The Biggest Issues to Watch in 2022 – Governing

Gavin Newsoms new budget is enormous. On Jan. 10, Californias Democratic governor unveiled a budget plan that includes $286.4 billion in spending. That amount tops last years budget already of record size by more than $20 billion. His proposed spending spree is possible thanks to the states surplus, which currently stands at $45.7 billion.

Californias numbers are outsized, as ever, but they arent unusual. Thanks to federal largesse and unexpectedly robust revenues, states across the country are enjoying a budget season thats not just rosy but would have been essentially unimaginable when 2021 began. In a typical year, we might have $300 million or $400 million of discretionary spending decisions to make, said Colorado state Sen. Chris Hansen. This year we basically have $4 billion.

So much money sloshing around is driving dreams of spending for programs old and new, while also leading to promises of tax cuts from Republican and Democratic governors alike. Idaho GOP Gov. Brad Little, for example, has proposed increasing school spending by 11 percent while cutting taxes by more than $600 million. Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, wants to raise pay for state employees by 5 percent, while also offering a one-time supplement of 2.5 percent to offset inflation.

Still, as lawmakers craft budgets this year, its clearly a good moment. States are in as good fiscal shape as theyve been, certainly since before the Great Recession, says Tim Storey, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Their revenues are bursting through their estimates.

Money isnt the only thing that matters. The omicron wave offers a reminder that the pandemic, about to enter its third year, is not over. Even Democratic politicians have mostly grown wary of shutdowns and mandates, but states are having to respond to the ongoing health challenges in all sorts of ways, from sending National Guard troops to help out in hospitals to supplying vaccinations and at-home test kits. As they gather in 2022, legislatures themselves are already watching recent history repeat itself, with some lawmakers meeting remotely while others have shown up at the capitol infected.

Meanwhile, culture wars are running hot. The Supreme Court will soon rule on a pair of abortion bans. Justices appear unlikely to uphold a Texas law that allows private individuals to sue abortion providers and facilitators, but most observers expect theyll use a Mississippi case either to overturn or gut the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion access the law of the land. A dozen states have trigger laws in place to end abortion rights as soon as the court allows. Conversely, on the same day that Newsom unveiled his budget, New Jerseys Legislature passed a bill to enshrine abortion rights in that state.

Schools have become a battlefield, with more Republican legislators looking to limit the ways in which the nations racial history can be taught in schools. Last year was a banner year for private school choice programs. That momentum may continue, given the anger many parents have felt about curriculum and COVID-19 closures.

All these issues and more are happening against the backdrop of an election year. The redistricting process is complete in a majority of states, with the clear loser being competition. There will be even fewer competitive seats left at the congressional or legislative levels. Republicans, who already control a majority of governorships and legislative chambers and seats, can hardly wait until November, convinced they will make more gains given the typical midterm backlash against the presidents party.

Meanwhile, the parties are still arguing about the 2020 election. Republican investigations and audits are continuing in states such as Wisconsin and Texas. For all the laws GOP state legislators passed last year that were designed to ensure election integrity, polling shows that increasing numbers of Republican voters think the game is fixed.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, voters are convinced that Republicans are seeking to rig the rules to ensure their partys victory in 2024. Bidens recent call to change Senate filibuster rules and allow passage of renewed voting rights legislation at the congressional level looks unlikely to be persuasive. The persistent failure of Congress to pass such bills over the past year left the door open for states to enact dozens of voting laws, both restrictive and expansive.

In 2022, whether its addressing elections or climate or energy or immigration or cybersecurity states will continue to be highly active, even as Congress remains mired in its habitual gridlock.

Alan Greenblatt

Additionally, four states have passed amendments explicitly stating that their state constitution does not protect the right to abortion or allow public funds to be used for abortion. By December of 2021, 19 states had enacted restrictions on abortion, the most in any year since Roe v. Wade.

Besides Mississippi, other states have taken legislative action to neuter abortion. Last September, Texas passed a new law that deputized citizens to enforce a ban on nearly all abortions in the state (the Supreme Court is expected to rule against this law). In fact, 2021 was a record year for abortion restrictions, the most in any year since Roe v. Wade was decided back in 1973.

