and the steps needed to make sure they are leveraged properly by criminal justice agencies can create serious complications and doubt among potential users, but such hesitation can lead to “a risk of the perfect being the enemy of the good,” Rothman said.

Resources like CCJ’s assessment framework can help remove perceived barriers to exploring and implementing AI solutions in criminal justice and create “a really good basis for ongoing engagement,” he said.

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Surveys highlight AI’s growth, uncertain future in higher education

Chris Teale — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

Two recent surveys show the impact artificial intelligence is already having on higher education, as well as continued uncertainty about rules that may or may not exist to govern its use.

In a nationwide study of 4,000 students studying for associate and bachelor’s degrees, Gallup and the nonprofit Lumina Foundation found that 57% use AI daily or weekly for their schoolwork, while only 13% say they never use it. However, 53% of respondents said their academic institution discourages the use of AI or bans it altogether, while 52% also report a lack of clear guidance on specific use policies in class.

“AI is already embedded in students’ academic lives,” Courtney Brown, Lumina’s vice president of impact and planning, said in a statement. “Higher education has an opportunity and a responsibility to move from uncertainty to clarity. Students need transparent expectations, ethical guidance and practical training so they can use AI in ways that strengthen learning and prepare them for the workforce.”

This survey comes at a moment where educational institutions for those of all ages wrestle with the role of AI in learning and reckon with how students can use it responsibly. Researchers at the nonprofit New America previously called on city governments to work more closely with higher education institutions to help each other adopt the tech for public good, and it acknowledged that such efforts “remain uncommon.”

Meanwhile, others are reckoning with the effects of AI on students’ learning. Arielle Roth, the administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, has suggested studying the effect of screen time and AI in educational technology on students and potentially tying school subsidies to that effort.

But this Gallup survey shows just how embedded AI has become. Among students who use AI for their schoolwork at least monthly, 86% say a very or extremely important reason is to better understand complex course material. They also say it saves time (76%), improves grades (70%) and helps them prepare for their future career (65%).

Among those who use AI at least infrequently, their most common uses include getting help with coursework they don’t understand and checking answers on assignments. At least 60% of AI users report doing these activities daily or weekly.

Despite this rapid adoption and fairly widespread use, students reported that their institutions have failed to implement policies to keep up with these new behaviors. Just 7% of students surveyed said their institution encourages AI use as much as possible, while 42% said their school discourages its use and 11% ban it outright.

Even where restrictions exist, students continue to use AI regularly: 48% of students at schools that discourage AI still use it weekly, as do 27% of students at schools that prohibit it. Policy clarity also varies across classrooms.

Just 51% of students at four-year institutions and 43% at two-year colleges say all their courses have clear AI policies. Those in courses that are the least likely to encourage using AI — like the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences — said they are the most likely to have comprehensive AI policies.

“This may suggest that faculty are currently doing a better job of clearly communicating policies that discourage AI use, rather than policies that clearly outline appropriate use,” the report says. “Technology students are also among the most likely to say all of their courses have clear AI policies, which may be related to technologically savvy faculty members having a stronger understanding of AI, on average, than their peers in other disciplines.”

A separate survey of 94,000 staff, students and faculty at the California State University had similar findings. That poll found that 53% of respondents across CSU’s 22 universities use AI regularly, while 56% of faculty said the technology has had a positive impact on teaching and research. The vast majority — 95% — said they have used at least one AI tool.

But there are issues on campuses across the state. Interest is high across the board in AI training, with more than 80% of staff and 70% of faculty calling for a formal framework. Half of students expressed the same sentiment. And there are concerns about job security: 82% of students, 78% of faculty and 74% of staff said they are concerned about AI’s impact on future employment. Similar numbers said they believe AI will become an essential part of most professions.

Those behind the study said they hope it can help guide future thinking on AI’s role in academic learning.

“This survey captures a moment of transition in higher education, where both students and faculty are actively assessing how AI fits into teaching and learning,” said David Goldberg, an AI Faculty Fellow and associate professor of management information systems at San Diego State University and a lead researcher on the survey. “The data gives us a powerful foundation to better support faculty by tailoring training to real needs, bringing more consistency to AI use in the classroom, and ensuring that its use strengthens learning outcomes. It also offers a roadmap for institutions nationwide to better understand AI’s role and to implement it thoughtfully, consistently, and responsibly.”

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Texas is giving data centers more than $1 billion in tax breaks each year

Paul Cobler, The Texas Tribune — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Texas Tribune.

Texas will lose out on at least $3.1 billion in sales tax revenue over the next two years thanks to an exemption for the state’s booming data center industry, according to the comptroller’s office.

That figure is likely a vast underestimate given the explosion of new facilities being built, but already makes the tax break one of the state’s costliest incentive programs and soon to be the most expensive of its kind in the nation.

Lawmakers, who will meet in January for the next legislative session, say they are considering proposals to either limit the scope of the tax break or get rid of it altogether.

“These new numbers are extremely concerning and I will say they’re unsustainable” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “I plan to look at filing legislation to either repeal the exemption or take a very close look at it and see.”

Lawmakers approved the tax break more than a decade ago, when data centers were smaller and required fewer resources. From 2014 to 2022, the exemption amounted to between $5 million and $30 million in lost state revenue per year. By 2023, that skyrocketed to more than $150 million, and this year Texas is forgoing at least $1.3 billion — a number that is rapidly increasing every year, based on state projections.

The money Texas is poised to lose from the tax break on a yearly basis could pay for the entirety of the state’s new school voucher program, or it could double the size of a state disaster fund to help local communities like Kerr County prevent flooding. It’s also quickly outpacing the cost of Texas’ highly controversial Chapter 313 tax abatement program, which allowed manufacturing companies to avoid paying local school property taxes, drawing the ire of lawmakers who eventually shut down the program last year at its height of more than a billion dollars a year.

The growth in data centers was unforeseen just three years ago, when the comptroller’s office projected the tax break would be valued at about $180 million in the 2027-2028 biennial budget. In 2025, the projection was revised upward to more than $3 billion — a reflection of the artificial intelligence boom that took off after 2023 and requires massive amounts of computing power.

Texas already has more than 300 operating data centers, with more than 100 additional projects planned or under development.

At least 142 more are currently under construction, leading the nation and beating out Virginia, which has 141 under construction, according to an analysis by data firm Aterio.

By fiscal year 2030, the comptroller’s office forecasts the annual value of the tax break will be nearly $1.8 billion — a $500 million increase from the current fiscal year — according to the 2025 report.

Data center industry leaders warn that shrinking or ending the tax break could spell an end to Texas’ rising status as the nation’s No. 1 destination for data centers, a status the industry argues comes with new jobs and billions of dollars in local investment.

“I think the hostile message that sends would … give a lot of different companies pause about what the state of being able to invest in Texas for the long term is,” said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy with the Data Center Coalition, a trade group that represents major tech companies.

Meanwhile, data centers are becoming increasingly unpopular among locals.

Cities like San Marcos, Amarillo, College Station, Waco and Harlingen have seen grassroots movements pressuring local officials to block data center projects. A recent Quinnipiac poll found 65% of Americans oppose the construction of a data center in their community.

Texas is one of 37 states offering tax exemptions for data centers, most of which are sales tax exemptions tied to local economic growth requirements. States like Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia also are debating whether to curtail or significantly alter those tax breaks.

The tech industry argues that tax breaks are crucial to maintain the industry’s investment in the state, which creates jobs and generates local tax revenue. Critics say the industry is choosing Texas for its abundance of cheap land and electricity as much as any tax break.

Dick Lavine, a former fiscal analyst for left-leaning policy group Every Texan, said there are many reasons why a company decides to build in a particular area, “and taxes is far from the most important.”

