Route Fifty - All Content

Beeck Center leader reflects on ‘bipartisan opportunity’ for government efficiency

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

July 4 meant the end of the Department of Government Efficiency, as the federal initiative launched by President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order officially sunset.

DOGE says it has saved billions of dollars, but its record is unclear. What is clear is that the initiative caused chaos at various federal agencies with layoffs and closings, as well as efforts to use technology to solve vexing problems that led to many privacy concerns.

Against that backdrop, and as many agencies start hiring again, state governments also experimented with their own efficiency efforts. Some were high profile, like in Iowa, Florida and Texas, which set up their programs to try and imitate the federal version.

But other states have looked to rethink efficiency and instead define it as the effective delivery of government services. One such state, Arizona, talked up its planned monetary savings but also framed the efficiency effort as a way to rethink certain business processes.

At the forefront of thinking about government efficiency is Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, led by Executive Director Lynn Overmann, a veteran of the U.S. Digital Service — which was repurposed to house DOGE via executive order — as well as other federal agencies. She also spent time as a public defender.

In the run-up to GovExec’s Government Efficiency Summit this week in Washington, D.C., Route Fifty caught up with Overmann to discuss where government efficiency goes from here, and how the trend is unfolding at the state level.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

ROUTE FIFTY: What does efficient government mean to you?

LYNN OVERMANN: I've worked both in the federal government and with state and local governments, so have a pretty broad perspective on it. But at the end of the day, efficient government means that government meets the needs of its constituents with the least amount of burden, both for the constituents and for the government workers that are delivering these services.

ROUTE FIFTY: Days after the end of DOGE, as you reflect back on that, what did you think of it, its aims and its outcomes?

OVERMANN: What was really fascinating to me observing DOGE is that it felt like it was repeating some of the lessons we learned when we first launched the U.S. Digital Service after the Healthcare.gov crash, which was this deep belief that the technology itself was the problem and that therefore technology was the solution. What we learned over time at the federal level — and I think it's being implemented in a far more innovative and effective way at the state level at this stage — is that it's not the technology. You need to understand who your users are and what their needs are, and then you need to build the process, the operations, the regulations, all the things that go around the technology to understand what is standing between the individual who needs the support and the service that's being provided, and then the technology often would come in at the back end.

It was really interesting to watch DOGE come into it with, frankly, a much stronger remit than we had. They were given a lot more air cover, they were given a lot more executive support, they were sent into agencies, and the agencies were told that they had to work with DOGE. Even with that, I think they ran into the same barriers that we did, which is, it’s not a matter of building a snazzy new technology product, it is really deeply understanding how government works and trying to make it better. That is a very different process than building a private sector technology tool.

ROUTE FIFTY: What's happening out there in state government?

OVERMANN: I would name a few states in particular: Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado are really doing some really interesting stuff. Colorado, I think, is a particularly interesting example, because their digital service team started not long after the U.S. Digital Service team and actually took some of the alumni from the original USDS and the original White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to launch that team, so they've been around about the same amount of time.

What the digital service team has evolved into under their new leadership is they've recognized that a digital service team on its own, even if it's highly empowered, is not as effective as an overarching technology shop, so have really stepped into the chief information officer shop, which brings with it a lot more responsibility, a lot more authority and a lot more capacity. It’s trying to transform the CIO’s office from a more traditional technology shop into a delivery shop. If I was to name one thing that's really happening at the state level that I think could be an example that the feds should follow at some point, it is recognizing that the goal is delivery, the goal is not necessarily a digital service or a technology tool.

I think we're seeing that in Maryland as well, where they have built out a really strong team and they've embedded folks in the key parts of the state government that not only build technology in partnership with agencies, but also have a lot of carrot and stick authority over the agencies themselves as they're doing procurement. They’re trying to wrap their arms around procurements to ensure not just that they've got a strong internal team that is capable of building a tool, but recognizing that a lot of government technology really comes from procurement, making sure that the procurement is well crafted, that there's a really clear sense of what the tool is that is needed, and then managing the vendors to ensure that it's actually delivered to the public.

ROUTE FIFTY: I want to ask about the goal being delivery. It must be hard as a government, because it must be very tempting to just bolt in a new technology and say, ‘Alright guys, we're done.’ How do you change that? Is that changing a mindset?

OVERMANN: It's both changing a mindset and changing an approach. One of the things that we've talked about for a couple of years now is something called the product model, which does tie back to procurement. It’s everybody's favorite thorny topic that is a challenge for everyone, but is recognizing that buying technology is not the same thing as buying a school bus, for example. The point of the technology is that it is responsive to the emerging needs of the program, and so technology is an ongoing piece of work. It is not a one-time procurement, and I think a lot of the procurements that we've seen — there's a number of reasons that procurements tend to go sideways — but one of them is this belief that you can name what you need the technology to do, you can buy the technology, you can deploy the technology, and that's the end.

I do think the mindset shift that we're starting to see, where delivery and outcomes are the goal, is an ongoing recognition that there needs to be ongoing work. User needs are going to change over time, technology is going to change over time, programs are going to change over time, funding is going to change over time, and what you really need is an infrastructure in place within government. A lot of it comes down to internal talent and capacity, who are capable of understanding in an ongoing way how those needs have changed, and how we should adjust the technology to be responsive in an ongoing way. It's not the way the government typically operates, and it's going to come from change management. That's why it's going to be so fascinating to watch these states that are pioneering in this space move to a goal, a new north star of, this is what they’re aiming for, and how do you bring these government agencies along to actually deliver it?

ROUTE FIFTY: Just on the procurement point, many states talk about having a request for proposals that's out of date by the time it comes into effect. How do we fix that?

OVERMANN: You need to have people on the inside who understand technology well enough to say, “What should these RFPs hold? Do we need an external vendor, or could we actually feasibly build this ourselves?” It's not always an obvious answer. I'm not ever a solid, "You must build," or "You must buy.” I think it depends on what you're delivering and what technology you already have in house, and then if you are going the vendor route, making sure that what you're asking them to do is deliver quickly to demonstrate that they are capable of building and delivering this technology, and then testing it.

It's really funny, we've seen over time the word “agile” has just gotten attached to a bunch of procurements, and, when you look at it, the actual process remains almost the exact same, which is you spend multiple years gathering requirements from different programs, you put them all into one incomprehensible multi-hundred-page document, you get two to three large vendors who respond because they're the only ones who have the capacity to actually dig through all of it and provide a response, and then by the time the project launches you can be two to five years into this process. Your requirements are out of date, and that's not even saying the amount of time it takes for the vendors to then build tools, because you've tried to capture everything all at once in one place. We're still talking four to five years for the tool itself to get developed, or for the system to be deployed, so you're anywhere from five to seven years into a product by the time you get to a point that you're starting to use it. The way technology is moving these days, that is just woefully out of date.

ROUTE FIFTY: Is it also difficult to do any modernization or efficiency project when you've got these old systems that can't break?

OVERMANN: There's been a really interesting project that emerged from the government of Alberta in Canada. They had a bunch of agency systems that were at the end of life, and they were facing a multi-year procurement, I think it was a $50 million RFP, with at best new systems in place in three or five years. What they did — this was a thoughtful use of AI — is the Alberta team had an empowered technology lead who actually understood what agencies’ technology needs were. He had a team underneath him that knew how to actually deploy using AI, so it wasn't just vibe coding to say, “Update my system.” It was, “What is the system architecture we need in place? How are we going to combine systems so that we are reducing redundancy? How are we understanding and meeting the agency's needs, and then deploying his team to use AI to build modularly?”

They were able to modernize multiple of their systems in just eight months, and I think for under a million dollars. That’s an internally empowered team that deeply understands their users' needs, and, in this example, it was an internal government need using modern technology to build things quickly. I think that’s a path that more governments should be pursuing in the future.

ROUTE FIFTY: You’ve talked about change management and having folks on the inside who care about this stuff. How do you go about getting people on board?

OVERMANN: Having clearly defined outcomes and goals. The vast majority of people who work for government are there because they truly believe in the government's mission. Every career staffer I've ever worked with on any technology project, if you can show them that what you are suggesting that they do is different from what they're currently doing and will actually get the job done better and faster, they'll do it. The disconnect is skepticism that the delivery will actually happen because folks have seen lots of great ideas come and go that don't actually work, and I think that's a totally fair concern around whether it’s a flash in the pan or a sustainable approach.

One thing that we learned over time in the federal government certainly is bringing team members in, whether it's programmatic team members or whether it's traditional technology IT shops, and co-designing with them, making them feel as if they're a part of the project from the outset. Nothing gets people on board more quickly than success, and they know the problems way better than we do. Oftentimes, it's not that they don't know what better looks like, it's that they haven't been able to do it with the tools that they've been given. If you bring them in as the experts, and then you help them get where they know they want to be, that will handle a lot of it. If you just parachute technologists in, they come in, they don't actually understand what the delivery challenges are, and they say, “We're going to just deploy an AI tool to solve this in two days that you've been working on for 10 years.” It's not successful, and you're not having a lot of proponents for it when you walk out the door.

ROUTE FIFTY: What's next? What are you going to be paying attention to in this government efficiency space?

OVERMANN: I actually think there's a really interesting bipartisan opportunity coming down the pike. There's a ton of upcoming gubernatorial elections, and many governors who will be changing, either due to term limits or folks just not running again. There's going to be a whole new crop of governors at the state level. There's going to be a whole new crop of state legislators, and they're staring down a tremendous amount of opportunity with emerging AI and other technology opportunities, and they're staring down a huge implementation challenge, if you're just looking at things like H.R. 1.

The fascinating thing to me about state governments that I think is just so different from federal is so many states have balanced budget requirements, and they're forced to make trade-offs that the feds just aren't. Having an empowered, technologically savvy internal workforce and turning them loose on these projects and problems is probably going to generate a whole lot of new examples of how you can actually deliver government in a more efficient way, because you're going to have to in a more constrained environment, but you don't have a choice to not deliver these services.

I think there's going to be a ton of really compelling examples emerging from state governments over the next six to 12 months, and I think that's going to happen in both red and blue states, and I think that's a great opportunity to point out that government should work well, regardless of what your exact philosophy is on what government should be doing.

ROUTE FIFTY: Anything else you’d like to share?

OVERMANN: The civic tech ecosystem has also evolved in parallel with government work, and has gotten stronger and more robust with a lot of the lessons that we learned at the federal level. Us at the Beck Center, Code for America, U.S. Digital Response and others are full of folks who have been government practitioners working on these issues, and provide a really helpful outside space for government partners. We convene our government partners, and we give them a safe and trusted space to share their own problems with each other to shortcut. One of the things we've seen over and over in government is they often have the same challenge, but because they're not necessarily connected, they'll solve the problem themselves instead of understanding that the problem has already been solved.

]]>

Feds launch groundbreaking electric plane pilot program in Virginia

Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury.

Virginia hosted the first flight of the federal government’s advanced air mobility pilot program in Charlottesville on Friday, an electric aviation initiative that sets the stage for the nation to improve air transportation while boosting health services and mitigating impacts on the environment.

The program, driven by the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration, is designed to accelerate the safe integration of advanced air mobility into the country’s national airspace system.

State and federal leaders attended the inaugural flight Friday afternoon including Greg Campbell, director of Virginia’s Department of Aviation.

“We are truly honored here in Virginia to be an important part of this milestone, where we can start to demonstrate the successful integration of these new exciting aircraft into the national air transportation system, and bring the economic and societal benefits to our residents here in Virginia,” Campbell said on Friday.

Campbell added that future demonstrations will be held in other parts of the state with aircrafts and technology of different sizes, transporting passengers, medical resources and other cargo.

Kyle Clark, CEO of aerospace and defense company BETA Technologies, said Friday’s flight is a starting point for a new phase in aviation.

“We have this beautiful national asset of the air above us, and these thousands of airports across the country that can be served by lower-cost electric aviation,” Clark said, “And if you’re tracking me, this is a massive, massive unlock.”

Clark’s team was on hand at Signature Aviation – Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport Friday to test the air taxis in real-word conditions. Staff of United Therapeutics and the Multistate Collaborative eiPP National Integration Complex, a partnership between multiple states, the FAA and aviation companies were also present.

The partnership, including representatives from Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, wrote the application awarded by the federal government to bring the test flight to the area.

Following remarks, the flight demonstration showed how a routine electric aircraft will use a multistate corridor connecting Virginia and Maryland to carry organs developed by United Therapeutics through the National Airspace System.

The demonstration is the first of several that will expand to at least 26 states.

Virginia is actively involved in other advanced air mobility efforts.

Lawmakers approved the creation of an advanced air mobility program within the Department of Aviation, allocated $1 million to the Virginia Department of Aviation to support the development of an Advanced Air Mobility test site in cooperation with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority, and recently allocated an additional $500,000 to the test site.

Virginia House Transportation Committee Chair Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax, said in a statement to the Mercury that the moment marked a major milestone in aviation, and there was “no better place for that takeoff” than in Virginia.

“We have worked hard to capitalize on the unique potential to expand advanced air mobility in the commonwealth,” Delaney said. “I look forward to continuing that work so that Virginia is a top state welcoming the future of aviation and aerospace.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.

]]>

Trump empties out election commission leadership just months before midterms

David DiMolfetta — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump removed the remaining members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission late last week, leaving the independent agency without any sitting commissioners just months before the 2026 midterm elections, according to a White House official.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted,” the official said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so.”

Democratic commissioners Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks were fired, while remaining Republican commissioner Christy McCormick resigned. VoteBeat first reported the dismissals.

The changes leave the commission, which helps oversee federal voting system certification and election administration programs, without the bipartisan leadership responsible for approving some of its most consequential decisions.