Nearly one in five pregnancies ends in abortion. By some estimates, one in four American women will have an abortion during their lifetime. Legal since Roe v. Wade, rates of abortion have been anything but steady. In the decade following Roe, the rate of abortion rose by 60 percent, peaking in 1983 at 30.4 per 100 women aged 15-44. The rate has since dropped to 13.5 in 2017, the last year figures are available, the lowest rate recorded since abortion was legalized in 1973.

The decline in abortions has occurred in every region of the country, whether states have acted to restrict or support access. Access to clinics has become increasingly difficult in some parts of the country. The number of clinics has increased in the Northeast and West, while declining in the Midwest and South. Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia each have only one remaining abortion provider. A reduction in the number of clinics, however, has not resulted in a corresponding reduction in the rate of abortion.

In 2017, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Florida had the highest abortion rates. Rates were lowest in Wyoming, South Dakota, Kentucky, Idaho and Missouri. However, many individuals cross state lines to get an abortion. In the five states with the lowest rates, nearly a third of those seeking an abortion go out of state.

Just as some states have moved to restrict abortion rights, so too have a number of other states moved to shore up support for abortion rights and access without relying on Roe. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books that protect the right to abortion. Twelve states explicitly permit abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the health and life of the mother.

In the last weeks of 2021, the federal government lifted restrictions on so-called abortion pills, allowing patients to receive the medication by mail, rather than in person from a doctors office, clinic or hospital. This development comes at a time when the use of medication abortion is on the rise, even as abortion rates in general are in decline. Medication abortion now accounts for two of every five abortions in the U.S. The majority of abortions in some states are medication abortions. Eight states enacted restrictions to medication abortion in 2021 and more are expected to follow.

However the Supreme Court rules on Mississippis challenge to Roe, the coming year is certain to see continued activity at the state level as well as ramifications for congressional elections and the presidential race two years beyond.

David Kidd

In recent years, state programs have received applications in excess of available funds, says Anna Read, senior officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts Broadband Access Initiative. State grant programs to date have focused on expansion of last-mile infrastructure to unserved areas, she says. Stimulus dollars are enabling states to allocate funds for other purposes, including mapping, public space connectivity, free wireless broadband for public housing residents, municipal broadband pilots and planning.

Looking ahead for 2022, broadband expansion faces a number of stumbling blocks that include supply chain issues and a need for more workers to build, deploy and maintain broadband services, says Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive officer of NTCAThe Rural Broadband Association. Focus on training and apprenticeship could address the latter need.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) included $65 billion for broadband expansion. The majority of that money, $42.5 billion, will fund a grant program to be administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). NTIA has a huge task ahead in an area where they do not have staff or expertise, says Bloomfield. Look for growing pains there.

Each state will receive at least $100 million for broadband infrastructure, mapping and adoption projects, the remainder awarded on the basis of the number of underserved or high-cost locations in individual states. If a state is unable to submit an application by the funding deadline, an application can be made in its place by a political subdivision or a consortium of subdivisions.

Grant dollars wont start flowing from NTIA until 2023, but states have much to do in 2022 to be ready to get in line for them. Proposals for funding must be accompanied by a five-year state action plan that reflects meaningful coordination with local and regional entities.

If the goal of these projects is to ensure equitable access, poor data regarding coverage will thwart the best intentions, says Francella Ochillo, executive director of Next Century Cities. Its important to ask questions about how coverage data is being collected, she says, that its not just top-down from the FCC to states.

If service is available to just one household in a census tract, the FCC considers the tract to be covered, whether even one household is connected or not. We need to make sure were using bottom-up methodologies to learn from municipalities, counties, unincorporated areas, places that are finding ways to collect data on their own to inform larger data sets.

Ochillo is also concerned about the standards for connectivity speeds that are built into projects. The FCC benchmark of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, used for many projects, was established in 2015. I think its problematic to push money out the door based on a speed threshold that you know is becoming obsolete we need to make sure that our communities are able to get the best speed that is available to them.

As more municipalities incorporate broadband within their economic development planning, the issue of speed has particular significance. Its not just a matter of access to texting and email but ensuring that all citizens have access to the full range of commercial, educational and work resources necessary for 21st-century communities to remain economically viable.