“Somebody's giving out money; [the companies] want to be in line. But it's not really how decisions are made, especially when there's bedrock things like land and energy that are much more important than their tax rate,” Lavine added.

There are currently 121 data centers receiving the sales tax break, according to a comptroller’s office database. A records request seeking individual tax break data for the facilities was rejected by the comptroller’s office, citing state law that shields that competitive business information.

Qualifying data centers are exempted from paying the state’s 6.25% sales taxes on purchases related to building and maintaining the facility — including servers and other data storage hardware, software, office equipment, the cooling system, emergency generators and plumbing.

Data centers are also exempted from paying state sales taxes on the cost of electricity, which is notable given the enormous energy demand of the facilities. By 2030, one in five data centers are expected to exceed 1 gigawatt in maximum energy demand, equivalent to the amount needed to power roughly 700,000 homes for a year.

To qualify for the tax break, owners of data centers larger than 100,000 square feet must agree to create at least 20 jobs paying at least 120% of the area’s median salary and invest $200 million in the project over five years. A 2015 addition to the tax break added a category for owners of data centers larger than 250,000 square feet, who must agree to create 40 of those jobs, invest $500 million and pay the energy grid operator to reserve 20 megawatts of transmission capacity, according to state tax code. The exemption expires after up to 15 years for smaller data centers and up to 20 for larger ones, depending on if the company meets the capital investment benchmarks.

In 2013, when then-state Rep. Harvey Hilderbran authored the original bill that created the sales tax exemption, data centers were focused on cloud storage, and were smaller and less resource intensive.

Hilderbran joked that the bill has turned out to be his most successful law ever, but he never could have guessed what the industry would have turned into and suggested that the tax break should be reviewed by lawmakers.

“If I was on the committee still, I would certainly be looking at it to get a balanced perspective of what the benefit has been, and how it compares to other costs of the state for other benefits we've had,” said Hilderbran, who retired from office in 2015.

States Re-Think Their Tax Breaks

States routinely hand out sales tax breaks to manufacturing companies to spur further investment that will hopefully create jobs and tax revenue. And data centers should be thought of like any other manufacturer, Diorio said.

“The final product of the data center is the 21st Century economy,” Diorio said. “It's the online purchases, it's the banking and financial transactions, it's the telehealth appointments …. I mean, it is basically the entire lifeblood of our daily lives.”

The coalition has been making this case across the country as states consider getting rid of their tax breaks for data centers amid debates over their consumption of electricity, water and land.

In Virginia, lawmakers have called a special session to weigh whether to phase out the state’s annual $1.6 billion sales tax break for data centers — supporters of repealing it argue the giveaway of tax revenue is unnecessary to keep the industry invested in the state and the tax revenue is needed to balance the budget.

In Illinois, where the value of the state’s sales tax break for data centers recently reached $1 billion, Gov. JB Pritzker in February announced a two-year suspension of the state’s sales tax break amid concerns that data centers are causing energy costs to rise for residents.

Virginia, Illinois and Texas make up the three most generous states toward the data center industry in terms of the annual value of their tax break. Along with Texas, both states have seen the value of that tax break grow rapidly since the AI boom began.

Diorio argued that repealing a sales tax break isn’t a good way to fill a budget hole because states will lose revenue if the industry invests less in a state. He pointed to a study commissioned by his association that found data centers in 2024 generated $3.2 billion from other local and state taxes, including local sales and property taxes, the state franchise tax and sales taxes imposed on data centers that have not qualified for the state sales and use tax break. Data centers, however, often engage in local agreements to waive property tax burdens.

“Texas is poised to be the [data center] leader and to be the leader in the country, and most likely to be the leader in the world,” he said. “And …getting rid of the sales tax exemption that would dramatically imperil that.”

Nathan Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies state and local economic development, said the argument that an industry could pull out of a state is common in debates over economic incentives. He said states should seek the right balance of incentives that attract and grow industries without sacrificing too much in tax collections.

“The whole point is to get some sales tax revenue,” Jensen said. “So even if you lost half the investment, but you taxed it at full value, from a taxpayer perspective, that's a win, right?”

Texas to Hold Hearings on Data Center Incentives

The Legislature will begin debating its tax break for data centers in July, when Huffman’s Senate Committee on Finance meets for an interim hearing ahead of the 2027 legislative session.

Huffman said she intends to use the committee hearing to cast a skeptical eye on the industry ahead of possibly filing legislation to repeal the tax break altogether, arguing the broad list of exempt purchases is too generous.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, last week highlighted the ballooning cost of the tax break and directed the Senate to study and make recommendations “providing safeguards to ensure that Texans benefit from data center investment.”

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, and vice chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the ballooning forecasts for the value of the tax break had also raised red flags for him.

“We have one of the largest economies in the world,” Martinez Fischer said. “We're looking for business partners, and that requires a two-way relationship of give and take. If you want the benefits, you’ve got to carry some of the burden.”

Lawmakers could take a range of approaches, including repealing the tax break, reducing it, further limiting the number of years it remains in effect, or tying the tax break to stronger economic development requirements.

Diorio said the industry plans to make its case to lawmakers in the hearings, “to help illustrate the good work that data centers are doing to be good stewards of resources in the state and really put the data out there to show that and demonstrate the broad economic value that we're bringing to the state of Texas.”

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Disclosure: Every Texan and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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University of Utah’s ‘AI supercomputer’ set to come online this summer

Alixel Cabrera, Utah News Dispatch — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by the Utah News Dispatch.

As Utah pushes to become a force in the artificial intelligence industry, its flagship university is quickly working on developing a supercomputing system researchers hope will accelerate cancer, Alzheimer’s, mental health, and genetic and environmental discoveries.

The system being built at the University of Utah is slated to come online this summer, and it’s projected to increase the institution’s computing capacity 3.5-fold, according to the university.

Some officials and communications from the university describe the project as a “supercomputer,” but Manish Parashar, chief AI officer at the University of Utah, prefers another term — ecosystem.

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“The physical computer is one part of it, but it is everything together that allows the innovation to happen,” Parashar said.

The ultimate goal for the system is to provide the computational power for researchers to run AI to crunch data and analyze models simultaneously.

That is expected to extend beyond health care research, with university leaders hoping to also make breakthroughs on “environmental modeling, clinical decision support, and large-scale analysis of historical and textual datasets in the humanities,” according to a release from the university.

“In the past researchers at the U. have found genes related to breast cancer, to Alzheimer’s. You can also look at how you find drugs that might be responsive to different types of diseases, or using AI to help physicians better analyze imaging,” Parashar said. “We’ve had many examples of researchers doing things like that at the U. What this will do is to be able to provide them with additional capacity to amplify and accelerate their research.”

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In a brief presentation of the project to lawmakers in February, University of Utah President Taylor Randall said the system will be available to all educational institutions in the state to train students, as well as to startups.

“This is just a fundamental, I call it, shared service that we can share across industry and other institutions to make sure that we are at the forefront of artificial intelligence,” Randall said.

In total, the full project, including physical infrastructure, computing, storage and software systems and their operations are expected to cost $50 million, a tab that’s being divided between philanthropists and the public sector. During their legislative session that concluded last month, lawmakers approved a one-time $15 million allocation for the endeavor.

A memorandum of understanding the state and higher education institutions signed with chipmaker NVIDIA to advance AI research and workforce in Utah is also playing a role in this development, Parashar said, with the company providing chips and expertise on the hardware.

The university also has an agreement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to assemble and operate the system, Parashar said.

While state leaders, including Gov. Spencer Cox, have been keen to accommodate the AI industry in Utah, some have also spoken in support of regulating the technology and have argued that AI must be “human-enhancing.”

That’s something that the university’s Responsible AI Initiative, also led by Parashar, is taking into consideration while working on the supercomputer.