The EAC is perhaps best known as a clearinghouse for administering federal election grants and certifying voting systems under the nation’s voluntary voting system guidelines. While those standards are not mandatory, they have become the benchmark many states rely on when purchasing, testing and deploying election technology.

Although the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency serves as the federal government’s lead agency for protecting election infrastructure from cyber threats, the EAC has become an important partner in the broader election security and election education ecosystem. The commission works with CISA, state election officials and voting system manufacturers on issues like system testing, certification, security guidance and information-sharing.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House official said.

The removals could raise questions about how the agency will carry out some of its statutory responsibilities as federal officials, states and voting system vendors prepare for this year’s midterm elections.

Career staff can continue many of the agency’s day-to-day operations. Still, the absence of commissioners would complicate actions that require a formal vote or approval, potentially slowing decisions involving voting system standards, certifications and other matters.

The White House official did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action. But the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require applicants to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, a step Trump called for in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections.

A federal judge later blocked that portion of the order, ruling that it exceeded the president’s authority because the Constitution gives Congress and the states primary responsibility over election administration and oversight. The administration has said it plans to appeal.

The dispute underscored the limits of the White House’s authority over an agency Congress created as an independent, bipartisan commission following disputes during the 2000 presidential election. Under rules set by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, the EAC is led by four commissioners, with no more than two members from the same political party.

It’s unclear when the administration plans to nominate replacements or how long the commission could operate without sitting members. Any new commissioners would require Senate confirmation.

The leadership vacuum comes as election officials continue preparing for the 2026 midterms while confronting cyber threats, foreign influence operations and persistent efforts to undermine public confidence in the security of U.S. elections.

The removals are an “extraordinary step that demands an immediate explanation from the administration and raises profound concerns about political interference in the institutions that support our elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

]]>

AI’s real promise for government: Shortening the distance from data to decision

Paul Decker — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Artificial intelligence is often discussed in government as a tool for automation, one that helps agencies do the same work faster or with fewer resources. That framing understates its real potential.

The most important impact of AI in the public sector may not be automation at all. It is the ability to shorten the time between data becoming available and leaders gaining the insights they need to act. In other words, AI’s real promise lies in improving time to insight.

For governments responsible for complex programs affecting millions of people, the speed of decision-making matters. Whether responding to emerging challenges, evaluating programs, or analyzing regulations, policymakers must turn vast amounts of information into decisions that shape service delivery, outcomes and people’s lives. Historically, this process — from analysis to action-ready insight — has been measured in months or even years.

AI is beginning to change that.

Across the public sector, AI-enabled tools are helping compress the cycle from data ingestion to insight to action. Tasks that once required hours of manual document review, synthesis, or data exploration can now be completed in minutes. But the real value is not simply faster processing. It is giving leaders more time to interpret findings, weigh trade-offs and make better decisions.

This shift suggests that governments should rethink how they measure the value of AI. Traditional outputs, such as reports, dashboards and other analytic products remain essential tools for decision-makers. But AI’s impact should also be evaluated by how much it reduces the lag between evidence and action, helping agencies move from insight to implementation more quickly.

Consider a few emerging examples.

At the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, AI is helping staff respond faster to hospitals seeking guidance on complex quality measures. An AI-powered tool developed by Mathematica and Telligen generates draft responses to hospital inquiries regarding the Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock measure — an assessment of whether hospitals follow evidence-based protocols — and integrates them into CMS’s workflow so experts can review and finalize answers more efficiently.

The approach helped reduce inquiry turnaround time by 35%, increased the share of questions resolved within the same month by 18%, and reduced reopened inquiries by 2% — signs that hospitals are receiving clearer, more complete guidance.

AI is also accelerating the policy development process itself. In the annual rulemaking cycle for Medicare’s Inpatient Prospective Payment System, which governs how hospitals are reimbursed for inpatient care, analysts must review thousands of pages of regulatory text and compare changes across years. Generative AI tools can now perform those comparisons in minutes rather than hours, allowing experts to focus on interpreting policy implications rather than manually tracking changes across thousands of pages.

Even in research and convening work, the gains are significant. In a recent initiative involving 18 national symposia on the future of health services research, AI-assisted transcription and synthesis tools enabled Mathematica researchers to analyze discussions and identify cross-cutting themes within days, compressing what would traditionally take weeks of manual synthesis.

AI can also help agencies manage the growing scale and complexity of public programs. In supporting CMS oversight of Medicaid Section 1115 demonstrations, Mathematica has developed AI-assisted workflows that help analysts review lengthy monitoring and evaluation documents against federal guidance and prior examples. These tools help teams review complex reports more consistently and rapidly, freeing experts to focus on interpreting findings and advising policymakers.

Taken together, these examples illustrate a broader shift: AI is beginning to function as decision-support infrastructure for government.

But faster insights alone are not enough.

If AI accelerates the production of insights without strengthening governance, transparency and analytic rigor, it risks creating a new problem: decisions made more quickly but not necessarily more wisely.

Responsible adoption therefore requires embedding AI within well-designed analytic workflows. Human experts must remain accountable for interpreting results. Models must be transparent about their limitations. Agencies must establish clear governance structures to ensure AI-assisted insights are reliable, reproducible and aligned with policy goals.

It’s also important that AI help leaders cut through complexity. Government executives already face overwhelming volumes of information. AI systems should help synthesize evidence, highlight uncertainties and surface decision-relevant insights, not generate more noise.

When deployed thoughtfully, AI can help governments operate at the speed of modern challenges while preserving the rigor that public policy demands.

For decades, the public sector has invested heavily in collecting data. The next frontier is ensuring that data translates into insight — and insight into action — fast enough to matter. That could mean identifying emerging risks in near real time, accelerating regulatory analysis that once took hours, or synthesizing evidence across programs in days rather than weeks.

If we want AI to deliver real value for government, we should judge it by a simple question: How quickly can they close the gap?

Time to insight may soon become the most important metric in public-sector innovation.

Paul Decker is president and CEO of Mathematica.

]]>

Maryland’s foster care matching platform demonstrates continued success

Kaitlyn Levinson — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:58:09 -0400

Child well-being is regularly a priority for state lawmakers across the U.S., particularly as an estimated 331,747 youths nationwide stayed in foster care last year. In a bid to reduce the number of children entering and staying in foster care, Maryland has adopted a family-matching platform through which officials are already seeing efficiency gains.

Across the U.S., states’ progress toward uplifting vulnerable children is often made more difficult by technological limitations from outdated and clunky child welfare information systems, said Terri Lowther, an out-of-home program manager at the Maryland Department of Human Services.

Maryland is tackling such pain points with a new “family-finding” platform that launched in September and serves as an assistive tool for caseworkers responsible for placing children needing out-of-home care, she said. The platform is particularly helpful for staff to search for kin-based caregivers — such as one of their direct family members, relatives or friends — which are preferred to placing a child with guardians they may not know personally.

To date, the platform has enabled DHS staff to find more than 41,000 potential or confirmed kin connections for children and adolescents in need of out-of-home care, Lowther said. That total is up from approximately 4,300 potential connections made through the platform within the first five months since its launch.

The tool uses public and proprietary databases that enable caseworkers to search for potential kin caregivers connected to the child based on available contact information, reducing the time it could take to place a child in care from hours to minutes, Lowther explained. She noted that a local agency within the state reported that the platform helped save staff approximately 10 hours of administrative work.

Now, staff can focus on more high-priority work, such as conducting more visitations to help familiarize children with their kin caregivers, helping caregivers prepare their homes for the child to move in and connecting children with supportive services like mental health programs or school classes, she explained.

“It's more time actually working towards the permanency for that youth …. because our goal is always to not have youth in out-of-home care,” Lowther said.

By streamlining and expediting a child’s placement with a kin guardian, Maryland leaders hope to see improved outcomes for youth entering and leaving the child welfare system, she said. For example, current research suggests that kinship care for displaced children can offer more stable conditions that support the youth’s safety and well-being, and that approach also helps reduce system costs compared with other foster care options.

Such outcomes are a growing priority for government leaders nationwide, but many state child welfare systems are struggling to keep up with increasing demands and pressure to deliver services, according to a report released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Since 2016, federal and state government spending on child welfare modernization has exceeded $2 billion under the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System — the federal regulatory framework for how states design and operate child welfare infrastructure, according to the report.

HHS also notes that, over the last decade, states have worked on 75 child welfare modernization projects, but only 23 of them have since become operational. Fifteen states have also not declared any new projects under the CCWIS.

“CCWIS implementation remains slow and uneven, with most resources flowing to legacy systems rather than modernization,” the report reads. Such implementation results in states’ continued reliance on legacy systems that limit data equity, restrict interoperability and increase caseworker burden. Those limitations threaten the timely delivery of child welfare services, child safety and placement stability, according to the report.

]]>

Missoula County adopts temporary moratorium on data centers

Katie Fairbanks, Montana Free Press — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Montana Free Press.

The Missoula County commissioners Thursday approved a temporary moratorium on data centers, citing the potential impacts on public health and the environment.

The interim zoning proposal introduced by county staff pauses the development of new or expanding data centers for up to a year while the county updates its regulations to mitigate potential impacts on public health, safety and natural resources. The moratorium applies to zoned and unzoned areas countywide but not the city of Missoula, said Karen Hughes, director of Missoula County’s Planning, Development and Sustainability Department. The city’s new zoning map does not include districts where data centers would be allowed, staff members told the Missoula City Council Wednesday.

The unanimous vote followed comments from 30 members of the public, all in favor of the moratorium, and was met with loud applause from the audience.

“I am very pleased that Missoula County today will be at the tip of the spear in the state of Montana and taking a deep breath to take a deliberative, methodical approach over the next year, or potentially more, to assess the impacts of data centers on our communities, on our citizenry and on our county,” Commissioner Dave Strohmaier said before the vote.

The county must now initiate a study within 30 days to verify an emergency exists and to determine the course of action to mitigate it.

The county’s current regulations on cryptocurrency mines and data centers were adopted in 2021 in response to energy use and noise problems with a cryptocurrency mine that operated at the Bonner Mill Industrial Park from 2017 to 2020.

The existing rules limit the facilities to “industrial zones,” rather than residential or commercial zones. The county also requires a special exemption for facilities directly next to residential areas, verification that electronic waste will be recycled and a guarantee that sites use new renewable energy that would not otherwise have been brought onto the electrical grid.

Hughes said the current regulations do not adequately address data centers’ potential impacts to water quality and quantity, air quality, heat, noise and vibration. That includes issues related to additional energy infrastructure, water use, wastewater disposal, emissions from generators and the 24/7 low-frequency noise from these facilities, she said.

County planner Jennie Dixon said the review of a data center proposed for Bonner — which is no longer moving forward after the property owner withdrew support for the project this week — prompted the moratorium proposal.

Commissioner Josh Slotnick said he is proud of the county’s current zoning, which prevented that data center from being built immediately, and is “pretty darn good circa 2021.”

“Back then, a data center meant something very different than what it means right now,” he said. “So our purpose, I’m just putting a finer point on it, is to give us some time so we can consider these new impacts that didn’t exist when we did this zoning.”

While the moratorium does not apply to the city limits, under Missoula’s new zoning code and map, data centers would not be allowed in city limits without going through a rezoning process, city officials told the Missoula City Council Wednesday. Data centers would only be allowed in heavy industrial areas, but there are none designated within the city at this time, said Cassie Tripard, the city’s planning supervisor. A rezoning request would have to be approved by the city’s planning commission and the city council.

Most public commenters on Thursday expressed concern about the potential for data centers to pollute Missoula’s aquifer and other water sources, generate excess heat and negatively affect human and wildlife health due to constant noise.

“The voice of opposition is loud while supporters of data centers are nearly non-existent,” said local resident Paul Barmore. “Montanans care about our wild lands and our outdoor recreation. We do not value wealthy corporations and their money-making ventures at the cost of our pristine outdoors.”

Ben Catton, with the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the organization has found that Montanans are overwhelmingly concerned about data centers and their potential demands for energy and water. He said the county’s existing regulations led to a more transparent and public process than is playing out elsewhere in Montana.

“Thank you very much, Missoula County, for giving a roadmap to others around the state,” he said. “I hope that we can both make these regulations more robust here and that others can be afforded these protections as well.”

Many members of the public who voiced support for the moratorium called for it to be longer than one year. John Hart, a county civil attorney, said the interim zoning only allows a one-year moratorium, which could be extended for another year with an additional hearing and an explanation for the extension. The county does not have the authority to permanently prohibit data centers, he said.

In response to data centers proposed in other parts of the state, residents of Butte-Silver Bow and Yellowstone counties are gathering signatures for ballot initiatives that would require voter approval for data center construction. This week, the Yellowstone County Commission directed the county attorney’s office to file a lawsuit asking the District Court to determine if the petition is valid and can continue, the Billings Gazette reported.

Commissioner Slotnick said it’s likely AI companies will be lobbying state legislators and encouraged members of the public to participate in Montana’s upcoming legislative session in early 2027.

“You are going to have to exert the same pressure on the Legislature, on our delegation, and go to Helena and write letters and speak your mind and do all the organizing that you’ve done today,” he said. “You’re going to do it again. I’m sorry for that, and I’m really pleased that I know that you can do it.”

]]>

Virginia nonprofit launches mobile tech education bus for underserved students

Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury.

Two retired military cybersecurity experts in Virginia recently launched a bus service in Hampton Roads to raise awareness and educate students about technology, after receiving an unexpected state budget appropriation of $200,000.

The cyber education bus is the latest way the nonprofit organization RFK Outreach will fulfill its goal to help children and teens learn about technology.