Last-mile needs arent just about broadband connections. A holistic approach should encompass increasing digital literacy among users and providing devices and tech support where necessary. Its important to think from the perspective of those who are disconnected, says Ochillo, which is not necessarily the reality of those making broadband policy. What does broadband access mean if a family shares a single smartphone and can only afford so much data?

If short-term federal funds are a big part of the reason that broadband becomes affordable to low-income citizens, jurisdictions will have to think about long-term strategies to keep prices down. We need to remind policymakers that building broadband may be sexy, but maintaining those networks and keeping them affordable will be just as important, says Bloomfield.

ARPA and IIJA dollars are the most significant broadband investments to date, says Pews Anna Read. A lot is still to be determined about how this funding will be prioritized and used, but it does create an opportunity to make real progress in closing remaining gaps in broadband access and adoption.

Carl Smith

Offices that hoped to have workers return in person in the new year have delayed opening fully yet again. Just before Christmas, several of the nations most prestigious universities, including Harvard and Stanford, announced that theyre moving classes back online for at least the start of spring semester. The University of Illinois delayed its start by one week, while the University of Virginia announced that faculty and students would be required to have booster shots to return to campus. K-12 schools, at least in some jurisdictions, have also returned to remote learning while a well-publicized standoff in Chicago that led to temporary school closures but that is something the vast majority of districts are determined to avoid.

Closures offer a strong sense of deja vu, but they are not the rule. The public and political will for strict lockdowns is now part of the past. Even many Democratic governors have lost their appetite for measures such as mask mandates. After two years, people arent reacting well to an ongoing environment of fear, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in December. You cant, at the end of the day, force people to do something they dont want to do, he said. Public health doesnt get to tell people what they want to wear. Its just not their job.

The mask and vaccine mandates that are in place continue to face challenges in court. Republican attorneys general are still battling the Biden administrations requirements for vaccinations or frequent testing for most workers, in a challenge that reached the Supreme Court. Let me be clear I will never force you to get the vaccine, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted in November. Why? Because you can be trusted to make good and responsible decisions.

More than 90 percent of Democratic adults have received at least one coronavirus vaccination, compared with 60 percent of Republicans. Only elderly Republicans are as likely as the youngest Democrats to be vaccinated. In Texas where President Biden carried just 22 of the 254 counties in 2020 17 of the 20 counties with the highest vaccination rates all voted for the Democrat. This divergence has led to a sizable partisan gap in death rates, one likely to worsen as the omicron variant spreads and infects millions more. In 2021, we started to see more of a divergence, and 2022 is potentially going to be even worse, unless we can pull it back from the intense politics, says Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

Even as omicron cases spike, there is some good news. Late last year, the federal Food and Drug Administration approved the use of two anti-viral pills. One, manufactured by Pfizer, reduced the risk of hospitalization in clinical trials of infected patients by 88 percent. Increasing supply to meet the enormous demand will be a big task, but finally treatments are available that should make a real difference.

All of this means that the pandemic continues to present challenges to state and local governments running vaccination clinics, supplying at-home test kits, sending the National Guard in to help in strapped hospitals. Some states are planning to send additional stimulus checks to residents whose economic fortunes remain crimped.

Public health officials continue to maintain that the tried-and-true methods of avoiding disease vaccination, distancing, hand hygiene, avoiding indoor crowds, masks offer the best hope for individuals to evade omicron. Theyre unhappy that about a dozen states placed curbs during the pandemic on the authority of health departments, particularly at the local level. They hope, perhaps optimistically, that lawmakers can be persuaded to strengthen local authority, while also helping to build up public health infrastructure for the longer term that will allow them to address future emergencies more capably.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other public health concerns that have received inadequate attention during the pandemic, including suicide and mental health issues, particularly among young people. Substance abuse has increased, notably abuse of opioids and alcohol. We have undervaccinated children, says Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. We didnt have that before the pandemic, but we have it now. We dont want the pandemic to be a cause for us having to deal with a lot of measles outbreaks, or other outbreaks.