“We want to make sure that when we address and use AI as a solution, we not only consider the technical dimensions, but also consider the ethical and social technical dimensions,” he said. “What are the implications? And how do we bring that expertise, that training to our researchers, to our students?”

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Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.

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Nonprofit playbook looks to help SNAP leaders manage payment error rates

Kaitlyn Levinson — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:03:07 -0400

Starting in 2027, states could be on the hook to pay millions more in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds if they are unable to lower their payment error rates. As state leaders scramble to implement dire system and operational changes to improve payment accuracy, a civic tech nonprofit has released a playbook to guide their efforts.

Oct. 1, 2027, marks the date that states will have to pay a larger share of SNAP food benefit costs if they cannot reduce their payment error rates to 6% or below, according to the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed in July. The national payment error rate in fiscal 2024 was 10.93%, the Agriculture Department reported in June.

Nearly every state would be subject to higher SNAP costs under the new rule, and an estimated 27 states would have to cough up $100 million annually to cover program costs. California alone, for example, could face an additional $2 billion in expenses with a payment error rate of 10% or above.

With the HR 1 deadline on the horizon for states already facing competing priorities, the nonprofit U.S. Digital Response released a playbook this month to help state SNAP leaders and staff “shape their systems and tooling to make it easier to be accurate and harder to make mistakes,” report authors wrote. The playbook is based on research and survey results from state leaders that USDR conducted from September 2025 through February 2026.

The playbook suggests that implementing technical and operational improvements to make frontline caseworkers’ jobs easier is at the root of improving the detection and correction of erroneous SNAP payments.

Indeed, “frontline staff are under tremendous pressure. We want to help make their jobs more straightforward,” the report states.

One way state leaders can reduce downstream payment errors is by improving the usability of SNAP eligibility and enrollment systems. Automation, for example, can be leveraged to streamline the process for clients to report changes to their income or other SNAP status and for benefit staff to review them, the report stated.

SNAP officials should consider opportunities to deploy automatic detection of client-reported changes in, for example, benefit portals or other integrated systems that manage the distribution of public benefits, according to the playbook. Leaders can also implement system features that automatically tag clients’ cases when they are new, altered or unchanged to reduce caseworkers’ burden of manually reviewing all SNAP cases to determine how to proceed with benefit payments.

State officials could also implement enhanced data verification experiences for caseworkers. USDR found that wage and salary data account for 43% of erroneous SNAP payments, and 46% of state agencies’ error dollars come from manual data miscalculations, system complexities for reporting and documenting client data and other challenges.

SNAP staff could improve user interfaces to make it easier for caseworkers to view client documents and related data, the report states. For example, enabling case management systems to show verification documents, like a client’s pay stub, next to related data inputs, such as a form field to enter a client’s earned income, can help SNAP workers more accurately report data that ultimately determines benefit payments.

The USDR playbook also recommends more proactive solutions that help caseworkers correct inaccuracies before a case is finalized. Researchers note that an in-system module that automatically flags case elements like missing data fields or address changes helps streamline caseworkers’ review process.

Such efforts to modernize and enhance SNAP systems and operations are already underway, according to USDR. Indeed, nearly 50% of the more than 100 state leaders surveyed told USDR researchers that their state has already launched changes to technical systems for improving payment accuracy, and 65% reported that they plan to or are already talking to caseworkers to develop solutions. For example, 65% of state leaders are turning to solutions that flag form fields that could include errors, like inaccurate or missing information.

Social workers in Riverside County, California, for example, have been leveraging an AI assistant tool developed by Nava Labs that alerts staff to potentially incorrect or missing data as they work with clients to enroll or determine their eligibility for public assistance programs.

Indeed, several states have tried to leverage legislation to encourage SNAP system changes in response to HR 1, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

California lawmakers last year introduced a bill that would appropriate state funding for automation and other system modernization efforts to help reduce payment error rates under SNAP. In New Hampshire, a bill introduced earlier this year aims to require data sharing agreements among state agencies to further assist with eligibility determinations and verification purposes. Additionally, Maine policymakers are considering a bill that would establish an electronic system that identifies potentially incorrect eligibility determinations.

Ultimately, the USDR playbook aims to help states navigate such legislative and programmatic changes because “reducing worker burden is a crucial — and often overlooked — aspect of improving SNAP payment accuracy,” researchers wrote.

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Feds sue three states over prediction markets regulations

Chris Teale — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said last week it had filed lawsuits against three states over their efforts to rein in prediction markets.

The federal agency filed suit against Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois, challenging those states’ efforts to, it said, “outlaw, regulate, or otherwise restrain” prediction markets, which are offered by the likes of Kalshi and Polymarket. In its lawsuits, the CFTC said it is the sole regulator of prediction markets, as they are designated contract markets.

“The CFTC will continue to safeguard its exclusive regulatory authority over these markets and defend market participants against overzealous state regulators,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in a statement accompanying the lawsuits. “This is not the first time states have tried to impose inconsistent and contrary obligations on market participants, but Congress specifically rejected such a fragmented patchwork of state regulations because it resulted in poorer consumer protection and increased risk of fraud and manipulation.”

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed criminal charges against Kalshi last month and accused the company of operating an illegal gambling business in the state. The case alleges that Kalshi broke state law that bans unlicensed wagering businesses and allowed bets on elections in Arizona. The company has already preemptively sued the state to argue it is subject to federal regulations, not state.

The CFTC’s lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, as well as Mayes and the state Department of Gaming’s Director Jackie Johnson and Chief Law Enforcement Officer Douglas Jensen said the state is incorrect to crack down on Kalshi and its peers in the prediction market sector as they are “doing precisely what is permitted under federal law,” specifically the Commodity Exchange Act, which provides a national law to govern designated contract markets.

The lawsuit takes issue with a 2025 cease and desist letter sent by Arizona’s gaming regulator to Kalshi, as well as the filing of criminal charges against the company last month. It calls on the court to declare that any efforts by the state to regulate prediction markets are preempted by federal law.

“Arizona’s attempt to shut down federally regulated [designated contract markets] intrudes on the exclusive federal scheme Congress designed to oversee national swaps markets,” the suit reads.

Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection sent cease and desist orders last year to three platforms — Robinhood, Crypto.com and Kalshi — for conducting what it called at the time “unlicensed online gambling, specifically sports wagering.”

The agency accused the prediction markets operators of violating state law by leaving users’ personal information vulnerable, not having integrity controls in place to prevent insider betting and for advertising to those on the state’s Voluntary Self-Exclusion List for problem gamblers, and on college campuses.

This year, Gov. Ned Lamont has looked to come down even harder on prediction markets with legislation that would ban them from being used by or advertised to consumers under 21.

“Prediction markets, while not federally defined as gaming or gambling, operate much like sports betting and share many characteristics that present risks for addiction without the established statewide consumer protections,” Lamont said in a fact sheet. “These platforms can be linked to compulsive behaviors, financial distress, and high-risk gambling patterns, especially among impulsive individuals.”

The CFTC’s lawsuit against Connecticut notes the three cease and desist letters the state has sent to prediction markets operators, and again notes that federal law preempts any state action on the topic.

“By prohibiting these [designated contract markets] from operating in Connecticut without a Connecticut license or by conditioning their operation on compliance with Connecticut laws and regulations, Defendants directly interfere with Plaintiffs’ authority pursuant to the federal scheme imposed by Congress through the [Commodity Exchange Act],” the lawsuit says.

The Illinois Gaming Board has also sent cease and desist orders to various prediction market operators, while in November the body issued a memorandum to say that prediction markets “constitute illegal gambling” under state law. The state board also warned that anyone operating a prediction market in the state, including gambling companies who have sought to move into the space, risk forfeiting their licenses to operate.