Kimberly and Ricardo Frost, the founders of RFK Solutionz Corporation, the umbrella organization for RFK Outreach, said they were surprised to hear about the appropriation requested by House Transportation Committee Chair Cliff Hayes, D-Chesapeake.

For a decade, RFK Outreach has been operating the Cyber Academy, training and developing people who want to build or advance careers in cloud computing, cybersecurity, information technology (IT), networking, and project management.

The couple said around 100 students have joined the academy each summer over the past 10 years.

Now, RFK Outreach will hit the road, offering lessons on tools such as drones and robotics. The state money will go a long way towards fulfilling their youth-focused mission, the Frosts said.

“We were serving active duty in the military, and we still, kind of, feel like serving (but) this time by training children today to have the knowledge and wisdom that they need to be able to protect themselves, their parents, and our nation when it comes to cybersecurity,” Kimberly Frost said.

Ricardo Frost said the STEM Cybersecurity Mobile Bus will also help reach children who cannot come to the Cyber Academy.

“We knew that a lot of people of color are normally in underserved communities or rural areas, so that’s where the cyber bus initiative came from,” Ricardo Frost said. “Since they can’t get to us, we’ll do what we can to get to them.”

Ricardo Frost said the Outreach’s mission also includes developing Virginia’s workforce, a focus that has received strong policy support from the state legislature.

He said state and federal lawmakers, including Virginia Democratic U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, have stressed the need to retain tech talent in the commonwealth. He said RFK’s mission is aligned with those efforts.

“Oftentimes… a lot of the students that learn and get their education from Virginia typically leave the state, so we’re looking at a way to… have those young bright minds stay local,” Ricardo Frost said.

The couple said the cyber academy has typically operated during the summer, but hopes to potentially expand with a bus and a second bus on the way to other areas of the commonwealth.

The group’s partnerships have expanded since its founding, and businesses have started to call after seeing the bus.

Most recently they have partnered with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, pairing interns from Virginia’s colleges and universities with academy students. The couple said Google has also agreed to sponsor $180,000 to RFK Outreach to support its initiative.

Ricardo Frost said technology is expanding, and the organization’s goal is to raise public awareness among children and adults alike.

“Our goal … is to ensure that we get those people on board and get the awareness up, so they know we’re now in a whole new era than we’ve ever been before, and we want everybody… to be prepared,” Ricardo Frost said.

Hayes, who successfully secured funding in the recently passed budget for the organization’s efforts, said the funds will help address the digital divide in Hampton Roads, and potentially other regions of the state.

“We want to give 100% adoption in all communities, and again, with artificial intelligence, with our massive interests, we want to have these technologies everywhere,” Hayes said. “This digital divide should be closed. There’s no excuse why it shouldn’t be closed in this day and time.”

More Mobile Services in Virginia: Go TEC, the Great Opportunities in Technology and Engineering Careers program, runs the GO TEC Mobile Lab—a 46-foot classroom on wheels that brings hands-on STEM and career education to schools and communities across Virginia. Aimed at middle school students (grades 6–8), the lab features Wi-Fi, expandable classroom space, and interactive technology to introduce students to robotics, IT, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and other engineering fields. It also trains teachers and administrators, supporting workforce development and career awareness statewide.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

]]>

Breaking down silos: A practical guide for cross-agency data sharing

John Roach — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Government leaders are stewards of two things citizens entrust to them: public dollars and the data collected while delivering services. That stewardship carries an obligation to use both as effectively as possible. Data-sharing serves all three goals at once: it improves program outcomes, runs programs more efficiently and makes noncompliance and fraud easier to detect.

The greatest barrier to this kind of data sharing probably isn’t what you think. There are virtually never insurmountable technical blockers. Most often, it’s the pervasive misunderstanding of state and federal regulations that govern data use. Agencies tend to interpret the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and similar regulations as prohibitive barriers.

In reality, these are privacy-protective frameworks designed to enable sharing, not discourage it. From the Department of Health and Human Services’ own summary of the law: “the Privacy Rule's goal is to protect individuals' health information while allowing the flow of information needed to deliver and improve care.”

The regulations provide clear guidance on how to share responsibly, yet they are routinely used to justify inaction. General counsels and compliance officers default to "no" when they interpret their primary mandate as keeping agencies out of trouble. Overcoming that requires sponsorship from executive leadership who can reframe the directive: responsible data stewardship means actually using the data to improve, not just protecting it.

Delivering Value Incrementally to Build Momentum

Agencies that share data successfully tend to start small. A single, well-scoped use case with a clearly defined outcome accomplishes two things that matter more than the immediate result.

The first is realigning risk perception. Resistance to data sharing is often rooted in an assumption that the risk is greater than it actually is. When one agency moves forward and other agencies see that it’s working (especially agencies handling more sensitive data than their own) the perceived risk recalibrates against reality. The conversation shifts from whether sharing is possible to how to do it well.

The second is reorienting leadership around mission. Agency leaders are pulled in multiple directions by day-to-day demands, resulting in thoughtful, capable leaders going months without examining whether their agency is making meaningful progress against the outcomes it exists to deliver. Has caseload trended in the right direction? Are recruitment and retention improving for the workforce? Are the populations the agency serves measurably better off? Questions like these quickly get crowded out by to-do lists.

A data-sharing initiative tied to a specific outcome forces those questions back to the surface. It requires agency leadership to articulate what success looks like in terms citizens would recognize and then to measure against it. That reorientation is often just as valuable as the analytical insights themselves.

This is why scoping matters more than scale. Each phase should deliver something concrete enough to justify continued investment on its own merits. It’s reasonable to place a measured bet on an application whose value is hypothetical but quantifiable, but pursuing work with no articulated value is not.

As early use cases prove, the technical foundations, governance practices and political support compound. Subsequent applications become cheaper to implement and easier to defend, and agencies build the muscle to ask better questions of their data over time.

When Legacy Systems Meet Modern Needs

The source systems generating most government data were never designed for decision support or cross-agency analysis. Over decades, systems, databases, programs and policies have changed, creating data discontinuities and quality issues that compound on each other. Standardization across agencies is necessary, but the challenge runs deeper than simple format differences.

While no agency has the luxury of retroactively fixing all historical data quality problems, modern machine learning and AI techniques can dramatically improve the value and usability of imperfect data. However, this shouldn't excuse continuing to design systems that ignore secondary use value. For example, the primary use of an unemployment insurance system may be processing benefit applications and paying benefits. The same data that the system collects could secondarily help identify fraud patterns, optimize skill-up training for jobseekers, or more holistically quantify the long-term impacts of secondary education programs.

New implementations should embrace this potential from the start: clear documentation of what each system collects and how each field is defined, common standards for connecting information across systems and explicit ownership for data stewardship. This includes review processes, incident response protocols and escalation pathways for data quality and compliance issues.

Managing AI Risks and Opportunities

The same principles that have driven successful technology implementations across state governments — focus on outcomes rather than technology; target low-risk use cases first; keep humans in the loop where automation alone would be untenable; fail fast and fail small; and deliver iteratively — apply directly to AI.

The strongest AI use case candidates share a few characteristics:

The desired outcome is defined up front, in terms a citizen would recognize, and progress against it can be measured.
The work is a genuine fit for AI — finding patterns across volumes of data no human team could reasonably process — rather than a place where working human judgment is being swapped out for speed.
An incorrect output won’t cause irreversible damage.

A career recommendation that turns out to be a poor fit for a jobseeker is recoverable; an automated determination of eligibility for benefits, child custody, or criminal justice is not. Risk tolerance should be calibrated accordingly, and agencies should weigh the counterfactual: if the alternative is a manual process with its own well-documented inconsistencies, the question is whether AI produces better outcomes overall, not perfect ones. Contained downside use cases are reasonable places to experiment and iterate. Severe, irreversible downside use cases warrant a much higher bar regardless of the upside.

Scale also creates new exposure on privacy and fairness. AI applied to longitudinal data needs algorithmic auditing so models don't amplify bias in program delivery, including ongoing performance monitoring across demographic groups and regular review of whether AI-driven insights produce equitable outcomes. Agencies should hold AI recommendations to an explainability standard and ensure a human decision-maker validates each one before it affects a citizen.

Privacy Protection and Advanced Security

Privacy protection in longitudinal data systems requires sophisticated approaches. Effective strategies must account for the increased re-identification risks that emerge when multiple data sources are combined over time.

The goal is to create systems that enable meaningful analysis while maintaining individual privacy protections that meet or exceed regulatory requirements. Modern privacy-preserving technologies offer new possibilities, enabling analysis without compromising individual privacy. This includes federated learning approaches that allow agencies to benefit from shared insights without actually sharing raw data.

For example, three different health departments could each train a model to predict disease outbreaks using their local data. They then share only the pattern-recognition insights with each other, creating a combined model that's better at predictions than any single agency could develop alone, all without any agency ever seeing another agency's actual patient records.

Moving Forward

None of this is easy, but agencies across the country have shown it's achievable. The obligation is clear: citizens have entrusted their government with both public dollars and the data collected in delivering services. Using that data to improve outcomes, run programs more efficiently and protect against fraud is part of the job, not a separate initiative.

John Roach is the president of Resultant, a leading consulting firm shaping how local, state and federal government agencies use data.

]]>

The nation’s housing crisis needs more than AI to solve it, experts say

Kaitlyn Levinson — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:10:37 -0400

A lack of affordable housing in communities plagues nearly every state and locality across the U.S., and government leaders have increasingly been turning to technology like artificial intelligence to innovate the systems and processes blocking residents from accessing stable, cost-effective places to live.

The permitting process in particular has emerged as a “really popular and in-demand” use case where AI has been used to assist housing agencies with clearing case backlogs, expediting document reviews and revisions and demystifying complex policies and rules, Judah Axelrod, associate director of data science research methods at the Urban Institute, told Route Fifty.

But most jurisdictions and housing agencies grapple with vastly different resources, capacity and access to such tools, limiting their ability to make progress and learn best practices from each other when implementing AI, he explained.

“I think the jury’s out on whether AI [solutions] can do these things, but there is a lot of interest in seeing if they can,” Axelrod said, adding that cities “want to make these investments in experimenting and piloting [AI tools], but are not really yet at the point where they can say AI is the solution to the problem.”

That’s where a new federal funding opportunity from the Department of Housing and Urban Development comes into play. Under a new $3 million grant program, state, local and tribal governments can apply for a share of grant money to support the adoption of automated permitting and building code systems, including AI-enabled solutions. Applications are due July 13.

“The demonstration will generate empirical evidence on operational performance, costs, governance needs, and potential cost savings to inform broader adoption by state and local jurisdictions,” according to the Notice of Funding Opportunity released in May.

Broadly, the program aims to enable governments to “test the real-world deployment of an automated permitting platform within a government permitting environment to evaluate its effects on processing timelines, workflow efficiency, staff roles and applicant experience,” the NOFO reads.

Many U.S. jurisdictions have already adopted AI-enabled tools to address permitting backlogs and challenges. Denver, for instance, launched a platform in May that uses AI to help flag errors in applications and planning documents before they are officially submitted to help reduce downstream administrative burden.

A similar tool was recently adopted in Jacksonville, Florida, in a move that city officials hope will reduce approval times and boost housing development. Officials in Port Orchard, Washington, have also approved a one-year trial to use an AI-enabled platform that is designed to review permitting applications and cross-check them with existing building codes.

A national program like HUD’s can not only help reveal best practices across jurisdictions’ use of AI, but “I do think that there are some policy and potentially kind of workflow changes that can occur alongside like adoption of AI tech,” said Will Curran-Groome, research associate in the Housing and Communities Division at the Urban Institute.

For instance, AI can inspire housing and permitting reforms that go beyond technology. As leaders increasingly adopt the technology, they must also consider if their current housing-related policies, building codes, regulations and other requirements are AI-ready, he explained.

That could mean “simplifying” the language and how permitting rules are presented to clients because “making sure that there are pretty clear and objective standards in those policy documents could potentially enable some of the AI products to make sure that they're generating accurate, useful [outputs],” Curran-Groome explained.

As leaders consider adopting AI solutions for permitting, the “AI data readiness” of policies will help not only train the tool more effectively, but also create more “human-readable” housing policies for future use, Axelrod said.

Indeed, Boston began reviewing and revising its zoning code in 2023 as outdated language and “hundreds of piecemeal revisions” posed challenges for housing development, according to a report commissioned by the city.

While “AI seems like it could play a compelling role” in broader housing and permitting reform, “I do think it'll be really important to see some of those other levers that cities are working on concurrent with [AI adoption] to move the needle,” Axelrod said.

]]>

Illinois governor signs major AI safety law

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

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a sweeping artificial intelligence law this week that officials said creates the nation’s strongest framework for AI safety, transparency and accountability.

The new law, known as The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act, requires the largest AI developers to identify, disclose and mitigate risks associated with their systems, while providing for independent oversight and protections for workers who report safety concerns. It takes effect on Jan. 1, 2027.

“As AI systems become more powerful and the federal government is unwilling to step in, states have a responsibility to protect our people from the dangers of AI while still harnessing the unique potential of the technology,” Pritzker said in a statement. “People want protections from the risks of AI and Illinois is stepping up with a bipartisan, first- and most-protective-in-the-nation law.”

This law marks a major step forward in state AI regulations, which have passed in several states including California and Colorado, with the latter amending its original version to make it narrower. Meanwhile, states and localities remain concerned about the prospect of Congress and the federal government preempting their laws.