Alan Greenblatt

A CNN analysis found that a diverse array of cities across the country had already broken their one-year homicide records before the close of 2021, including Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Louisville, Columbus, Albuquerque, Tucson, Rochester and Portland, Ore. A handful of others, including Austin, are on track to do the same. In some cities, including Philadelphia, the sixth largest in the country, 2022 is off to an equally bloody start.

The surge in violence is fueled almost entirely by guns. The abundance of firearms in the United States makes policing more difficult and dangerous, and officers more likely to react aggressively. But gun regulation efforts are unlikely to advance substantially in 2022, as the Supreme Court looks likely to rule in favor of gun advocates.

Although homicides began trending upwards before COVID-19 struck in 2020, it is widely believed that the immense social dislocation of the pandemic has fueled the surge in gun violence. In-depth reporting on Philadelphias horrific 2021 found that disadvantaged young people deprived of school, libraries, sports teams, youth groups and a litany of other supports were uniquely vulnerable to the maelstrom. As the pandemic continues its uncertain course, it remains to be seen if school closures or other safety measures will continue to disrupt social life or if an easing of COVID-era restrictions could finally stall spiraling violence.

Many pundits and analysts argued that Defund the Police sloganeering hurt Democrats in 2020, despite the fact that few politicians used that rhetoric. In 2021 the political ramifications of the crime wave were unclear, but it is sure to be further weaponized by Republicans. In states like Pennsylvania, where elections have been tight, statewide offices are up for contest, and crime has visibly surged in some areas; it seems likely such tactics will be widespread.

Last year, in New York City, former police officer Eric Adams won election as mayor by promising to address violence head-on. Similarly, Democratic mayoral candidates with law-and-order platforms defeated police critics in Seattle, Buffalo and Atlanta. However, the preeminent progressive district attorney in the country, Philadelphias Larry Krasner, won re-election easily while voters in Austin rejected a proposal to require the hiring of hundreds of more police officers. In Cleveland, Justin Bibb won handily by campaigning, in part, on additional civilian oversight for the police department, while progressive-backed Susan Hutson defeated the 17-year incumbent in the New Orleans sheriff race.

In 2022, criminal justice will be on the ballot again. In San Francisco, progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin faces a recall election in June. In Los Angeles, a similar effort is targeting prosecutor George Gascn, although it remains unclear if his opponents will gather the number of signatures needed to initiate the recall process. In heavily Democratic California, a victory for a recall campaign against a progressive prosecutor would be a major blow to the criminal justice reform movement.

Many other progressive prosecutors are facing re-election campaigns, including St. Louis Countys Wesley Bell, John Creuzot in Dallas, Brian Middleton in Fort Bend County, Texas, and Joe Gonzales in Bexar County, Texas (home of San Antonio). There are also races between reformers and more traditional district attorneys shaping up in Memphis and Raleigh.

A handful of big cities shifted funds away from their police departments in 2020, including Austin, Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis. But the concept of depriving police departments of funding, especially if framed as a punishment, polls poorly and few mayors are likely to pursue such a path in 2022.

There were cities where the call to defund translated into meaningful reductions in police budgets, but it wasn't widespread, says Patrick Sharkey, professor of sociology at Princeton University. In the coming year, Id guess police departments will ultimately have higher budgets than at the beginning of the pandemic. That initial momentum to defund is not persistent.

Funding social services and alternatives to police law enforcement polls much more strongly than defunding. New York and California plan to allocate funds to support violence interrupters and other community-based interventions. In Philadelphia, unarmed traffic wardens are replacing police officers for regulation of some street offenses while alternative first responder programs were established in San Antonio and Dallas during the pandemic, and in 2022 other cities may follow their example.

Jake Blumgart

Economists expect many of these features to remain a persistent part of the economic landscape in 2022, although in a more muted fashion than last year. Policymaking in D.C. is likely to be more conservative, with as many as four interest rate hikes possible this year and far less fiscal spending forecasted. Even if some version of President Joe Bidens Build Back Better bill does pass it is not likely to inject much money into the economy in the short term, unlike 2021s American Rescue Plan Act.

You likely will continue to see inflation above the Feds two percent target for a lot of 2022, but not the kind seen in the second half of 2021, says Alex Williams, research analyst with Employ America. That is going to play a major role in fiscal spending decisions at the federal level and maybe at the state level.