Those three cease and desist letters are similar to the other states’ actions on prediction markets, and the lawsuit notes that Congress has acted repeatedly to protect the CFTC’s jurisdiction and preempt any state activity. The federal agency said those states were trying to restrict its role, contrary to the law.

“The entire point of the CEA is to create a uniform and predictable nationwide market for futures trading, and the CFTC oversees that market via its certification process of DCMs and its requirements for DCMs to comply with the self-certification or submission certification requirements before listing event contracts,” the lawsuit says. “Defendants’ letters and threatened legal actions would undermine that uniformity, thwart Congress’s scheme, and intrude on Plaintiffs’ exclusive jurisdiction by subjecting CFTC-regulated DCMs to regulation in all 50 states.”

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Missouri AI regulations stall as lawmakers fear loss of rural broadband funds

Steph Quinn, Missouri Independent — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by the Missouri Indepenent.

The promise and peril of artificial intelligence have been a recurring theme for Missouri lawmakers this year, as they debate safeguards on campaign advertisements, companion chatbots and mental health therapy that use the technology.

But efforts to enact regulations in Missouri stalled last week in the state Senate amid fears the legislation could jeopardize nearly $900 million in remaining federal broadband funds for rural internet expansion.

The underlying bill, sponsored by GOP state Sen. Joe Nicola of Grain Valley, would specify that liability for harm caused by an AI system always resides with a person or organization — whether it’s the company that designed and created the system or an individual who used it. Courts would decide where liability lies in specific cases.

The bill would also prohibit AI from being granted legal personhood. People would be prohibited from marrying an AI partner, and AI could not own property or be an officer of a corporation.

“We don’t want anybody, any company or any person, to be able to blame the machine or blame the AI,” Nicola said.

An amendment sponsored by Republican state Sen. Brad Hudson of Cape Fair would require age verification to restrict minors’ use of AI chatbots and make it unlawful to develop or publish chatbots likely to encourage minors to engage in self-harm or sexual conduct.

Another amendment, sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, would prohibit the use of AI to prescribe medication or controlled substances, while Republican state Sen. David Gregory of Chesterfield attached an amendment banning nondisclosure agreements in lawsuits stemming from the bill.

But the debate turned quickly to broadband funding, with lawmakers warning the bill could run afoul of President Donald Trump and jeopardize federal money for rural high-speed internet access.

Trump issued an executive order last December establishing an AI Litigation Task Force within the U.S. Office of the Attorney General to challenge “onerous” state laws that conflict with a national policy of “a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI.”

Trump also indicated that states deemed to have overly burdensome AI laws would be ineligible to receive remaining “non-deployment” funds set aside for the $42.5 billion federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program.

Missouri was awarded $1.7 billion through that program in August. But last June, two months ahead of the state’s deadline to report the companies it had chosen to install fiber in rural areas, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration gave states 90 days to redo their selection processes implementing new priorities. While the Biden administration’s earlier guidance had prioritized fiber, the new directive told states to choose the lowest bid, including from satellite internet providers.

The new directives contributed to $21 billion in savings in states’ final proposals. Gov. Mike Kehoe announced in January that the agency approved Missouri’s $814 million final spending plan, which aims to connect more than 200,000 “unserved” or “underserved” locations to high-speed internet statewide. About 12% of those locations will use satellite connections.

That leaves $900 million in “non-deployment funds” from Missouri’s original allocation. And Missouri lawmakers representing rural areas are worried about losing those funds.

The federal government earlier this month postponed guidance to states on how they can spend the funds, and in November U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, filed a bill that would claw back the $21 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

Republican state Rep. Louis Riggs of Hannibal is sponsoring a House resolution urging the federal government to allow nondeployment funds to stay in Missouri.

“They call it savings,” he told a committee last week. “I call it theft.”

During debate on Nicola’s bill in the Missouri Senate, Republican state Sen. Jamie Burger of Benton read the entirety of Trump’s executive order aloud and asked Nicola for comment.

State Sen. Jamie Burger is introduced to the Missouri Senate on the first day of the 2025 legislative session in January (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Nicola responded that “an executive order is not law.”

“I would prefer the federal government to have some guardrails on AI, but they have failed us,” Nicola said.

Congress has yet to pass AI legislation, though the Trump administration on March 20 issued a more detailed national AI policy framework to guide federal lawmakers.

Republican state Sen. Jason Bean of Holcomb told Burger that the bill wouldn’t be worth jeopardizing the state’s rural broadband funding.

“Deployment of rural broadband, it’s not an easy task,” Bean said. “It’s extremely important. There’s underserved, but there’s also [areas that are] not served at all. And I think this would be very, very concerning if we put at risk our federal funding.”

Bean said that while he’s also concerned about the bill stifling AI innovation, the threat to rural broadband funding is “a big deal.”

“It’s a huge deal,” Burger said.

Nicola told The Independent that the uncertain fate of the broadband funds is the primary source of opposition to his legislation.

“Especially with some of the senators in rural districts that need the money to get fiber out to the people, that’s the sticking issue that we just need to clear up,” Nicola said.

Nicola said he would seek feedback from the White House about the bill.

“I take great offense at any president that is telling the state what they can and can’t do,” he said.

Burger told The Independent that he shares many of his colleagues’ concerns about the dangers of AI.

“People always say, ‘People are being violated by AI,’ and I know that, and I hate that,” Burger said. “But I don’t know that we can stop that anyway with our legislation.”

He said that since AI crosses state borders, there’s a need for federal legislation that crosses state borders too.

“I live 20 miles from Illinois, 80 miles from Arkansas,” Burger said. “They’ll just go across state lines. How can we regulate those things?”

Measures seeking to shield children from AI risks have garnered bipartisan support, even among lawmakers who are otherwise wary of AI legislation.

Republican state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman of Arnold said that while she had “real, deep concerns” about Nicola’s bill, Hudson’s amendment requiring age verification for AI chatbots would help “protect [minors] from people who wish to see and do harm.”

“I’m old enough to remember when we thought that less government, not more, is preferential, and that regulation for the sake of regulation was bad,” Coleman said.

Another bill, sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Patty Lewis of Kansas City, would make it unlawful for people who develop or publish AI to advertise that it can provide professional mental health services. Republican state Rep. Tara Peters of Rolla is sponsoring a similar House bill.

During committee hearings on that legislation last month, witnesses described the danger of AI’s tendency to reinforce the ideas people feed into it. This danger, they said, can especially affect children and teens.

Dr. Heidi Sallee, a primary care pediatrician and president of the Missouri chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told The Independent that while AI legislation “will never be able to protect 100% of the people,” it’s important to require AI companies to take safety precautions.

And she said that the emphasis in Lewis and Peters’ bills on advertising means that they won’t stifle innovation in the AI industry.

“It doesn’t prohibit development,” Sallee said.

But that may not be enough to win enough lawmakers’ support.

Riggs said Missouri lawmakers “don’t have any business” passing bills that restrict AI.

“It will literally cost us $900 million in non-deployment funds,” he said. “…It’s just one more little wrinkle in the broadband picture.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

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Government official impersonation scam complaints doubled in 2025, FBI report shows

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

The number of complaints filed with the FBI that described cyberscammers impersonating government officials nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025 and resulted in some $800 million in losses last year, FBI data released Monday shows.

Recorded government impersonation complaints rose from some 17,300 in 2024 to nearly 32,500 in 2025, the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report shows. The center, dubbed IC3, documented some $797 million in losses in 2025 from those efforts, up from around $405 million in the year prior.

That type of scam was listed among the top five cyber-enabled fraud crimes by both number of recorded occurrences and amount of money lost. Other major cyber crimes include romance, tech support and investment scams.