This Illinois law, which passed with bipartisan support, establishes a framework requiring developers of the largest advanced AI systems to publicly disclose safety practices, report significant safety incidents within 72 hours and maintain robust compliance processes. The reporting requirement is the same as that in New York, and California set theirs at 15 days. The law also creates confidential reporting channels and whistleblower protections for employees raising AI safety concerns.

Illinois also became the first state to require regular, independent third-party safety audits of covered AI systems, ensuring oversight is conducted by qualified experts without financial conflicts of interest.

In addition to receiving bipartisan support, the legislation also has received the backing of several AI and technology companies. In a statement released by Pritzker’s office, Cesar Fernandez, head of U.S. state and local government relations at Anthropic, called it “an important step toward the accountability this technology demands.” Others shared those sentiments.

“[This law] is the strongest AI safety law in the country,” Sunny Gandhi, co-executive director of advocacy group Encode AI, said in a statement. “It builds on the frameworks California and New York have already passed and goes one step further by requiring independent audits, so the public doesn't have to take AI companies at their word. Illinois has set the new standard.”

This legislation, and any others like it that may follow in other states, comes at a vital time for AI in state and local governments. A survey released last month by enterprise software and AI company Appian found that 37% of public sector workers say their agency’s integration of AI is advanced and across multiple critical processes.

The survey of 2,000 workers in the U.S. found that agencies are deploying AI in workforce management, investigations and case management, procurement, grants management, cybersecurity and citizen services. And it also found that agencies are placing more emphasis on AI governance, oversight, transparency and compliance alongside operational efficiency and mission outcomes.

That shift in strategy, as well as this Illinois law, comes as agencies wrestle with the risk management side of AI, especially the transparency of its models. Jason Adolf, vice president of the global public sector vertical at Appian, said that in sensitive areas like benefit applications and verification, AI models have to be able to show their work, otherwise it leaves governments open to difficult appeals processes and audits.

“If something is appealed, or if you ever have to challenge that decision, you have to know how the decision was made, and the decision needs to be made consistently across populations,” Adolf said. “When I'm looking at things like benefits, it can't just be that one plus one equals two, but I don't know that there was something that happened in the middle. I need to know that every single time it adds one plus one, and we're not yet at the level of where we're starting to dump things into these models that it could actually tell you that it's the same means to an end every single time.”

Illinois officials said their law will help the state manage some of those risks and establish parameters while allowing companies to experiment and innovate, and governments to do the same.

“Artificial intelligence is creating incredible opportunities, but it also brings new risks, especially for young people,” Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said in a statement. “Illinois is showing that innovation and accountability can go hand in hand by setting clear expectations that help protect our communities while supporting the responsible development and use of AI. We can embrace emerging technology while ensuring it reflects our values, safeguards the public, and helps build a stronger future for everyone.”

]]>

A Puerto Rico government agency exposed 1M Social Security numbers

Luis Valentin and Nick McMillan, ProPublica — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by ProPublica.

The government agency that collects property taxes in Puerto Rico inadvertently exposed the Social Security numbers of approximately 1 million people, Centro de Periodismo Investigativo and ProPublica learned.

It was the latest cybersecurity lapse for the Puerto Rico government, which in the past three years has seen technology breaches interrupt government services, take websites offline and lead to citizens’ personal information being published on the dark web.

CPI and ProPublica became aware of the vulnerability related to the Municipal Revenue Collection Center’s interactive property map, known as the Catastro Digital, and notified the agency in mid-June.

The online tool provides information, such as size, boundaries, tax assessment, sale price and owner’s name, for every registered property on the island.

While a simple search of the map wouldn’t reveal sensitive information, anyone who understands how websites request data could download unprotected personal information such as Social Security numbers without a username or password.

The news organizations were able to verify the security hole and provided the agency, known by its Spanish initials, CRIM, with a detailed description of the issue that included the specific server and folders that contained the compromised data.

Despite the notification, CRIM has repeatedly denied there were any problems with its system.

“Following a review of the Catastro Digital platform, it was determined that there was NO breach of confidential personal taxpayer information, as the Catastro Digital does NOT contain or display the type of information alluded to,” CRIM Executive Director Javier García Cintrón said.

But a few days after CPI and ProPublica contacted CRIM, the news organizations were able to see that the security holes had been patched.

García denied that, saying there was no need to fix any problem. A Puerto Rico law requires any entity, including government agencies, to promptly notify users if their personal information has been breached. But García said the agency would not reach out to users to tell them that their Social Security numbers were potentially exposed, as “no protected information was at risk.”

CRIM also did not notify the Puerto Rico Innovation & Technology Service, known as PRITS, which oversees all government information technology systems. The government’s cybersecurity protocol requires informing PRITS of “any suspected security incident.”

A PRITS spokesperson declined to answer questions and said they had to be submitted under Puerto Rico’s public information law, which is meant to allow citizens to get government records and not to answer press questions.

So far this year, more than 2 million attempted cyberattacks have been recorded within the Puerto Rico government, PRITS data shows. Half of these were deemed critical incidents, which involve “severe impact on critical operations, the compromise of sensitive data, or an imminent threat to agency security or government data,” according to the agency.

In March, citizens saw their driver’s license and registration appointments postponed after an attempted cyberattack on Transportation Department systems. Last year, Puerto Rico residents could not verify their criminal record status, which they need for employment, for almost a week because of an “unauthorized access” to the local Justice Department’s criminal records database. In 2023, Puerto Rico water utility clients and employees saw their personal information published on the dark web after a ransomware attack.

An increase in attacks prompted Puerto Rico lawmakers in 2024 to approve a comprehensive cybersecurity law, Act 40, which mandated all government agencies implement minimum cybersecurity standards and principles. It also established penalties for noncompliance and required all government agencies to conduct a risk assessment at least once annually.

But three cybersecurity experts said agencies have failed to fully implement the security standards set out under the law, even as attacks become more frequent and sophisticated. Instead of periodically assessing and tackling vulnerabilities that prevent these attacks, agencies are reactive, they said.

A Puerto Rico Inspector General Office report released late last year found deficiencies across 90 local government agencies, with 60% of them failing to conduct vulnerability assessments of their IT systems.

The government would be in “much better shape” if it focused on employee training and implemented tools like multifactor authentication on the front end, said Carlos Pérez, a cybersecurity expert in Puerto Rico who is director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, a company that consults with governments and private companies.

“We are addressing the symptom but not the disease,” he said.

In most cases, the cybersecurity law falls short of requiring unified standards across the government, said a former government IT employee, who asked not be named because he feared professional repercussions. That lack of a single set of standards has allowed agencies to decide on their own how they protect personal data.

García explained that, as part of CRIM’s security measures, the agency uses passwords, usernames and text messages to validate identity. He denied that anyone could access the Catastro Digital database without a password except to conduct individual searches through the public website.

The ability to access Social Security numbers through CRIM’s property map raises concerns given the proliferation of private companies that sell Puerto Rico real estate information, obtained from public databases such as Catastro Digital. Any of those companies could have accessed the data, including personal information.

At least three property listings companies contacted by CPI and ProPublica said they were not aware of any vulnerability and did not access the sensitive data.

]]>

This permit, common for dry cleaners, is now being used to build AI power plants

Evan Simon, Floodlight — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Floodlight and Texas Tribune.

Omaira Garcia didn’t realize life on her small ranch in Abilene was about to change forever until clouds of dust — kicked up by a mysterious construction next door — began to engulf her home.

The Air Force veteran said she was never told about OpenAI’s plans to build its flagship “Stargate” data center directly beside her property until well after construction began in the summer of 2024. Now, the site’s large-scale power plant sits roughly 500 yards from her house — the exhaust stacks of gas-powered turbines clearly visible from her kitchen window.

“We weren’t given any time to understand what this impact was going to be on us,” the mother of two said through tears. “We’re trapped here.”

OpenAI did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the data center has “contributed meaningfully to the economic development” of Abilene, and its investments are “funding new fire trucks, school expansions, and road improvements across the city.”

Garcia’s situation isn’t unique: Data centers like Stargate, along with their accompanying power plants, are proliferating across the country, helping to satisfy an immense demand for artificial intelligence.

And despite lofty promises to fuel data centers with renewable energy, data shows AI companies are mostly relying on gas to satisfy their insatiable energy demands. Nationwide, nearly 60 data centers are planning to build their own gas plants to avoid connecting to the grid, according to research by energy analytics firm Cleanview released last month.

Including Stargate’s Abilene campus, at least 15 gas plants tied to data centers are planned for Texas, according to Cleanview. Available permits reviewed by Floodlight show that nine of them combined could emit more than 130 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. That’s the equivalent annual emissions of 35 coal-fired power plants, according to an Environmental Protection Agency calculator.

While actual emissions are usually lower than estimates, the impact on the climate could still be enormous: If completed, these nine plants have the potential to emit more annual greenhouse gases than most countries do — even if emissions end up being half of what’s permitted.

In Abilene, Stargate’s developers have already built 10 gas-powered turbines and 62 backup diesel generators and want to add 41 more turbines and 18 more generators to the sprawling site. If approved, the expansion would make Stargate one of the largest fossil fuel power plants in the state — capable of powering more than 1 million homes and emitting more annual greenhouse gases than nearly 2 million cars.

On paper, Stargate’s Abilene campus started out small, but through a permitting loophole identified by Floodlight, it was able to quietly construct massive power sources with little-to-no public notice.

Dozens of Texas data centers have obtained these minor air permits — which avoid public scrutiny and extensive environmental reviews and are more commonly associated with dry cleaners and auto body shops. In several cases, data centers secured these permits before seeking massive expansions later on, deploying a “small first, big later” strategy that watchdogs say limits public input and creates unstoppable momentum for their projects.

“All of this should have been rolled into one permit,” said Bruce Buckheit, a former air enforcement chief for the EPA who served under multiple Republican administrations, when briefed on Stargate’s expansion plan.

These minor permits — as well as the nondisclosure agreements many developers require in their dealings with local governments and residents — are how communities like Garcia’s are left stunned when exhaust stacks pop up in their backyards.

Texas on Track to Lead U.S. in Data Centers

Stargate was first announced in January 2025 as part of a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle to construct hyperscale AI data centers across the country.

"It's big money and high-quality people," President Donald Trump said at the time. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it “the most important project of this era.”

Construction was already well underway in Abilene. The 1,100-acre campus, along with its 360 megawatt on-site gas plant, were among the first hyperscale AI data centers to break ground in Texas. A wave of similar proposals has since made the state ground zero for the AI-driven build-out of fossil fuel power plants across the US.

With roughly 300 operational data centers and 200 more in development, Texas is expected to surpass Virginia as the nation’s leading data center market by 2030. Lured by prolific gas reserves and an industry-friendly government, AI companies have flocked to Texas in droves and begun erecting a “shadow grid” of custom-built power plants capable of fueling entire cities.

For example: Meta’s data center in El Paso plans to rely on a new 366 MW gas plant; Chevron is planning a 2.5 GW–5 GW natural gas-fired power complex in the Permian Basin exclusively meant to power data centers; and Pacifico’s GW Ranch in Pecos County was recently granted the country’s largest air pollution permit, allowing emissions of up to 33 million tons per year of greenhouse gases — equal to nearly 5% of Canada’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Overall, Texas has put more than 80 GW of new gas power plants into its construction pipeline, more than any country besides China. Roughly half of that capacity will provide power exclusively to data centers according to a report from Global Energy Monitor.

“You haven’t seen anything like that since the fracking boom,” said Jenny Martos, who authored the report. She described the trend as “enormous” and said it risks “locking in fossil fuel for the foreseeable future.”

The “bring your own power” strategy once thought of as a novel approach embodied by Elon Musk’s controversial data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi has now gone mainstream, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Texas.

Minor Permits Lead to Major Construction Projects

In 2024, Stargate’s developers secured permission to operate 10 gas-powered turbines and 62 backup diesel generators through minor permits known as “permits by rule” and “standard permits.” Under the minor permits, Stargate’s fleet of turbines and generators are currently allowed to emit more than 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 1,000 tons of combined harmful air pollutants every year. Despite being permitted for continuous use, Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the turbines will only be used for back up power.

Widely understood to be used by low-level polluters across the country, these permits don’t require environmental studies, public notice or public comment periods, according to experts like Kathryn Guerra, who spent nearly four years at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality before joining the watchdog group Public Citizen.

“Those lower level permits get granted very quickly and often without the public knowing,” Guerra said — and “that feels pretty intentional.”

Buckheit, the former EPA air enforcement chief, agreed.

State agencies typically use the permit by rule process “for small things that happen a lot,” like gas stations or dry cleaners, so “they don’t have to waste their time reinventing the wheel for common stuff,” Buckheit said.

But Stargate “isn’t common stuff,” he said.

“Normally that permit by rule was conceived of and implemented in a case where an operator wanted a backup generator or three backup generators. When you get to 62, you start thinking, ‘Well, wait a minute, maybe the scale is wrong here,’” Buckheit said.

Since 2024, at least 38 data centers across Texas have received minor permits to operate on-site power sources, according to a Floodlight analysis. As a result, Texas regulators quietly sanctioned the use of more than 2,100 backup diesel generators across the state.

While intended for emergency power, the generators are also routinely operated for testing and maintenance, according to their permits. Operating data center backup diesel generators for less than an hour per week, on average, creates the same public health impact as five large scale gas-fired power plants, according to an analysis by Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Washington.

Taken together, the thousands of new generators identified by Floodlight in Texas are permitted to emit nearly 2,500 tons of nitrogen oxides into Texas communities every year — more than triple the state’s newest coal-fired power plant. (Nitrogen oxides are highly toxic gasses associated with severe respiratory illness and even premature death.)