The politics of inflation are believed to have weighed on the Democrats in the 2021 elections, where Republicans won one of two governors races. Concerns over price rises are one of the reasons that U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin gave for setting back the presidents major social spending and climate change bill, evidence that a more conservative fiscal attitude may be winning out. Inflation is likely to be a persistent line of attack for Republicans in the 2022 midterms.

Supporters of Bidens spending plans say that many of his priorities could ease inflation in the medium-to-long term, enhancing productivity through investments in child care, sick pay and clean energy. We may never find out if they are right, but the president made a similar argument about his infrastructure bill and local leaders are already planning projects with those funds to ease supply chain issues. But the fruits of such spending are unlikely to be seen in 2022.

The National Association of Counties points to investments by entities like Miami-Dade County, which is expanding cargo facilities at its airport. With federal aid and local funds, Chambers County, Texas, is purchasing two purpose-built barges to facilitate the movement of tens of thousands of additional containers around the region. These are just a few examples of the local investments in physical infrastructure, even before the funds from the bipartisan law are distributed.

During the pandemic, cities quickly adjusted their zoning and street codes to accommodate restaurants and other outdoor services for safer dining. This saved many eateries, coffee shops and bars and made life much more pleasant, especially in big cities where outdoor space is at a premium. But as 2021 wore on, some cities and counties rolled back these regulatory easements. In 2022, as the pandemic rolls onward, restaurant industry and outdoor groups may go back on the offensive.

Meanwhile, wages for lower income workers surged ahead of inflation as employers had to lure people out of their homes and compete with pay raises and mass hiring by major corporations like Amazon and Walmart. Labor strikes, union drives and other worker actions saw a notable uptick, although they remained low by mid-20th-century standards. Higher income workers did not see the same wage increases, although their amassed savings from 2020 provided plenty of cushion.

Economists believe consumer spending will remain elevated in 2022 even without further federal fiscal support, as a result of the strong job market, historically low unemployment and rising wages.

Consumer spending is likely to be buoyed by strong labor markets and gross labor income growth in 2022, said Williams of Employ America. This is in contrast to the years leading up to the pandemic, which saw tightening labor markets without the kind of wage growth that were seeing right now.

In 2022, local and state policymakers will continue to compete for scarce workers with the private sector. They have a deep deficit to build back from, and it will be worth watching to see if the public-sector employment levels can return to pre-pandemic levels.

Many public-sector jobs grew increasingly stressful in the last two years, especially in health care, law enforcement and sanitation. Additionally, in 2020, many local and state governments did not replace workers who retired or quit, fearing a coming budget crunch. In some cases, layoffs were enacted.

But today, even with revenues surprisingly robust, state and local employment is still far below its early 2020 levels.

It's just gotten much more expensive to hire people, says Tracy Gordon, director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The great resignation affects the state and local sector as well. To the extent that governments want to hire people, or bring them back, they have to pay much higher salaries. And I do wonder about the sustainability of that.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that the principal concerns over inflation next year for legislative fiscal officers are that everyone will be trying to recruit teachers, police and health-care workers. In addition to competing with the private sector for workers, states and localities will also be crafting bills to entice people into the workforce and prepare them for available jobs.

Along with the usual job training programs, some states are considering higher pay and benefits like child care to help parents ease back into the labor market. Minimum-wage increases to keep pace with inflation could be a possibility in a few states, and even fewer cities. Living-wage increases for government workers are expected in 2022, in an effort to help the public sector compete for employees.

Every legislator I've been talking to is hearing about workforce problems, both for state employees and private-sector workers, says Tim Storey, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. I think many states are going to be paying a lot of attention to workforce issues in the next few months.

Jake Blumgart

The expansion of ESAs, which allow students to use public funds for private school tuition or tutoring, is a prime example of the recent growth in school choice experiments. Choice proponents expect the momentum from their breakthrough year to continue into 2022. In an election year, when most legislatures will have shorter sessions, there may not be as many new programs created as last year, but there will be continuing expansion of existing programs in choice-friendly states. School choice legislation has already been introduced this year in a long list of Republican-run states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and South Dakota.