The spike comes amid a broader surge in impersonation-based fraud, fueled by artificial intelligence-driven voice and messaging tools that can allow scammers to convincingly pose as government officials at scale.

AI was referenced 260 times in complaints involving government impersonations, the report shows, with $7 million lost in cases with those AI references. AI involvement was documented the most in complaints involving investment scams.

Government impersonation can be especially effective because scammers often exploit the built-in authority people associate with official institutions, prompting victims to act quickly out of fear of penalties, legal trouble or loss of benefits.

“It has never been more important to be diligent with your cybersecurity, social media footprint, and electronic interactions. Cyber threats and cyber-enabled crime will continue to evolve as the world embraces emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence,” the IC3 report says.

The increase coincides with a period of upheaval across much of the government’s workforce, though IC3 did not detail any evidence linking the rise in complaints to mass federal layoffs.

Cyber threats, additionally, continue to become more prevalent. Data breaches and ransomware were among the most prominent cyber threat complaints documented in 2025. Over 60 new ransomware variants — modified versions of ransom malware crafted by hackers to evade detection — were discovered last year, the report says. Government facilities also remain a top target of cyber adversaries.

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Report warns of AI’s impact on non-college grads’ careers

Chris Teale — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

Much of the focus on artificial intelligence’s impact on the workforce has been on its implications for college graduates. But a new report warned that its effects on those in jobs that don’t require a college degree could be just as dramatic.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution warned last week that AI threatens to disrupt the 70 million people who it describes as “Skilled Through Alternative Routes,” known as STARs. Of those, 15.6 million work in jobs highly exposed to AI — including clerical roles, customer service positions and the like. And of that 15.6 million, researchers said there are around 11 million people employed in what they termed “Gateway” roles, which have traditionally allowed workers to build skills and then transition into higher-wage jobs as they gain experience.

AI is poised to erode some of the career pathways to transition to that higher-paying work for people without a four-year college degree. Brookings warned that as those pathways disappear, workers are at risk of losing their current jobs and being unable to find future opportunities for advancement, say into sales or human resources roles. Meanwhile, employers suffer as they are not able to develop talent.

“There's a lot to be sorted out as we think about how AI flows through the labor market,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro and a co-author of the report. “But there are few areas of greater importance, I think, than this one.”

As with other Brookings research on the impact of AI on jobs and employment, there is regional variance in where those changes are expected to be biggest. The most exposed pathways are in administrative, clerical and customer occupations in the Sun Belt and Northeast, researchers found, in addition to state capitals and cities and towns dominated by universities.

That will put the onus on local governments to invest in workforce development and other efforts to ensure their residents are not left behind.

“The further anyone gets away from a college experience, the less relevant the specific course material is, and we're entering a world where there's a new curriculum for all of us,” said Justin Heck, senior director of research and data production at nonprofit Opportunity@Work and a report co-author. “Over the next 30 years, we're all going to be needing to learn a lot of new things. The question is, are we willing to trust that lots of folks have potential, and lots of folks can be learning these skills? Including a broader set of workers in this moment of change is going to be key.”

Heck said local governments and employers also should be willing to experiment with pilot projects and other initiatives in this space and share what works, as well as what hasn’t worked.

“I understand why folks don't want to share their failures, but those are such good learning moments,” he said. “There's something of a commitment to us trying things and finding out what works, what scales and sharing that with peer networks, and getting folks in rooms together.”

The report found that some occupations, like construction and health care, are well insulated from the onset of AI as they are still heavily reliant on the human touch. But there could be a lot of uncertainty ahead, as 23 million people who fall into the STAR category have low adaptive capacity, meaning they may have a limited ability to weather job displacement. It all creates a lot of uncertainty in the labor market, especially in the future.

“Exposure does not necessarily mean automation,” Heck said. “Well, it can mean that. Worst case scenario, a lot of these key roles get automated, and we see workers stranded in low-wage work, and employers fighting to find the workers they need for higher-wage roles.”

However, the report emphasized that it is still early in the process, and it is incumbent on policymakers and employers to figure out what happens next.

“We have so many choices ahead of us that can determine the impact of AI, and we can make better choices,” Heck said. “That is still on the table, and anyone who says otherwise just doesn't want to take responsibility. It's still early days.”

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Across New York, debate about the inevitability of driverless cars begins

Annie McDonough — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0400

Last month, in the basement of a Baptist church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a few dozen people debated how to stop robots from taking over New York.

“This wave, this tsunami that’s coming – it’s bad,” Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Chiarello told the small audience that represented some of the most politically engaged constituencies of New York City: Black churchgoers, union members, lefty worker justice organizers. They were gathered around a buffet breakfast and Dunkin’ coffee.

“What does it mean when technology is capable of literally just rendering human beings obsolete in a whole lot of areas of life?” asked pastor and former state Senate candidate Conrad Tillard.

“Obsolete!” one person called out in refrain.

The gathering – informal, but not lacking in enthusiasm – was the first public meeting of a new coalition fighting autonomous vehicles in New York, as the driverless car company Waymo inches closer to acceptance in the halls of the state Capitol.

And if the rhetoric at a few points veered off-course – the robot vacuum Roomba was invoked as a villain by one speaker, and Tillard compared the ethical concerns of automation to cross-breeding humans and dogs – it was also grounded in very real, increasingly urgent worries for a workforce that is suddenly not at the wheel.

“There have been no discussions around what happens to the drivers,” said David Alexis, a former ride-hailing driver and former socialist candidate for state Senate. “There’s no talk about transition to another industry. There’s no talk about training or support. It’s really just, ‘Driverless cars are here. We don’t need you. Disappear.’”

The Rev. Conrad Tillard shared his concerns about driverless cars in the basement of Antioch Baptist Church in Brooklyn. / Annie McDonough

For several years now, the technology industry has been making its own arguments for why New York should embrace autonomous vehicles. Waymo, a subsidiary of the company that owns Google, leads that push and has been testing eight autonomous vehicles in New York City since it was granted a small pilot permit in August. That testing license, which required a human present in the driver’s seat at all times, expired last month. It will need to be renewed at the city and the state level.

In a surprising move, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed in her executive budget a pilot program allowing a limited deployment of robotaxis outside of New York City, assuming companies could demonstrate local support. It was the closest Waymo had come to expanding its reach in New York. But weeks later, Hochul conspicuously dropped the proposal, citing a lack of support from stakeholders, including in the state Legislature. (The New York Times reported that the decision came as Hochul sought labor support for her higher-priority auto insurance reforms.)

Despite its failure this year, the brief emergence of autonomous vehicles as a live debate in Albany previewed what could become a dominant issue next session. The opposition is already organizing with new coalitions, polls in the field, and arguments forming for why positive safety data from the 10 U.S. cities where passengers are hailing fully autonomous Waymos are not persuasive enough to allow the company access to the country’s largest ride-hailing market.

“They are coming. They could be great.”

Many people talk about autonomous vehicles as a matter of “when,” not “if.”

“I think any reasonable person would say that autonomous vehicles, looking forward in five, 10, 15, 20 years, are inevitable,” said Steve Fulop, president and CEO of the business advocacy group Partnership for New York City, and the former mayor of Jersey City, where autonomous delivery robots roam the streets. Google is part of the Partnership.

“I have no doubt that sometime in the next five years there are going to be AVs on the street in New York City,” said Julie Samuels, president and CEO of the industry group Tech:NYC.

“They are coming. They could be great,” said former city traffic official Sam Schwartz, “Gridlock Sam,” at a recent panel on autonomous vehicles hosted by New York Law School. (Whether they’re great, Schwartz said, will depend on whether they can be integrated to fill transit gaps and not just serve the wealthy.)