In the small town of Whitney, a data center owned by Cyrus One got the permit to operate hundreds of generators that the company estimates will emit 249.1 tons of nitrous oxides every year — just shy of the 250 tons-per-year limit that would have triggered more stringent permitting.

Outside of San Antonio, a Vantage data center received permission to emit 99.8 tons per year of the gas — barely below the area’s 100 ton-per-year threshold.

In fact, more than half of the data centers identified by Floodlight provided regulators with annual nitrogen oxide emission estimates that were just shy of thresholds that would require public input and more detailed environmental reviews.

In several cases, data centers secured minor permits to begin construction before seeking massive expansions later on.

After initially obtaining minor permits for 22 diesel generators at its San Antonio location, Vantage is now seeking to operate more than 80 diesel generators at the data center.

In Abilene, Stargate’s developers applied for a major air permit the year after securing a minor one as they sought to more than quadruple the number of gas powered turbines located on the campus.

Buckheit said Stargate’s staggered permitting approach could violate EPA “aggregation” policies, which are intended to evaluate the whole project. The agency’s own handbooks refer to minor permits that precede major ones as “sham permits.”

“You can't come in with a permit application for two [turbines], and then three months later, you come in with a permit application for two more,” Buckheit said.

Former TCEQ veteran James Doty suspects the move was likely intentional.

“I sincerely doubt that the company made some last-minute decision to suddenly expand,” said Doty, who spent nearly 30 years at TCEQ. “They're trying to get their foot in the door.”

The massive emissions estimates associated with Stargate’s expansion have forced its developers to apply for a major permit that requires the additional turbines to be equipped with the most effective emissions reduction technology available and triggers extensive environmental reviews and upcoming public comment periods. But nearly two years after construction began on the project, it may be too late for local residents to do anything.

“If a data center gets its operating permit, it's too late,” Doty said. “The only chance to stop something like this is to do it at the very, very, very beginning of the process — before the permit is issued — through the public participation process.”

Doty and Guerra, both former TCEQ staffers, recommend concerned residents pay close attention to notices from state environmental agencies to spot incoming projects and request contested case hearings when possible.

Few of those avenues remain viable for Abilene residents. Guerra believes “it’s a foregone conclusion” that the expansion request will be granted.

Can State Regulators Keep Up With Data Centers?

Even if Stargate secures more appropriate permits, both former TCEQ staffers doubt the agency is properly equipped to enforce them.

“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability” of TCEQ to sufficiently regulate, Guerra said, adding that the agency’s enforcement backlog consists of more than 1,400 cases.

“This past year, they were able to resolve 39 of those 1,400 cases. At that rate, it's going to take them 35 years to resolve all of them,” she said.

“Every single permit that this agency issues, in my opinion, is one more than they can effectively regulate,” she added.

An agency spokesperson refuted Guerra’s claims, writing that “industry growth has not compromised TCEQ’s commitment to fulfill its mission of protecting public health and the environment.” The representative wrote that TCEQ had conducted more than 100,000 investigations in 2025 and claimed that the low number of enforcement actions taken by the regulator “reflects high overall compliance rates” rather than “a lack of enforcement activity.”

Guerra said that TCEQ is “full of folks who are very interested in protecting the environment,” but leadership has made the agency notoriously lax on enforcement.

The policies may be drawing investments for the state, but those gains aren’t being felt by some fenceline residents in Abilene.

Worries About the Future

Garcia and her husband spent more than a year looking for their “piece of heaven” in the country.

“We took so much time to get it, and my kids absolutely love it. But under these conditions, we no longer have that,” she said.

In addition to concerns about air pollution, Garcia said the data center has transformed the quality of life on her once-quiet country road. Trash regularly lines the fences and gridlock traffic has sometimes made it difficult to leave her own driveway.

Crusoe wrote that the company takes “quality-of-life concerns seriously” and is committed “to being a responsible neighbor throughout construction and operations.”

Yet despite prominently featuring in a Floodlight/PBS short documentary on the topic — viewed millions of times — Garcia said Stargate’s developers have yet to reach out to her or her family.

Garcia’s nextdoor neighbor, Paul Daniel, said his family has lived in the area for more than 200 years, and he has been living in his current home for 44 years.

“Living here and having to deal with this, you can lose the value of your property,” the 81-year-old retiree said. Like Garcia, he said he didn’t know the data center was coming until it was too late to sell the property.

“We were never advised or anything,” Daniel said. As a result, he said the home he had planned to leave for his children has been seriously devalued.

“I don't have a legacy,” he said.

Garcia says she wasn’t made aware of Stargate’s recent expansion plans until Floodlight informed her of the pending major air permit applications. Already coping with the presence of 10 gas-powered turbines beside her property, the plan for 41 more came as a gut punch.

“I can't even begin to understand what kind of impact that's going to have on me and my health in the future,” she said.

She tried to put the house on the market after learning about what was being built next door, but said she didn’t get a single offer. Realtors suggested she convert it into an Airbnb for Stargate workers but Garcia said she can’t afford to buy another home to live in while keeping the one beside the data center.

“It feels almost impossible unless Stargate purchases it, because what other homeowner is going to want to deal with what we're dealing with?”

The dilemma has left her feeling helpless.

“I don't know what the future looks like."

]]>

California has started to track AI-related job loss

Kaitlyn Levinson — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:04:56 -0400

The California Employment Development Department launched an online data tool late last month that aims to help state leaders and other stakeholders address how the workforce could be impacted by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence.

The California AI-Unemployment Tracker — or CAIT — aims to offer oversight on labor market changes within the state that could be associated with AI’s use in workplaces. The tool considers unemployment insurance claims data and exposure metrics, such as whether a certain job includes tasks that can be done with AI.

“There is considerable speculation about how AI may affect job loss, but very little evidence. This new tracker is a way to add some evidence to the conversation …. and identify potential signs of disruption as they emerge,” said Ben Hyman, a senior researcher at the California Policy Lab, which partnered with the EDD to build the tool and publish an accompanying report with preliminary data insights last month.

But it’s imperative for policymakers and other users to consider that “these findings are best understood as an early signal, not a call for any particular policy response,” Hyman, a co-author of the report, said. “The tracker helps policymakers understand what’s changing and make informed decisions as more evidence becomes available.”

In fact, there is “no evidence of rising UI claims from AI-exposed occupations” between January 2019 and May 2026, according to the report.

While there is no significant evidence of AI-related mass layoffs across the state thus far, “we did see some patterns in certain regions like the Bay Area, in certain tech-heavy sectors and among highly AI-exposed workers with college degrees, so we’ll continue to monitor those trends,” Hyman said.

For instance, UI claims among college-educated people in jobs with high-risk exposure to AI increased from an average of 13,000 claims per month in November 2022 — the month ChatGPT was released to the public — to between 16,000 and 22,000 claims per month since 2023, according to the report.

Still in its early stage of use, CAIT will continue to be updated every month with UI claims data and developers will consider adding more data points to the dashboard in the future, Hyman said.

“We hope the dashboard and report can be illuminating for policymakers in other states who are also thinking about the potential impacts that AI may have on workers and how they may respond,” he said. “This is a topic that’s at the forefront of many conversations, especially as AI continues to become more integrated into more sectors.”

Indeed, humans tend to focus on “what we can measure and what we can understand,” said Jeffrey Wenger, senior economist at RAND. For instance, people can observe that AI is increasingly assuming traditionally manual work, like data entry or drafting communications, “and then we immediately interpret that as resulting in reduced employment,” he explained.

He pointed to the fact that, around the same time the report identified spikes in UI claims, the U.S. was still recovering from COVID-19 pandemic-related disruptions that also likely contributed to rising unemployment cases. Factors like a nationwide recession and spikes in work-from-home orders also impacted people’s job statuses.

While data initiatives like CAIT can be valuable, particularly as more information is revealed with time, policymakers should resist the urge to draw strong links between AI and certain outcomes, he said.

Indeed, the report states “... our measures of AI exposure capture the extent to which job tasks could be or have been performed by AI, not necessarily whether AI is being adopted or causing displacement at a specific workplace. It is also well known that UI claims capture only workers who claim UI benefits after losing their jobs, rather than all people who lose their jobs.”

policymakers should remember that “there are potentially many, many other jobs that [AI] will create and generate new opportunities [for],” Wenger said.

A growing number of state and local governments are creating roles like a chief AI officer, to oversee the exploration, research and implementation of the technology. Illinois appointed its first CAIO last month, joining a handful of states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Montana and Texas, that have already adopted the position, GovTech recently reported.

Existing government leadership roles, like the chief information officer, have also been expanding from primarily managing technology infrastructure to now include responsibilities like driving innovation and modernization government- or agency-wide as AI is used more.

And many states and localities have increasingly launched workforce upskilling and development programs intended specifically for AI-oriented jobs and job functions.

Ultimately, “we can look at the amount of disruption [of AI’s impact on the workforce] and be a little bit concerned, but I think we have to look at … the ability of the people who are disrupted to adapt to it,” Wenger said.

]]>

How Texas modernized a ‘train wreck’ customer service center

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

The Texas Department of Public Safety has many areas of responsibility, but one that the majority of residents interact with is its licensing division, which issues driver’s licenses and identification cards.

In the past, the division struggled under the weight of the sheer number of customers it had to help. It only had a couple of hundred phone lines in its customer service center and around 100 people to answer those lines, but it received around 650,000 calls a day.

It meant many people were left on hold, sometimes for hours, or had their calls dropped, all of which made for a “train wreck” of a customer and employee experience, said Jessica Iselt Ballew, the Texas Department of Public Safety’s chief information officer.

“When you compare that with the fact that we have about 30 million citizens, of which about 24 million require driver license or identification services, the math doesn't add up,” Ballew said during a session at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington, D.C. last week.

That problem gets even more difficult considering Texas’ projected population growth, with the Lone Star State expected to grow 26% by 2030 to between 37 million to 40 million residents. Typically, government agencies would look to solve a problem like this by spending more money to “throw more people at it,” Ballew said.

But a 2021 assessment by Deloitte forced the agency to think differently, and consider how it could break down technology siloes across its various divisions, which each ran their own IT operations and had little interoperability in their systems and databases. Meanwhile, employees in the licensing division’s customer service center struggled to keep up with the crushing level of calls coming in, and Ballew said supervisors were “blind,” with little insight into productivity or when additional resources were required.

To deal with any surges in calls and to make the service more reliable, DPS moved its contact center to the cloud in 12 weeks with omnichannel engagement, meaning customers could call for help, but they could also text or help themselves through various self-service options. The division started on this new system with its most common calls for service, then expanded from there.

“This lets us start somewhere and get something out there,” Ballew said. Waiting for a system to be perfect and ready for every case would take too long, she said, and would only be perfect for “30 seconds,” so governments must iterate as they go and slowly add more functionality as the system proves itself.

It’s been successful so far. Ballew said the division has been able to handle eight times as many cases and resolve three times as many each week. Almost 70% of cases are now handled by a virtual agent or chatbot, and the system now handles an additional 10,000 cases a week.

Part of that process of improving the system slowly relies on engaging with employees on how they do their jobs, Ballew said, and letting them help shape and reimagine how new technologies are used. It needs a few champions who are willing to be creative and not limit a project’s scope too much, she said, which can be tricky.

“There are so many projects I see where you put these subject matter experts on it and you give them an opportunity to modernize and innovate, and what they do is they design the exact same process, which was probably designed based on the limited ability of the technology that they had,” Ballew said. “But that system was designed 20 years ago, and they try to make the process exactly the same as the new one.”

Those repetitive designs don’t change anything, she added, and they lead state agencies to either shelve modernization projects or scale them back, leaving officials generally disappointed and feeling like they have failed to make things better.

“You're not really getting your money's worth that way, you're not being more efficient, you're not improving quality, you're not improving throughput, you're not improving the ability of your constituents to have self-service or interaction with the system,” Ballew said. “It was really important that we had the right people that wouldn't be self-limiting because they were too married to the way things had always been done.”

Ballew already has big plans for this customer service center model, including rolling it out to other divisions within the Department of Public Safety, which runs the gamut from housing the state police, highway patrol, crime labs and criminal records. Her aim is to eventually have “one way into the agency where I can address whatever it is that I need,” similar to other state agencies that have introduced a unified portal to access services.

“I should be able to interact with this agent if I have a concealed handgun license and a driver’s license, and am in private security,” Ballew said. “Then I should have a common interface.”

]]>

Clark County commissioners hear push for data center moratorium but take no action

Leilah Ortega, Nevada Current — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Nevada Current.

Environmental activists are demanding a moratorium on new data center approvals, citing concerns about water use and other county resources.

The Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter held a rally Tuesday in front of the Clark County Commission’s office to protest the growing number of data centers being built around Nevada. While the commissioners planned to have a general discussion about the application process and approval criteria for data centers, they did not lay out any specific plans or regulations on data centers during the meeting.

The discussion appeared on the agenda at Commissioner Tick Segerblom’s request.

“I think the meeting was a mixed bag,” Sierra Club Toiyabe Chapter Director Olivia Tanager told the Nevada Current after the meeting with no action. “Ultimately, my organization believes at the end of the day, in order to effectively evaluate and correct this really huge issue, the county and other jurisdictions need to execute moratoria while evaluating.”

Multiple jurisdictions nationwide, including Reno, have placed moratoria on data center approvals.

During the pre-meeting rally, community members shared their frustrations with the rise of data centers.

Tony Chavez, representing the Alchemical Opus Foundation, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, and Nevada Environmental Coalition, attended the rally and spoke during the meeting’s public comment period.

Data centers “are something that we already know in this community is detrimental to our ecosystem, especially when it comes to the basic things of how much water they actually use,” Chavez said. “And especially when they want to force these kind of laws and rules on us, the average citizen — God forbid you water on a Sunday — yet these data centers get to expand and keep growing and get away with it. And that’s not ok.”