Its also possible that changes will be pushed through the state budget process, with governors already looking to shift some federal COVID-19 dollars into ESAs. For an election year, were going to see more action on things like education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships and education measures in general, says Ben DeGrow, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, a conservative think tank in Michigan.

In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to weigh in on a religious education case with major implications. In December, the court heard a challenge against Maines policy of banning state funding for parochial schools that engage in religious instruction and activities. The state argues it is not penalizing such schools, merely refusing to subsidize them. Plaintiffs argue that the state, which offers vouchers for secular private schools, is discriminating against religion. The court is expected to decide the case this spring. Justice have been sympathetic to religious schools in other recent cases, including a 2020 decision that overruled state constitutions that ban state aid for religious schools. If they rule against Maine, it could open the door to religious school vouchers across the country.

Choice proponents believe 2022 could be decisive in another way. They believe that political momentum is on their side, pointing especially to the results of the November gubernatorial election in Virginia, in which choice issues played out in favor of newly elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. If more Republicans win on a school choice platform, it will obviously embolden choice advocates to press harder. Count me as just a little skeptical that school choice is going to be one of the most prominent political issues in the 2022 election cycle, says Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. But Republicans have pretty much embraced it and theyve committed to it, while Democrats have to figure out what their response is going to be and will have to develop a response thats more family-friendly.

Its clear that many parents are angry about whats happening in schools. They will be demanding greater transparency about curriculum, while many will also be pushing back against standardized testing. Parents are going to demand a stronger role in influencing whats taught to their kids and how its taught to them, Wolf says.

Critical race theory is only a small part of this dynamic. Nevertheless, its clear that the question of how race and racial history is taught will continue to be a flash point issue. Nine states passed bans on the teaching of critical race theory in 2021, although Arizonas ban was overturned by the state Supreme Court in November. Expect at least twice as many states to consider similar legislation in 2022.

The state bans are quite broad and limit the way subjects such as slavery and structural racism are taught. Opponents of the bans have noted that critical race theory, an academic doctrine taught largely in graduate and law schools, is entirely absent from K-12 curricula. They are angry about schools and libraries removing a broad range of books not just about race but also gender identity and sexual orientation from the shelves. Nevertheless, the push will continue. In December, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he wants to allow parents and other private individuals including corporate employees who undergo diversity training to file lawsuits against teachers or others who run afoul of the proposed legislations definition of critical race theory.

Aside from the hot-button issues, schools are still struggling with how to deal with learning losses caused by disruptions from the pandemic. Helping kids make up for lost classroom time has been difficult and may become more so, as some districts revert to online and hybrid learning due to omicron outbreaks. Total school enrollment, including higher education, dropped by 2.9 million from 2019 to 2020, according to the Census Bureau. College and preschool enrollments dropped to their lowest levels in decades, while K-12 enrollment fell by roughly 2 million.

Theres been an assumption that most of those kids will come back, once the pandemic is truly in the nations rearview mirror. But its possible that many are now permanently in charters and home schooling and are lost to traditional public schools. To the extent that parents are angry at their neighborhood schools, its clear that, at least in red states, they can count on having more options available in the future.

Alan Greenblatt

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), more than 3,500 election bills have been introduced during the past year, over a thousand more than the average over the past decade. Only 285 were enacted, consistent with the 300 or so seen in earlier years. But tensions cant be expected to ease.

Local election officials expect even more public attention to their work in the coming year, says Ricky Hatch, the clerk/auditor for Weber County, Utah. While transparency is crucial and welcome, election administration is complex. The past year saw numerous examples where routine processes were seized upon as smoking guns by observers who didnt understand what they were seeing. Im also concerned about knee-jerk legislation that is based on inaccurate information or sensationalized anecdotes, says Hatch.

The number of Americans who voted by mail in 2020 doubled, reaching 46 percent. Although some characterized this as an invitation to fraud, there was more legislative action in 2021 to increase mail voting than to restrict it. Its unknown how much public health concerns will color the 2022 midterm elections but that possibility, combined with greater public enthusiasm for voting by mail, could prompt adjustments to ballot deadlines and the time allowed to count mail ballots before election day. A voting rights bill before Congress could protect against restrictions on voting access, but its path forward is uncertain.