Evangelists usually cite safety first. There is a lack of independent studies, but data published by Waymo suggests their driverless vehicles will get in far fewer serious crashes than human drivers. “At Waymo’s current scale, the data suggests our technology is preventing approximately one serious-injury crash every 8 days,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher said in a statement.

Waymo has partnered with advocacy groups including Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the American Council of the Blind to promote the tech’s benefits. It won’t drive impaired, and it won’t decline to pick someone up if they have a service animal, for example. “Being able to show people the technology is really wonderful, and to put their hope in the fact that together, we can end impaired driving,” said Paige Carbone, regional executive director for MADD’s New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania office. (Carbone said Waymo has provided financial support to MADD as part of their partnership.)

And then there is a healthy amount of shiny object attraction. Riding in a Waymo is fun, even thrilling. Assembly Member Brian Cunningham, who sponsors legislation that would allow autonomous vehicles to operate in New York with certain safety conditions, has twice tested the company’s cars in Atlanta.

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Cunningham said those trips were on his own dime. Waymo has invited him – and at least 11 other state lawmakers – to try out their vehicles in other cities, according to lobbying records. Cunningham plans to bring fellow lawmakers along on a trip to test Waymos in Phoenix next fall, which, if approved, could be paid for by the Legislature, he said. “I want to be the chief cheerleader,” he said. “We don’t have to be first,” he added of the state adopting the new technology. “But we have to be best.”

If you want a sense of how Waymo presents its own inevitability, look no further than a map on its website showing cities where they currently operate, and the cities that are “up next.” “New York, NY” is listed alongside 18 other cities across the country as well as London and Tokyo. Autonomous vehicles are not an issue most New York lawmakers are volunteering opinions on yet. But they’re getting an earful on it. Waymo has spent at least $2.5 million lobbying New York City and state officials since 2019 and has hired multiple top firms, including Brown & Weinraub, Bolton-St. Johns and Kasirer.

“We’re going to continue to partner with (Hochul) because we think this is a really important technology for New Yorkers to have access to,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told The New York Times recently. “It will be odd if we are in a lot of major cities around the world and New York is excluded from them.”

Labor versus the machine

The Transport Workers Union has fought automation for decades. To the union, robotaxis represent a slippery slope.

“The 1960s version of Abundance bros was saying, ‘It’s inevitable that there will be fully automated operation of the New York City subway,’” TWU International President John Samuelsen said. “Forward flash 60 freaking years, and there’s still a two-person train crew on the subway cars in New York City. That’s because of the union.”

Like it or not – and some don’t – it’s that kind of hard-headed attitude that could form the strongest opposition to autonomous vehicles in New York. Organizations like the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, representing yellow cab and ride-hailing drivers, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is fighting autonomous vehicles in other states, are other major opponents.

Some opponents are on their guard 15 years after Uber first bounded into New York City, followed by competitors like Lyft and Via. App-based for-hire vehicle rides outnumbered rides in the city’s iconic yellow cabs in around five years, during a period in which their licenses weren’t capped. The city’s slowness to regulate the new technology – on top of an underlying taxi medallion debt crisis – was often blamed for cab drivers’ financial ruin. In the late 2010s, several drivers died by suicide.

“Waymo is underestimating us. We are organized, and we have battle scars to remind us of lessons,” said New York Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai, referencing the fights for taxi medallion debt relief, and a slew of labor protections for the new workforce of app-based drivers.

While Waymo has been at the vanguard of the driverless car push in New York, Uber – a major AV player elsewhere – has surprisingly suggested that New York should slow down to get the policy right.

Asked if Uber’s interest in slowing down is related to concerns about market competition from Waymo, senior director of public policy and communications Josh Gold denied that’s part of their thinking. “I don’t see that,” he said, saying that the issue just doesn’t have the support politically yet, without conversations about worker protections, accessibility requirements and congestion.

Tillard, part of the coalition fighting robotaxis, is aligned with Uber in their separate push for auto insurance reform in Albany this year. He told City & State neither he nor his church has been compensated by Uber for his advocacy on either issue.

Then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani went on hunger strike to secure debt relief for taxi drivers in 2021 and remains close to the constituency as mayor. / Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Legislation sponsored by state Sen. Luis Sepúlveda and Assembly Member Karines Reyes would effectively ban driverless vehicles, requiring a human driver to always be present. Sepúlveda’s concerns lie with the immigrant taxi and ride-hailing drivers in his Bronx district, whose incomes would be devastated by robotaxis.

“If we can reach a happy medium where we can slowly take the technology in while we protect jobs, then I’ll be the first one to support that,” Sepúlveda said. But like many people interviewed for this story who said they are open to – or even counting on – solutions for worker displacement, he hasn’t heard many promising ideas for exactly what that would look like.

There have been some suggestions that autonomous vehicle companies could license existing taxi medallions from their current owners – a bill sponsored by Assembly Member Micah Lasher would require AVs to be licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission as taxicabs – but app-based drivers have raised concerns about being left out of that kind of deal.

Waymo has stressed that its rollout in other cities has been gradual – their total fleet size across the country is 3,000 vehicles. By comparison, the TLC licenses more than 130,000 vehicles in New York City alone.

“Like with any new technology, there will be changes, but these changes will take shape very slowly over time,” Teicher, the Waymo spokesperson, said in a statement, adding that the technology would open up jobs as vehicle testers as well as other positions operating and maintaining the cars, depots and charging infrastructure. Waymo is also working with Bronx Community College to develop a training curriculum.

There are also major unanswered questions about what New York City wants its own streets to look like in the future. “We just got congestion pricing going. We are moving in the direction of fewer cars on our streets,” said Sara Lind, co-executive director of the open streets advocacy group Open Plans, which advocates for car-free street uses like curbside dining and pedestrian space. “Robotaxis, for all the fancy technology, are just cars.”

Lind also cautioned that any regulation in New York should also include a demand for more safety data from autonomous vehicle companies and robust privacy protections for data collected inside and outside of the vehicle.

Jeffrey Tumlin, the former director of transportation at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said he loves riding in a Waymo. But he’s eager to share lessons from the West Coast after becoming intimately familiar with the challenges – including headline-grabbing fiascos like a power outage that stalled Waymo vehicles across San Francisco in December, a vehicle driving through a police stop or even a car that hit a child. “AVs, to the extent that your city looks like a computer simulation of a city, are fantastic,” he said. But New York City – from its congestion to its weather – is exceptional, the San Franciscan acknowledged.

The taxi test

Assuming the state renews its program authorizing local testing, which it’s likely to do in the budget, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a noted ally of taxi workers, will need to decide whether to renew Waymo’s testing permit in New York City.

“If a company like Waymo finds itself in New York City, what they will also find is a city government that is committed to delivering for the workers who keep the city running, and those workers also include our taxi drivers, who for far too long, have been sold a dream of being able to work their way to the middle class only to have the rug pulled out from under them,” Mamdani told City & State at an unrelated press conference last week.

The decision conjures two competing visions for the future of New York City. The techno-optimists see a city free from traffic collisions, where almost anyone can get a ride at any time, pedestrians aren’t killed or injured by reckless drivers, and no person is spending hours circling the block to find parking. Doomers see a city where a whole sector of the economy is devastated by automation, where streets are congested with vehicles that could be hobbled by a power outage, a bad software update, or worse, weaponized in a cyberattack.

“How do you direct the entire industry towards the best parts of the technology,” Tumlin asked, “and avoid the inevitable enshittification that will occur when these companies need to start actually being profitable?”

The two visions parallel and preview broader conversations about what artificial intelligence will add to our lives, and what it will take away. Last month, Hochul announced a new commission to tackle the unanswered question of how to embrace innovation and protect workers.

In that church basement, one speaker asked the crowd how they would respond to the talking point from “the other side” that with automation, humans will be freed up to spend more time together with their families.