Chavez also spoke up about the actual time of the meeting, stating that it was not accessible to community members.

“They need to start having these meetings at a more reasonable time,” Chavez said. “I think on a Tuesday at 9 a.m., a lot of the working class is actually working right now, so to sit here and to try to justify that this is an ok time to have a meeting for the community that deeply impacts them is ridiculous to me.”

Democratic candidate for Nevada State Assembly District 41 Vinny Spotleson, also a member of the Sierra Club, spoke during the rally, stating Joe Lombardo failed Nevadans.

“As you know, Lombardo loves data centers,” Spotleson said. “While Lombardo has been governor, data centers have been able to obtain millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions in tax abatements.” Not only are data centers “pulling from our water and energy resources, they are also not paying taxes while they do that.”

In an interview with Current, Spotleson said he is upset with the impact data centers are having nationwide,“especially as we see this massive AI bubble.”

He continued: “Where this is headed is that these bubbles pop, and the worst case scenario would be that we end up bailing out these companies.”

Another Sierra Club member, Kevin Castellanos, said he showed up to last month’s meeting where commissioners approved the expansion of Switch’s data center campus.

The meeting “was unfortunate,” Castellanos said. “Basically all the commissioners voted to continue with the expansion of the Switch Data Center. The reason they did it is because, to them, the Switch Data Center expansion is like the gold standard for data centers, and it’s working on a closed-loop water system, which is supposed to be more efficient and better for the environment. However, it’s still something that I think needs more public input, and something that they’re moving too hastily on.”

Inside the meeting, Commissioner April Becker pushed back on the narrative against data centers, stating the approval of expanding data centers last month was misreported.

“What came before us was a waiver for a configuration of a driveway,” Becker said. “When it’s reported that we’ve expanded data centers and we’ve approved them, that’s not what happened. I think that when this is the way it’s reported, it upsets people and rightfully so because they think that we’re doing something against what the public wants.”

Commissioner William McCurdy II commented that data centers are a “significant issue here in our region.” McCurdy II continued saying he believes they need regulations moving forward.

“I believe that we should look for a uniform standard of what we would require of those looking to construct data centers here in our valley,” McCurdy II said. “I understand based upon some of the information I’ve been provided and also independent research that this is gonna be a herculean effort, which is going to require us to talk to all the…stakeholders…[to come] to a place where we can actually identify standardized policy we can put in place.”

]]>

Crypto kiosks were used to scam $56 million from Texans last year. Lawmakers are calling for regulation.

Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Maria was standing in front of a cryptocurrency ATM, $5,000 in hand and a moment away from being scammed.

Fabricated court documents, supposedly sent by text from the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, threatened the 72-year-old with arrest if she didn’t feed the money into the “crypto kiosk” at a grocery store. A voice on her cellphone, claiming to be an officer, calmly coached her through the process of posting bail for failing to appear for a jury summons and contempt of court.

Seeing the machine, however, snapped her out of the fog created by the persuasive fake officer.

“I was a wreck the whole time. I was very nervous, very tense,” the Austin woman said. “And then when I walk in, I said, ‘You're telling me it's this yellow thing?’ and he says yeah. [But] that's a Bitcoin machine. I'm not putting any money there.”

That last-minute realization made Maria more fortunate than almost 1,200 other Texans who lost a combined $56.8 million last year through similar kiosks, almost double the amount taken from victims in the second-highest state, Florida.

Scams using the kiosks have increased rapidly in the United States over the past two years, according to the FBI, prompting other states to restrict or ban the machines. Texas regulators currently have no oversight over the kiosks, a gap that fraudsters regularly exploit, public safety advocates say.

The Texas Tribune spoke with a dozen people who were victims or near victims of kiosk fraud, including one who lost almost $100,000 and another swindled out of $63,000. The victims asked not to be named, saying they feared being targeted again. All said they felt shame or humiliation, symptoms that experts say reduces the likelihood that crimes are reported, likely making the steadily increasing rates of kiosk-aided fraud an undercount.

Victims described elaborate schemes involving phone numbers that appeared to belong to police departments, state agencies or their banks, sometimes providing real names, titles and badge numbers.

In some cases, fraudsters knew personal details — such as Maria’s recent move — and provided realistic court documents with fake case numbers and the full name and home address of victims.

In every case, the scammers’ goal was to direct victims to withdraw cash from their banks and head to a cryptocurrency kiosk to feed the money into a slot. The cash is converted into cryptocurrency that is whisked away into unidentifiable crypto accounts.

“[Cryptocurrency] kiosks serve no useful purpose, and no rational person would choose to use them, except for the purpose of hiding illicit funds,” Adam Colby, executive director of the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center, said during testimony before a Texas House committee in May.

An estimated 4,000 kiosks have been installed in convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses across Texas. Nobody knows the exact number, but the ATM-like machines are described by law enforcement as a key tool for scammers who particularly target elderly Texans, though adults of all ages have been swindled.

These crypto ATMs have streamlined the speed of scams while making it almost impossible for local law enforcement to track and retrieve stolen money.

“It just didn't seem like there was really any sort of hope that there would be any form of accountability for these things,” said a North Texas man who lost $5,000 after being threatened by someone impersonating the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office.

Cutting Out the Middleman

Crypto kiosks let users deposit cash to purchase certain cryptocurrencies and designate a “wallet” to receive the digital assets.

Cryptocurrency is increasingly preferred by scammers because it is not subject to the same banking laws as traditional currency — especially in how it can be transferred internationally, where most scammers are based, according to law enforcement.

“Crypto is a wonderful, amazing, horrible, terrible invention, right? Obviously, the advantage of crypto is you can move money much faster without supervision,” said Michael Levine, chief felony prosecutor for the Cyber and Financial Crimes Division of the Harris County district attorney’s office.

Fraudsters usually send or text a QR code that can be scanned into a kiosk, sending the purchased cryptocurrency to a particular wallet, similar to making a bank deposit.

Once received, the crypto is often distributed to dozens of additional wallets and mixed with legitimate funds, making tracing difficult even for financial crime experts. The FCIC estimates there is only a 36- to 48-hour window to recover the stolen money, which rarely occurs.

None of the victims who spoke to the Tribune had the stolen money returned. When they reported the crime, they said, officers had a similar message: Don’t get your hopes up.

Absent traditional means of restitution, some police have taken more direct approaches. In McLennan County, police seized a kiosk after a 82-year-old woman was scammed out of $15,000 in 2023. The kiosk operator, Bitcoin Depot, sued the county over the seizure and agreed to a settlement stipulating that they were not involved in the fraud. The money was returned to the woman.

Last summer, a sheriff’s deputy from Jasper County with a search warrant sawed open a Bitcoin Depot kiosk with a power tool after a family lost $25,000 to a scam. The company threatened to sue the county, but ultimately filed for bankruptcy in May.

The county’s sheriff, Chuck Havard, declined to talk about the incident or whether the victims retrieved their money because the criminal investigation is ongoing, but said he thinks legislators should increase the punishment for anyone caught participating in these scams.

“I just think that, you know, these scammers, if we can catch them, I think the consequences should be very, very severe,” Havard said. “I know a lot of legislators are talking to their constituents, because trust me, they're getting scammed all the time.”

“Texas Is Behind Other States on This”

Only California has more crypto kiosks than Texas, according to available data, and the Tyler-based Financial Crimes Intelligence Center estimates that roughly 70% of the people using them are over age 60.

State Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, was already acquainted with the kiosks before he attended a House committee hearing about them in May. A family member fell victim to a kiosk-aided crypto scam, but Little said he was more alarmed when an FCIC official testified the machines were mostly used for scams.

“They suggested that they needed to be banned, and to have law enforcement come out that stridently about it was a little bit surprising,” Little told the Tribune. “I think it seems to suggest that there are way fewer legitimate uses of these devices than you would expect.”

Texas House and Senate committees have held recent hearings about the kiosks under directives that frame the issue differently. To prepare for action when the Legislature meets in 2027, House Speaker Dustin Burrows wants to examine solutions to elder fraud stemming from “emerging technologies,” while Lt. Gov Dan Patrick asked senators to look into ways to regulate kiosks amid the broader crypto landscape.

In late June, a handful of East Texas lawmakers from both chambers met with the FCIC to discuss how to tackle regulating the machines, including Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant. Hefner said he or another representative will seek to ban the kiosks next session.

“From the law enforcement experts in the room, I don't see any reason to be regulating them,” Hefner said. “Based on their testimony, based on their experience, [kiosks] serve no other purpose but money laundering or scamming folks, and we just need to get rid of them.”

Thirty states have passed laws regulating the kiosks, including four in the past four months that banned the machines.

In 2025, separate bills directing the Texas Department of Banking to regulate the kiosks passed the state House and Senate but were not approved by both chambers.

Andrea Earl, associate state director for AARP, called it a missed opportunity.

“The state of Texas is behind other states on this, and then really lost momentum last session,” Earl said.

Without state regulations, cities have limited options to help potential fraud victims. The San Antonio City Council passed an ordinance in June requiring warning signs on every machine detailing the risks of fraud, an option the El Paso City Council discussed Tuesday. Other cities and counties have begun warning residents about the spike in kiosk fraud as well.

“I don't know how far they can go without legislation giving them authority to go all the way, but there's probably some things locals could be doing as far as informing and educating the public and letting them know that this stuff is going on,” Hefner said.

In Texas, a state that has championed crypto and encouraged its use in private business and government affairs, regulating even a small but growing financial sector could meet resistance.

“Texas, as a predominantly Republican, conservative state, generally lets the market solve its own problems, and I'm very sensitive to that,” Little said. “I don't think we should just step in and ban things because we don't like them or we're worried about them or they're a novelty … but it’s pretty obvious we have a problem.”

Before the Legislature meets in January, Little said he wants to hear from kiosk operators on rates of fraud, how many machines they operate and what guardrails are in place for consumers — information he hopes they’ll provide willingly.

“It Should Set Off a Few Alarm Bells”

Kiosk operators say their machines are often used for legitimate transactions, but they have been met with tighter regulations in other states as scams have increased.

Bitcoin Depot, the nation’s largest crypto kiosk operator, filed for bankruptcy in May citing “increasing litigation and regulatory enforcement.” It shut down its network of kiosks, including roughly 900 in Texas, which a court filing described as the company’s “highest concentration of active kiosks.”

Several victims the Tribune spoke with said scammers directed them to Bitcoin Depot machines. One faux court document sent to Maria included a falsified signature from the sheriff and a picture of a company kiosk, describing it as a “designated” machine for the county.

A public relations representative for Bitcoin Depot referred the Tribune to a May press release that announced the company’s bankruptcy and said it was intended to wind down operations and “facilitate a sale of its assets.” Bankruptcy proceedings are underway for the Georgia-based company in a Texas federal bankruptcy court.

An investigation by the Iowa attorney general’s office found that 98% of transactions through Bitcoin Depot’s kiosks in the state were scams, prompting the agency to sue the company and another, CoinFlip.

CoinFlip’s director of government affairs, John Turk, told a Texas Senate committee in June that the company supported robust consumer protections from the state. Some operators like CoinFlip run their own hotlines for customers and have posted warnings on their machines, which are not required in Texas but are in other states.

“We appreciate the Legislature's willingness to engage with responsible operators and focus on practical safeguards,” Turk testified. “For 2027, we would encourage Texas to continue that work with a clear, uniform framework for cryptocurrency kiosks.”

In an email to the Tribune, a CoinFlip spokesperson said the company takes consumer protection seriously.

“As evidenced by our strong public support of legislation in states across the country, we strongly believe in commonsense rules and clear disclosures, and want everyone in the industry to be held to the same high standards we meet voluntarily,” the spokesperson wrote.

All the victims and near-victims the Tribune spoke with had never heard of the kiosks before they were targeted despite frequenting some of the stores where they operate.

Such was the case for a Katy-area resident who found his mother at a rural gas station feeding roughly $63,000 into a kiosk. At the direction of a scammer, she had cut contact with her family, prompting her son to call police who helped find his mother.

The son said he was frustrated by a lack of guardrails for the machines, including daily transaction limits, that could keep scammers from collecting large sums of money all at once.

“I think it should set off a few alarm bells if someone's shoveling tens of thousands of dollars into one of these machines at a Valero station in Gonzales, Texas. I mean, that's just kind of weird,” he said.

Disclosure: AARP and Valero 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 Texas Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

]]>

Libraries lament ‘cascading effects’ of E-Rate’s potential demise

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

After the Federal Communications Commission voted to review its E-Rate program, libraries across the country are already concerned at how changes to that program might impact their budgets, services and even operating hours.

Commissioners voted 2-1 to examine whether E-Rate is advancing educational outcomes and protecting children’s online safety amid concerns over minors’ screen time. The review is also meant to ensure funds from the program are being spent responsibly and for educational purposes. E-Rate helps pay for discounted services, internet access, equipment and maintenance for schools and libraries.

And at the local level, any effort to curb E-Rate funding or even cut it altogether will be felt keenly. The West Haven Public Library in Connecticut, for example, uses E-Rate to receive a 90% discount for its myriad networking costs, the highest discount available. Having to find between $20,000 and $30,000 from elsewhere to cover the disappearance of those E-Rate funds could be fatal, especially in a town of 55,000 people where 14% are below the poverty line.

“Every budget runs so small that you don't have that capacity when it could potentially automatically disappear,” said Colleen Bailie, the library’s executive director.