Legislative and executive actions taken in 2020 to accommodate COVID-19 have lapsed or expired and legislation has been proposed in some states to prohibit practices such as extending absentee voting to at-risk populations. The challenge then becomes creating safe ways for voters to cast their ballot in states that do not have election administration laws that facilitate safe voting, says Brianna Lennon, the clerk for Boone County, Mo.

While the legislation passed to date may not reframe the 2022 voter experience in most states as drastically as feared, attempts to shift authority over certification of vote counts are a different matter. These can give officials with limited understanding of the processes involved in ballot collection and counting the authority to override results, and the will of voters. Do you want your legislature looking over the shoulder of your election officials? asks Wendy Underhill of NCSL. Maybe thats the job of the secretary of state.

Partisan efforts can have unintended consequences, says Tammy Patrick, a former election official and senior adviser to the Democracy Fund. Control of a legislature that seizes authority over certification can shift; voters from both parties can have trouble with voter ID or prefer to vote by mail. Too often, she says, "politicians believe they understand what the situation is, and they have it wrong.

Threats and hostility prompted an unusual number of election officials to leave their jobs in 2021. A bill proposed in Washington state would criminalize such harassment. For officials who remain in their positions, disinformation and mistrust are reinforcing a commitment to free and fair elections and leading to new collaborations with colleagues, private-sector leaders, academics and nonprofit organizations.

Risk-limiting audits can play a significant role in convincing voters that vote tallies are accurate. Already required by statute or being piloted in 15 states, they are expected to become more common and more prominently publicized in the coming year. We could add a statewide risk-limiting audit to the certification process and that would create a two-step process to verify all results, says Lennon.

As Lennon puts it, election officials need to take back the space, replacing false narratives with the truth about their work and its complexity, precision and reliability. This is often best accomplished through personal contact with the public, tours of processing facilities, presentations to community groups and schools or interaction with individual voters.

Ive been able to turn people around a little bit or make them feel more comfortable about what we do, says Carly Koppes, the clerk and recorder for Weld County, Colo.

Thats what we are going to have to continue to do, but were also going to continue to figure out how many other ways we can do that.

Carl Smith

Demand for green energy is being driven by emission reduction targets set by government as well as private-sector attention to environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG), says Marlene Motyka, U.S. and global renewable energy leader for Deloitte, a market research firm.

Tech companies such as Google and Amazon that are driving the growth of energy-intensive data centers are also demanding green energy to match their footprint, says Steve Piper, director of energy research, S&P Global Market and Intelligence. Jurisdictions that want to attract them and the companies that are following their lead on clean energy, such as Walmart and McDonalds, need to have policies that facilitate development and procurement of it.

In 2022 and beyond, state and local governments will grapple with siting of projects as renewable generation becomes a bigger part of the power mix, says Piper. Utility-scale projects can create land use controversies in states or crowded metropolitan areas with limited open space, or if projects involve agricultural land. Rooftop solar and microgrids can help address this and governments will need to adjust policies to get the mix of applications right, he says.

Energy demand continues to rise, driven by data centers, electric vehicles and cryptocurrency. Another driver is electricity use from indoor cannabis cultivation, which is approaching that of data centers. A lighting module for four plants can use as much electricity as 29 refrigerators.

Kim Chelsak, director of code for New Buildings Institute, expects to see more attention to building electrification in 2022, whether through codes, gas ban ordinances or building performance standards tied to carbon reduction targets. Attention to building grid integration will also increase, she says, updating building systems so that they can talk to the power grid and balance energy demand, on-site generation and storage, and act as grid resources if needed.

Smarter buildings are only one piece of what will be required to ensure the nations electricity grid can accommodate escalating clean energy production and demand. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes $73 billion to improve grid infrastructure capacity, resilience and cybersecurity.

According to a Net Zero America study from Princeton University, a 60 percent increase in high-voltage transmission capacity is needed by 2030 in order to accommodate the additional clean energy inputs required in high electrification. This would require a $360 billion investment, it says.

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The Biggest Issues to Watch in 2022 - Governing