Cynette Wilson, a former driver working on a new driver-owned co-op, answered first. “What will we be eating while we’re together and I’m not working?”

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Data centers are straining the grid. Can they be forced to pay for it?

Naveena Sadasivam, Grist — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Last month, President Trump sat alongside executives of the largest tech companies in the country as they pledged to pay a fair share of the energy costs of their data center buildout. “Data centers … they need some PR help,” Trump said at the gathering. “People think that if the data center goes in, their electricity is going to go up.”

It’s not an entirely unfounded assumption.

As the tech industry has funneled billions of dollars into the AI boom over the last several years, it has simultaneously been expanding its fleet of computing powerhouses, which require vast amounts of energy to run. These facilities have been cropping up all over the country, from rural communities in eastern Pennsylvania to the cities of northern Utah.

This boom coincides with a dramatic rise in U.S. electricity prices, driven by inflation and the rising cost of adapting to wildfires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. But these massive facilities have also strained the grid — and in some cases — contributed to rising prices. For instance, last year, an independent monitor for PJM, the grid operator that serves 13 northeastern states and Washington, D.C., projected that powering data centers would result in higher electricity generation costs, which would ultimately be passed on to consumers. And in cases where the buildout hasn’t yet led to price hikes, utilities and grid operators expect that it’s just a matter of time if tech companies follow through on their plans. Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates that with data center electricity demand expected to double in the next five years, wholesale power prices could rise by as much as 50 percent.

At a time when the cost of living has become untenable for many Americans, and consumers are setting aside ever greater shares of their income to pay energy bills, the possibility of further rate hikes to line the pockets of tech companies has prompted a massive backlash across the country. The White House gathering of tech executives appeared to be a response to the backlash. On March 4 at the event, they signed onto the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”

The pledge itself has few specifics or teeth. It’s a voluntary agreement by several prominent tech companies — including Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon — to secure their own power for data centers, pay for any powerlines or other infrastructure that utilities may need to build to move that power, and hire locally from the communities they build in. While in theory the agreement could help prevent Americans from having to bear the cost of the data center expansion, the White House hasn’t set up oversight mechanisms to ensure that they do. Several consumer and environmental advocates called the agreement “meaningless,” “unenforceable,” and ultimately, “nonsense.”

The United States has become ground zero for the global data center boom. The rapid buildout has left developers, tech companies, and the utility industry scrambling to secure more power. As a result, the wait for a data center to connect to the grid can be years in many parts of the country. Hyperscalers — companies that operate large data centers and provide vast computing power — have been trying to get around these wait times by signing long-term power purchase agreements with solar developers, building their own natural gas plants, and even retrofitting jet engines to generate electricity.

“Every single data center in the future will be power limited,” said NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang last year. “We are now a power‑limited industry.”

Outside of the White House, utilities, local regulators, and lawmakers have also been proposing various solutions to address the community backlash and allow for the continued building of more data centers. Some have implemented measures requiring data centers to pay the costs of generating and moving the electricity they use. Others have suggested that data center developers install solar and battery systems on-site, or that rates should be frozen for residents while utilities figure out how to handle the additional costs. And at least 11 states are considering legislation to temporarily ban new data centers while their impact on electricity prices and other concerns are addressed.

“You’re seeing states try to move quickly,” said Meghan Pazik, a senior policy associate in Public Citizen’s climate program. But “every state’s going to have a different approach to how far they want to go on data centers.”

Many states are utilizing additional tariffs for data centers and other customers that pull large amounts of power from the grid. These facilities — referred to as “large load customers” — are required to pay more to make up for the added infrastructure costs that come with supplying them, as well as the risk if they end up walking away from the project, which would leave consumers on the hook for the investments. More than 30 states have proposed or implemented measures of this sort.

Some hyperscalers are changing their approaches, too. In Minnesota, Google inked a deal with Xcel Energy, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, to bring 1,900 megawatts of clean energy onto the grid. The company is fully funding wind turbines, solar panels, and battery storage, as well as the costs of grid infrastructure upgrades to serve its data centers. And in Louisiana, Meta signed a deal with Entergy to help fund the construction of seven natural gas plants, more than 200 miles of transmission lines, and battery systems, among other infrastructure upgrades.

A recent report from the Searchlight Institute, a policy think tank, argues that this piecemeal approach to regulating the tech industry misses an opportunity to fund a large-scale upgrade of the grid. Although the surge in demand has largely been framed as a looming crisis, the report contends that the boom also creates a rare policy window: a chance to modernize the country’s electrical system and make long-delayed investments needed for the clean energy transition.

Utilities make roughly $35 billion in investments in transmission infrastructure every year — far short of what’s actually needed. Electricity demand is projected to double or triple in the next 25 years. The Searchlight Institute report proposes creating a dedicated grid infrastructure fund to accelerate the expansion. Under the plan, hyperscalers would pay into the fund in exchange for speedy connections. Money from the fund would be directed to utilities and other companies to build out the system, prioritizing clean energy along the way. And consumer and environmental advocates, along with other policymakers, would oversee the process to ensure funds are being distributed equitably and serve the needs of the public.

Such a mechanism would ensure increased investments in clean energy, rather than the natural gas projects many tech companies are currently backing, while protecting consumers from increases in electricity prices.

“The hyperscalers need power,” said Jane Flegal, a senior fellow at the Searchlight Institute and author of the report. “They have a ton of capital. And rather than letting them continue to cut these one-off deals with utilities, we’ve got to find a better way to take advantage of the potential upside here and avoid the downside of them basically building a secondary grid behind the existing grid that benefits only them.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/accountability/data-centers-are-straining-the-grid-can-they-be-forced-to-pay-for-it/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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5 ways state and local governments will operationalize AI in 2026

Stephanie Weber — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0400

State and local governments don’t have the budgets or staff to experiment endlessly with artificial intelligence. Constituents expect services to work efficiently and accurately every time. Agencies making progress are not chasing silver bullets; they are strengthening the workflows that already run government.

Recent pilots revealed a clear lesson: standalone AI tools that sit outside day-to-day systems create operational friction. CIO forums and legislative hearings increasingly reflect frustration with tools that require parallel processes, extra training, or manual reconciliation.

That distinction matters. In high-impact areas such as health, infrastructure, investigations and service delivery, automation must be accountable and explainable. In 2026, agencies will move beyond pilots, embedding AI directly into real-world processes where it can operate reliably and at scale. Five shifts already taking shape illustrate how state and local governments are putting AI to work.

Grants and Rural Health Initiatives Will Drive Modern Processes

Federal-to-state grant funding is increasing, along with the complexity of how funds flow. Multi-agency coordination, strict compliance requirements and compressed timelines are forcing states to modernize execution, not just reporting.

The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program exposed these pressures. Although allocations were announced on schedule, many states encountered delays related to provider validation, location-level eligibility reviews, environmental and permitting coordination and National Telecommunications and Information Administration documentation requirements. In several cases, approved plans did not convert into executable awards, leaving funds unobligated.

The lesson is operational: when intake, review, clarification and award workflows are disconnected, minor documentation gaps can stall funding for months. Agencies are responding by adopting orchestration platforms that connect compliance, fund movement and cross-program coordination without replacing core systems.The same execution pressures are emerging in rural health, where grants increasingly tie funding to performance: access targets, service-delivery timelines, enrollment thresholds and clawback provisions. When dollars depend on measurable outcomes, retrospective reporting is insufficient. Agencies need near-real-time visibility into risks such as missed appointments, delayed enrollment, provider shortages and coverage gaps.

Orchestration platforms connect intake, eligibility, funding, clinical data, remote monitoring and case management so agencies can intervene before targets are missed. Grants shift from reimbursement mechanisms to instruments of early intervention.