It’s a similar story for the Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System, which has seven library locations across four counties in the state. That system has relied on E-Rate to help cover its networking costs as far back as 1999, when it was used to subsidize having fax machines. As the government has required many services to be available digitally, like filing taxes with the Internal Revenue Service, the library has served as a vital hub for that, with E-Rate helping keep its costs down.

“When you transfer these services from being accepted in the mail to making them a digital format, people have to have the ability to get those there however they can and to transfer those,” said Misty Hawkins, the region’s library director. “If people do not have home access, they have to have the ability to send those somewhere, and the libraries, that's the place for many Americans.”

With those budgetary worries comes what Bailie called the “cascading effects” from the threat of reduced services, especially if E-Rate is to sunset completely or even just be rerouted to focus on rural areas, as has been proposed by the FCC.

“If E-Rate goes away, we're going to have to switch funding from someplace else in order to be able to continue,” Bailie said. “You still have to have computer access, we still have to have network access, so something else may go away. We may have to lower the amount of programming that we do, maybe looking at shortened hours, because that's one of the key places that we can cut back our budget costs.”

Hawkins said she is also concerned about libraries’ inability to maintain their existing networks, as some E-Rate funding can be used for upkeep and to buy equipment. She said that means “unnecessary hardship on local infrastructures,” especially having built a “beautiful broadband network” that has worked as intended until now.

E-Rate’s demise would force libraries and schools to look elsewhere to make up the funding shortfall, something Hawkins said would add an extra “administrative burden” that many staffs are likely not prepared for. Bailie said it will mean looking for extra grant opportunities, while her library has a small endowment that could be tapped. But not everyone is so lucky, she said.

“When we set up our budget, we budget down to the pennies,” Bailie said. “You lose a chunk of money, you have to figure out where you're going to get that from.”

Others have offered to step up and fill some of those gaps. Nonprofit Mission Telecom stepped in last year to offer funding to pay for Wi-Fi hotspots and Wi-Fi access on school buses after the FCC said E-Rate funds could not be used for those purposes. Mark Colwill, Mission Telecom’s director of broadband operations, said zeroing out E-Rate makes no sense, as it is “one of those rare stories where Congress passes a law, and it actually does exactly what's intended.”

“I do think if libraries had a need, the communities would step up and potentially help out, but a $5 billion hole is a pretty big hole to fill for schools and libraries,” Colwill said.

As for the future, libraries are already gearing up for a fight to save E-Rate funding and influence the FCC’s review. The American Library Association quickly launched a national advocacy campaign after the vote alongside partners from the nonprofit Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, and it pledged to “fill the record” of the FCC’s public comment period with “the voices of the schools, libraries, and communities that depend on E-Rate most.”

“The program has been running very well for the last number of years. Certainly, there are ways in which it can be improved and simplified, but that's not something that this notice really addresses,” said Bob Bocher, an ALA senior fellow who consults with the association and Wisconsin’s state library agency. “[Making] statements such as, ‘Well, most of the libraries and schools have broadband access, maybe it's time to phase out the program or significantly reduce it in such a fashion,’ that's not what the law says… It doesn't say anything about, “If you get your internet access, then you don't need this money anymore.’”

]]>

Kentucky bill regulating kids’ social media had bipartisan support, AG backing. What killed it?

Sarah Ladd, Kentucky Lantern — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by Kentucky Lantern.

Bella Cornett sees a direct line between a social media influencer who posted videos of tricks with vaping smoke and the bullying she endured in her Kentucky high school.

Cornett, 19, said her friend group at the time watched those social media videos as first year high school students and “thought that was so cool.”

They started vaping too, she said. Then, for some, came marijuana, drinking and “harder stuff.”

“Us being in eighth grade and freshmen…we shouldn’t have been seeing that,” Cornett said.

She eventually tried vaping too — because, she says, she was bullied into it.

“I think — then and now — I did it more because they were pressuring me so much, and they kept making it seem like it was so fun and so cool,” she said.

Cornett and other teenagers who spoke to the Kentucky Lantern recently about their experiences with social media said it can be a positive place for connection — but that it needs more guardrails to protect them and more options for parental control. Two of the teenagers are minors who spoke to the Lantern with parental consent.

One Central Kentucky Republican tried unsuccessfully to do just that during the 2026 legislative session — and plans to try again next year.

A Bipartisan Effort With Big Backing

Rep. Matt Lockett, R-Nicholasville, filed House Bill 227 in January and it amassed 27 cosponsors, both Republican and Democrat.

The bill took a sweeping aim at “addictive” online features like doomscrolling and autoplay by blocking these features for children. It would have also required social media platforms to estimate the age of users and restrict usage for those under the age of 15 to child settings unless a parent consented otherwise.

The bill proposed giving parents passwords to the children’s accounts so they could monitor and manage the time spent online.

It had the support of Kentucky’s highest law enforcement official, Attorney General Russell Coleman, whose track record includes suing TikTok and Character.AI, an artificial intelligence company.

In committee, Wil Schroder, the senior counsel for Coleman’s office, testified in favor of the bill.

“Attorney General Russell Coleman fully supports this bill, and the office stands ready to defend it should it be challenged,” Schroder said on Feb. 18. “Our attorneys have reviewed this bill, and are encouraged that it is content neutral in every way, and believe that it will pass a constitutional challenge should it face one.”

It passed the House unanimously on March 9 but progress petered out in the Senate, where it died.

Lockett doesn’t blame senators. He said Meta lobbying against the bill “kicked into high gear” once it passed the House.

“I think it’s unfortunate that a company like Meta wants to protect their bottom dollar so much that they’re willing to do it on the backs of kids,” he told the Lantern.

Meta did not respond to two emails from the Lantern seeking comment. The Lantern also attempted to reach each of the company’s registered lobbyists via phone calls and email.

According to the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission, Meta lobbied on the bill in February, March and April. The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, lobbied for other bills as well, spending around $5,600 during the session, according to a legislative agent compensation report from the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission.

Meta Platforms has the following lobbying agents registered with the Legislative Ethics Commission:

Megan Arnold, registered since Jun 10, 2024
Sherman Brown, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Jeffery Busick, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Jeff Harper, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Scott Jones, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Sara Massey, registered since Jan. 1, 2024
John McCarthy, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Libby Milligan, registered since Dec. 11, 2023
Chris Rinkus, registered Feb. 20, 2026
Amy Wickliffe, registered since Dec. 11, 2023

In early June, the company announced an expansion of its 13+ content setting, which “is designed to hide content that’s inappropriate for teens in places like Feed and Reels, and to limit teens’ ability to interact with Profiles, Pages, Groups and Events that primarily post inappropriate content.”

Meanwhile, the senate’s failure to pass the bill “should not be viewed as opposition,” said Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield. A bill stalling often represents “a matter of the legislative process and the need for deliberation, especially when a topic is complex,” she said.

“There’s not a shortage of examples we could identify where a proposal took a couple of years or more to get over the finish line. I trust the same is true here,” said Tichenor, who serves on several health and education committees in the Kentucky Senate.

Tichenor called Lockett’s bill an effort to “elevate an important conversation about protecting children online” and “I share his concern that families are navigating an increasingly digital world where technology often moves faster than public policy.”

“As with any complex legislation, there are important questions surrounding implementation, constitutional considerations, the interaction with federal law and ensuring government policy reinforces, not replaces, the essential role parents play in raising their children,” she said. “Those are challenges to solve, not reasons to stop pursuing the goal. I hope to see the proposal brought forward again, and (am) willing to carry the torch in the Senate.”

‘The Right Thing to do’

Lockett’s passion for social media protections comes from constituent concerns and his own two children, both adults now, he said.

“Social media, of course, was a thing when they were teenagers. I was unaware of — I think probably most people were at that time, just several years ago — were unaware of how dangerous … social media could be,” he said. “I noticed that they spent a lot of time on it…and I was able to curb that.”

In the course of pushing for the legislation, he said, some pushback he heard was “if parents would just be parents … then the government wouldn’t have to be involved.”

“While that’s a good statement, and somewhat may be true, what happens with the kids that don’t have parents that are as involved, or don’t have parents at all?” he said. “This is the right thing to do for our Kentucky kids. This is the right thing to do because I believe it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens.”

This is especially true, he said, because it involves “children who don’t understand what’s happening to their own brain.”

“This is something I believe that this is the right thing to do, while not being heavy handed from a government standpoint, while not encroaching on First Amendment rights, but at the same time holding these big tech companies accountable to say ‘you’re not going to profit billions of dollars every year off the backs of our children while their brains are destroyed by your product,’” he said. “It did become kind of a personal mission, and still is.”

He plans to introduce HB227 again in 2027.

‘Our Brains are Just so Moldable’

Cornett, who works in Graves County for now and hopes to go to college soon, quit vaping by sophomore year. She didn’t like how it made her feel, and always suffered from headaches.

“Our brains are just so moldable,” she said. “And with us being so young….that was such a big, impactful time of our lives.”

During her freshman year, the Too Good for Drugs program came into her class. Cornett recalls sitting right in front and listening to every word of the presentation.

“I’m putting this stuff into my body, and I don’t even know if I want this in my body,” she recalled thinking. “I’m doing it to fit in.”

She now uses social media for her work at the health department in Graves County and says it’s now a positive outlet because she uses it to educate people about mental health. She still tries to limit her personal time on social media, though, and recently took a 5-month hiatus.

“I think I wasted a lot of time scrolling,” she said. “I spent so much extra time on there that I shouldn’t, because I’m so much more productive now.”

Bowling Green teenager Cayden Dunn got a phone around second grade. For a long time, social media was a way to connect with his speech and debate community. Around sixth grade, he said, it turned into a more urgent tool.

“It wasn’t just, ‘oh, I’m trying to connect with people that I can’t talk to on a daily basis,’” he said. “It was more of, ‘even though I can see you tomorrow morning, and even though I’ll see you at school, let’s talk tonight,’” said Dunn, 17.

Dunn’s mom helped shield him from more addictive features of social media, he said, but he saw it sucking in the people around him, denting people’s ability to form personal relationships outside a digital world.

“I’ve definitely seen how me and another person are having a one on one conversation, and they’re scrolling through their phone at the same time, and how that can kind of impact day to day life, and how we build relationships in our new era,” he said. “It kind of makes me feel unheard, because I’m a huge eye contact person.”

Dunn graduated from Bowling Green High School this year and will begin college courses at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire this fall with the aim of working in law or politics.

Bullying and Connectivity: The Duality of Social Media

Shannon Moody, the incoming executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said social media’s duality is that it can certainly help with connectivity when there is none otherwise available, like during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it can also intensify underlying mental health issues.

“Especially during points of isolation, kids were able to use social media as a means to stay connected to their friends and their peers, which is really important. We want that connectivity,” Moody said. “Where we see social media become problematic, and this is especially true for children who are already prone to anxiety or depression, but social media can exacerbate signs of anxiety and depression and other mental health issues like eating disorders that especially impact young girls, but impact a lot of young people generally.”

Young people tend to compare themselves to edited, polished images they see online, Moody said, which can also lead to depression and anxiety.

Cornett experienced this comparison; she was anxious about her clothes, the vehicle she drove, even where she was in life, all because she saw glamorized videos online that told her what her life should look like.

And bullying is also easier, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence that enables people to “post photos that are there that are not real, that are generated,” Moody said.

Dunn, the Bowling Green teenager, believes the 24/7 nature of social media is a key part of the puzzle that makes bullying “widespread” and “almost unescapable.”

“Social media did not invent bullying, but I feel like it kind of removed the final barrier for it going back generations,” he said.

Social media keeps people keyed into connection or bullying long after school ends, he said, and it “penetrates every aspect of your life.”

“A hurtful comment, a rumor, an embarrassing photo, all of those things kind of stay with you all day,” Dunn said.

The algorithm system doesn’t help, said Aleah Stigall, 17. She described a spiral: If a person likes a video based on their mood, their feed will be filled with that content, which can be harmful in a depressive or anxiety episode.

“I could like a couple things, and then it’s all I see,” she said. “So, sometimes I really struggle with that.”

Stigall, who just graduated from Boyle County High School and will attend the University of Kentucky this fall, started an educational initiative called “Disconnect to Connect: Let’s Get Real.”

She goes into schools and encourages students to build connections offline because in 2019, she felt phones were already replacing human connection.

“I went to a sleepover with all my friends, and back in 2019 I didn’t have a phone yet, so all of my friends had phones, so instead of doing all of the fun girly sleepover things, they just wanted to watch TikTok or make TikToks,” Stigall said. “I really struggled with that. Especially as an only child, I was looking for an opportunity to get out of my house and spend time with my friends, and I just did not get that.”

Moody, with Kentucky Youth Advocates, said the concern for children is valid: Excessive screen times impact sleep and can cause social media addiction and other mental health issues.

“There’s a lot of concerns, and especially with bills like House Bill 227, I think the aim there was to address those addictive features, put in some common sense protections,” Moody said. “I think we also need to understand that a lot of the age verification processes and things of that nature are really hard to enforce, especially on the state level, if those platforms are willing to even adhere to state policy changes.”

]]>

U.S. Supreme Court declines request to block Texas’ app age verification law

Paul Cobler and Alex Nguyen, The Texas Tribune — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0400

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Texas can continue enforcing a law requiring app marketplace operators like Google and Apple to verify all users’ ages after the U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to intervene.

Senate Bill 2420, which was supposed to take effect Jan. 1, establishes age verification requirements and mandates parental consent before a person under age 18 is allowed to download apps or make in-app purchases. The law also requires app developers to say whether their apps are appropriate for people in four categories: children under 13, teens age 13-15, older teens age 16-17, or adults 18 and older.

The law was initially blocked in December when a federal judge in Austin determined restrictions in SB 2420 likely violated the First Amendment.

Texas appealed the temporary injunction, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in late May allowed Texas to enforce the law until its judges issue a ruling on the law’s constitutionality.

A trade association asked the Supreme Court to block the Texas law while the 5th Circuit weighed the state’s appeal. The high court declined Monday without comment.

Computer & Communications Industry Association President Matt Schruers on Monday said the tech trade group looks forward to making its case at an expedited hearing before the 5th Circuit in early August.

“People should not have to turn over personal data to access the internet any more than they should show government identification to enter a bookstore,” Schruers said in a statement.

The law’s supporters say it is needed to protect children as they navigate social media and online spaces, while critics say it would violate free speech rights. Louisiana and Utah have passed similar laws that have not yet gone into effect.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, an advocacy group, filed separate lawsuits in October challenging the law, both arguing it violates the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman sided with the plaintiffs in December, finding the law likely violates the First Amendment and issuing the temporary injunction blocking the law while the full case plays out in the district court.

“The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book,” Pitman wrote in a 20-page ruling at the time.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office appealed the temporary injunction in late December.

Paxton urged the appeals court to allow enforcement of the law, arguing the state has the right to regulate transactions between minors and app marketplaces that take place in the state, according to court filings.

In a June statement, Paxton wrote that the age verification law was necessary to protect children online.

“Texas has not only the right, but the duty, to protect children from the harms of our modern digital space,” Paxton wrote. “Parents deserve to know what their children are downloading and to have the ability to stop them from accessing harmful or inappropriate content.”

The trade and advocacy groups urged the court to uphold Pitman’s injunction, arguing SB 2420 “restricts an enormous amount of online speech” in violation of the First Amendment.

Students Engaged in Advancing Texas in a statement at the time noted its members use marketplaces to access apps used to communicate and learn, and the organization itself uses apps to engage with its members and the public.

“Students have just as much a right to access information as adults, and this law denies them that access,” Cameron Samuels, co-founder and executive director of SEAT, wrote in a statement.

Disclosure: Apple and Google 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.

]]>

How states can address broadband worker shortages

Lexi West — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:00:00 -0400

This article was originally published by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

After several years of planning, states and territories are receiving final approval of their plans for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a federal initiative that aims to connect all Americans to high-speed internet.

For states to meet the goal of completing all infrastructure projects by 2030, expansion of the broadband workforce is critical. Analysis from The Pew Charitable Trusts has found that worker availability, wages and competition, and data limitations present barriers to growing the workforce. States and internet service providers (ISPs) should consider how labor availability will affect their ability to complete BEAD projects on time, particularly amid a historically shrinking workforce and competition with other industries for similarly skilled workers as data center expansion accelerates.

In 2025, the U.S. Commerce Department reviewed the BEAD program, which was enacted as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and issued a restructuring policy notice. Among other changes, the policy notice rescinded funds previously allocated for nondeployment activities, or programs that are complementary to broadband network construction—including funds earmarked for broadband workforce development. Many states had already begun using these funds to train prospective workers; after the release of the policy notice, they canceled programming as they awaited further guidance. The availability of these funds remains uncertain as the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) continues a delayed review of which activities will be eligible for support.

Regardless of the outcome of that review, workforce shortages will require state policymakers, higher education partners, and ISPs to coordinate closely to fill gaps and meet BEAD milestones. Following are prominent examples of the varied approaches that are currently in use and that show the importance of cross-sector collaboration as states prepare for BEAD implementation.

State and Tribal Workforce Programs

Outside the BEAD program, states and Tribal Nations have used their own appropriations or other federal funding sources to create or expand existing workforce development programs to include training for broadband jobs. For example:

In 2019, the Cherokee Nation established a fiber technician program combining fundamental and technical instruction in fiber and broadband technology. In addition to free tuition, the program offers benefits including free training supplies and a $10-per-hour stipend, which allows students to earn money while pursuing training. Students graduate from the program with up to seven micro-credentials recognized by Oklahoma’s higher education system.
Ohio’s Regionally Aligned Priorities in Delivering Skills (RAPIDS) program allocates grants—totaling $8 million in state fiscal year 2025—to universities, community colleges, and career technical centers for training and equipment that will help to meet regional workforce needs. The University of Dayton and Sinclair Community College are using one of these grants to establish 5G broadband teaching and wireless communications labs, with the goal of offering training for students at all degree levels.
Texas established the Building the Texas Broadband Workforce Grant Program in 2025, awarding $25 million to seven organizations that will provide tuition-free broadband training. This program is funded by a one-time commitment from the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Fund.
In January 2026, New Mexico announced plans to offer free monthly broadband certification classes across the state, using $2 million in congressionally directed spending from fiscal year 2024. The classes will consist of a five-day training program that includes instruction in introductory installation, fiber and copper-based cable installation, and technician training.

By taking a leadership role in funding and administering workforce programs, state and Tribal governments can direct resources to the specific jobs or skills needed in their regions. States do not need to start from scratch; even if they choose to implement new, broadband-specific programming, they may also repurpose or expand existing workforce development programs, saving time and resources. This approach may be a solution for states, particularly as they advance toward BEAD construction amid uncertainty surrounding nondeployment funds and with less time to prepare their workforce strategies than was expected under original BEAD rules.

Credentialing and Certification Programs

In addition to state workforce programs, community and technical colleges offer certifications and other credentials for the technical and construction roles that the NTIA has deemed critical for BEAD. These credentials demonstrate the attainment of foundational and high-demand skills required for immediate employment in broadband jobs. Training programs can be developed in collaboration with practitioners or companies that seek to fill these specific roles. For example:

The Fiber Broadband Association developed a fiber-optic technician curriculum offered at more than 70 partner community and technical colleges in 40 states.
Louisiana’s Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity has partnered with the Louisiana Community and Technical College System to offer broadband-related training at each of its 12 campuses.

Credentialing programs that encompass a variety of skills benefit workers by giving them portability across roles or sectors. These credentials also benefit employers, providing them with employees who have a variety of skills that can be applied to different project types. For example:

Southwest Virginia Community College pairs its fiber-optic technician credential with commercial driver’s license (CDL) training. CDLs are in high demand across sectors.
Northshore Technical Community College in Louisiana integrated a fiber-optics certification into its existing information technology associate degree program; it also incorporates fiber-optics training into its heavy equipment operating program, with plans to include training in directional drilling and utility line locating in the future.

States or other entities interested in developing these credentialing programs should consider coordinating with local adult education providers, which often design and implement workforce programs. Funded through Title II of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, they typically include nonprofit community-based organizations, community colleges, and school districts’ community education programs.

Stakeholders designing or updating these programs should equip students with the skills needed to support BEAD projects within their states as well as competencies they can apply to other infrastructure projects in the future. An increase in expected retirements will result in demand for these workers and skills long after BEAD projects conclude.

ISP and Trade Association Recruitment

A lack of public awareness of broadband job opportunities is a key barrier to attracting new workers and may create challenges as BEAD sub-grantees receive funding and make more positions available. ISPs and the trade associations that represent them play a key role in recruiting and training the workers needed to complete infrastructure projects. For example, the Telecommunications Industry Association, the Fiber Broadband Association, and NTCA—the Rural Broadband Association maintain career exploration websites and job posting databases. Nonprofit organizations also can help; for example, Heartland Forward, which works toward economic development in 20 states in the central U.S., maintains a database of job postings and training opportunities in Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

Apprenticeships, which pair on-the-job training with classroom instruction, are recognized as an especially effective workforce development strategy because they allow entry-level workers to earn wages while they build skills. Apprentices benefit from obtaining industry-recognized credentials, while employers develop a pipeline of skilled job candidates. The Wireless Infrastructure Association shares data on hiring trends, training requirements, and salaries and operates the Telecommunications Industry Registered Apprenticeship Program (TIRAP), which is approved and validated by the U.S. Labor Department.

Other Federal Resources

State workforce programs, ISPs, and higher education providers may consider engaging with a number of existing federally funded workforce development programs administered by the departments of Education, Labor, Veterans Affairs, and Defense to fund credentialing programs or apprenticeships and inform prospective job applicants of broadband job opportunities. For example:

The Education Department’s Pell Grant program, which provides grant aid for low-income students, was recently expanded to cover programs that offer eight to 15 weeks of instruction and may enable greater access to broadband training programs for eligible students and providers. As shared by Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, a senior fellow with the National Skills Coalition, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ Texas Broadband Summit on Feb. 10, 2026, this program expansion could create additional financial support for new pipelines of workers entering the broadband field.
The Labor Department’s H-1B Skills Training Grants program uses fees paid by companies hiring high-skilled foreign workers to fund several workforce training programs.

In 2025, the Commerce, Education, and Labor departments collaborated on a federal workforce strategy that emphasizes the importance of designing training to align with employer needs, identifying high-value credentials, streamlining and ensuring the quality of federal workforce programming, and promoting a workforce prepared to use artificial intelligence. The strategy notes that states may be eligible for Industry-Driven Skills Training Fund grants, which seek to address critical workforce needs.

Cross-Sector Collaboration

State policymakers will find value in close coordination with higher education and industry partners to ensure that broadband workforce development policies and programs are aligned with the training that workers need and the skills that employers expect applicants to have. For example, sector partnerships are public-private collaborations that seek to address industry-specific skills gaps while expanding access to high-quality job opportunities within communities. NTIA identified industry-led sector partnerships as a best practice for workforce planning. Some states, such as Ohio, had previously implemented broadband sector partnerships before the pause on nondeployment funds.

States also have workforce development boards, which oversee federal workforce training funds and convene cross-sector stakeholders to align statewide workforce plans with employer demand and educational offerings. These workforce boards can designate broadband jobs as high-demand occupations, which can direct resources and elevate awareness of job opportunities.

As states receive BEAD funds and move into a new phase of implementation, it is crucial that they work quickly with partners to identify expected workforce shortages and consider potential solutions to meet construction deadlines. With timeline constraints and uncertain access to BEAD nondeployment funds, states can look to existing programming and approaches, including working with higher education and industry partners. Leveraging existing efforts will also benefit states if nondeployment funds are made available for workforce needs. As implementation approaches, such advance planning by state leaders will play an important role in helping to achieve the goal of universal broadband connectivity.

Lexi West works to translate research into policy solutions for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ broadband access initiative.

]]>

How Kansas’ labor department’s tech became ‘built for tomorrow’

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

The 1970s brought many cultural touchstones, be they Star Wars or the advent of disco. It also marked the launch of the Kansas Department of Labor’s original unemployment insurance system.

In the 50 years since, there had been attempts to upgrade it, said Amber Shultz, the Kansas secretary of labor, but the state never really changed from its original system, setting up what she described as a “house of cards.” Customer service representatives were reliant on old green screens, and had to memorize and use short codes to navigate the platform, which meant calls could take 30 to 40 minutes to resolve.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed those shortcomings, as the state’s unemployment rate jumped from just under 3% to over 12% practically overnight, and the number of calls the customer service center received each day jumped from 15,000 to 1.5 million. It proved to be a lot for a system that Shultz said was “duct-taped and bubble-gummed together” and was deemed as at high risk of failure.

It prompted Gov. Laura Kelly and other state leaders to start a major modernization push in early 2021. In the space of 29 months, the agency had turned to the cloud and artificial intelligence to bring its system into the 21st century. That system can now be expanded for times of high demand, which Shultz said means it is “built for tomorrow,” not just the short term. It also does not experience any downtime, enabling it to be used around-the-clock by residents. The old system was available around 65% of the time by design, as it went down each night to process transactions.

“What we knew was that we needed to build a system that was not only going to work for us today, but also for decades in the future,” Shultz said during an on-stage interview at last week’s AWS Summit in Washington, D.C.

Now, around 90% of those seeking help can be served online, rather than have to contact a customer service center. And for those working in that service center, training that used to take eight weeks to get employees able to start taking on cases now only takes two weeks under the simplified system .

And with many mundane processes like call transcription and auto-adjudication of applications and paperwork now automated, they are able to focus on cases that require greater human intervention. Shultz said it all has created a “snowball effect” where everyone’s lives, from applicants to employees, get better.

“The biggest outcome is … it is dreadfully difficult to be unemployed, your emotions are all over the place, your family, your apartment, your home, cars, so it’s just to make sure that there's one path for claims and we can ensure that we will be there for them,” Shultz said.

The Kansas Department of Labor was something of a modernization pioneer, Shultz said, noting the agency was “so far ahead” of many of its peers but also “so far behind” on adopting new technology. In the meantime, residents’ expectations for government services have changed as they demand transparency, responsiveness and the ability to solve problems quickly.

Experts said AI can help speed up that modernization process and make applications that are in some cases decades old work more efficiently and quickly in constituent service. Although, they said, it will take time for those dreams to become a reality.

“Overall, I don't think you've seen governments really able to deliver on that promise yet,” Alec Chalmers, AWS’ director of educational and government technology, told Route Fifty in an interview on the sidelines of the summit. “I really do think what you're going to see with AI, it's going to allow them to modernize these legacy applications, some of which are 30 and 40 years old.”

Numerous agencies at the state and local level are modernizing their legacy systems and turning to AI to help make employees work more efficiently. Shultz said it cannot be business as usual as government leaders look to better serve residents.

“Government can't work like government anymore, especially in terms of procurement, technology and service delivery,” Shultz said. “We're really failing individual citizens, businesses, our stakeholder groups, organized labor. It's not just one person; we're failing everybody.”

Modernization will remain an ongoing task, as this system will likely add new features and will also need to comply with new regulations and laws passed by the state legislature. The agency will never stop moving forward, Shultz said.

“If you think you’re done, you have failed,” she said.

]]>