Infrastructure Gets Smart

State transportation systems and public infrastructure generate enormous volumes of data through sensors, connected devices and monitoring tools. Historically, agencies used that data to explain what happened after the fact. Today, executive and legislative expectations are shifting. As congestion, safety risks and maintenance backlogs grow, agencies are expected to use data to influence outcomes in real time.

Embedding AI into infrastructure management processes enables that shift. Continuous analysis of sensor data allows agencies to anticipate conditions and initiate responses before issues escalate.

Rising congestion can trigger automated signal adjustments. Emerging safety risks can generate prioritized maintenance work orders before failure occurs. In documented pilots, predictive insights delivered value only when directly connected to dispatch systems, inspection scheduling and funding approvals. Insights alone did not reduce delays; integrated workflows did.

Orchestration makes this operational shift possible. Infrastructure environments involve multiple systems, teams and decision thresholds. AI creates value only when its outputs are embedded within governed workflows that define responsibility, authorization and response.

Investigative and Provider Management Modernization Will Become Table Stakes

Across government, investigative casework and provider oversight remain heavily dependent on manual processes and paper-based workflows. Replacing systems of record is costly and risky, so many agencies have delayed modernization efforts altogether.

Agencies responsible for licensing, eligibility enforcement and fraud investigation report staffing constraints as their primary risk as caseloads rise without headcount growth. Using AI to automate repeatable tasks and allowing agents to focus on critical case functions increases productivity and job satisfaction.

To address this, agencies are modernizing by layering AI and automation on top of existing systems. AI agents embedded in investigative and provider management workflows can automate document intake, validate compliance requirements and support credentialing without removing human judgment from critical decisions. Core systems remain in place, but the work around them becomes faster, more consistent and more transparent.

This mirrors earlier modernization efforts that improved digital intake and case tracking by upgrading the “system of action” around legacy records rather than replacing them.

Transparency and Governance Will Define AI-Driven Government

As AI moves into mission-critical government functions, transparency and governance become non-negotiable. Agencies cannot rely on black-box systems to support eligibility, enforcement, or funding decisions in environments governed by statute and public accountability. Agency leaders consistently ask a practical question: Can this decision be explained and defended?

Meeting that standard requires AI systems to produce traceable outputs tied to source data, governing policies and documented human approvals. Each action must generate an audit trail that withstands oversight, public records requests and legislative review. When embedded within governed process frameworks, this level of traceability allows agencies to scale AI responsibly, strengthen staff confidence and sustain public trust.

AI Super Prompters Will Enable a New Citizen-Centered Workforce

As agencies scale AI responsibly, a workforce shift is underway. Rather than replacing public servants, AI is elevating program leaders, analysts and frontline experts who translate policy intent and service needs into automated action.

Public-sector HR and CIO discussions increasingly emphasize staff who shape AI within policy and operational constraints, not simply operate new tools. These “AI super prompters” understand how work flows through eligibility determinations, investigations, inspections and service delivery. Government work is highly contextual, shaped by policy nuance and human judgment. Super prompters frame the right questions, define guardrails and activate automation at precise points in existing processes so that AI reflects how agencies operate.

Together, these shifts reflect a more mature phase of AI in state and local government. Reliability, auditability and scalability now outweigh experimentation as measures of success. By the end of 2026, AI will be judged less by what’s possible and more by what’s dependable.

Stephanie Weber is industry lead for U.S. state and local government at Appian.

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Inside the government website accessibility lobbying push

Chris Teale — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:00:00 -0400

The impending April 24 deadline of a federal accessibility rule and a new review has set off a frantic lobbying blitz from disability advocates and government groups looking to shape the future of that mandate.

The Department of Justice referred a rule to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs requiring that government websites comply with various internationally recognized standards from the World Wide Web Consortium under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But it did so with amendments as an Interim Final Rule, which would become effective immediately after publication and does not have a pre-publication public comment period. The rule had initially been put forward under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by the Biden administration in 2024, which required a public comment period before a final rule was issued.

The tweaked process has set off furious lobbying from groups on both sides of the website accessibility issue as they seek to influence the final rule, either before or after this month’s deadline. Minutes of any meetings between groups and the federal government are not public, and an OMB spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on the process or future timeline. Meetings are scheduled on the topic into mid-April, per the OIRA website.

But documents and letters give a sense of where some organizations stand. In letters to OIRA after its joint meeting with staffers from OMB and DOJ on the rule, officials with the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties raised a number of concerns about the effort, including the cost of compliance and remediation, technical difficulties and ambiguity about enforcement, among others.

NACo’s letter called these issues “significant barriers,” even as its members “strongly support the goals of accessibility.” And other government groups raised similar concerns.

“Cities continue to work hard to provide information and services to their communities using the Internet,” said a letter from the League of Minnesota Cities. “Many cities have expended substantial resources developing accessible websites and apps. However, this priority is one of many competing for the scarce resources of cities, especially those with populations less than 50,000.”

Cost of compliance is a big barrier for government groups, the letters say. When it first rolled out this rule in 2024, DOJ estimated counties could face a bill of around $967 million nationwide just to comply with the new standards, while cities could expect to pay upwards of $2 billion. States would be spending around $275 million to comply. Annual compliance costs after implementation were expected to be in the millions too.

NLC said full compliance is “unaffordable and out of reach” for most governments, especially those smaller municipalities with limited budgets but also larger ones too. They cited one-time PDF remediation costs for small communities of between $5,000 and $10,000, and ongoing annual costs of $70,000. Meanwhile larger cities, with lots of PDFs, also face resource challenges as they need more staff time to comply.

“A normal annual budget for these small communities could be $2 million or less, which [sic] the majority of that committed to expenses such as police and fire, water and sewer services, and retirement obligations,” says the letter, signed by NLC’s Legislative Director for IT and Communications Angelina Panettieri. “Most of these cities outsource information technology functions entirely, and may have an annual IT budget of $10,000 or less for these services. That makes the expense necessary to comply with the rule’s technical requirements financially onerous or even impossible for these small communities.”

NACo also warned that uncertainty over how the DOJ plans to enforce the new rule is making compliance difficult for county leaders. The group warned that, while digital accessibility can be measured and scored, there is less clarity on how that compliance is enforced, which then creates budgetary uncertainties. The DOJ has previously been tight-lipped on how it will enforce this rule.

“Beyond the physical world, where for example a curb ramp may reasonably constitute physical accessibility to a crosswalk, the digital world is constructed of many disparate elements that continue to evolve and change with the emergence of new technologies,” NACo’s letter says.

Disability advocacy groups said clarifying the requirements for government websites under the ADA are necessary, however. Mark Riccobono, president National Federation of the Blind, said in a letter that further delays or amendments to the rule would “severely harm blind and other disabled Americans,” and that it provides a “clear, transparent shared understanding of the applicable legal requirements.”

And the Autistic Self Advocacy Network said in its letter to OIRA that the rule’s “qualitative benefits,” including “independence, ease of use, self-determination … far outweigh the costs.”

NLC, NACo and others asked OIRA for several remedies to the current situation, including delaying the rule’s implementation; a complete exemption for those governments with less than 10,000 people; more flexibility on content exempted from compliance with the rule; and assistance in liability exposure, including more time to cure identified non-compliance.

In his letter, Riccobono rejected those claims and said governments of all sizes have had plenty of time to get into compliance.

“There is no basis for reconsidering the website rule, which has already gone through fourteen years of consideration, public input, and adjustment, and which is based on a requirement in existence for nearly fifty years,” his letter says. “Additionally, public entities have had nearly thirty-six years to prepare for the requirements that were initially established in the ADA, clarified by the final rule, and have been actively requested by stakeholders on all sides.”

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