State Resources for Policymakers and Advocates

Essential Reading on Fiscal Accountability

Accountability is the monthly newsletter of the Business Incentives Reform Clearinghouse. Managed by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) and funded by the Ford Foundation, the Clearinghouse provides policymakers with the latest ideas on how to encourage greater disclosure and increase accountability when they create business tax incentives. Articles in Accountability explore issues such as sprawl subsidies, incentives to benefit the environment, international policies, and the care and feeding of state tax bases. In addition to archiving the newsletter, the Clearinghouse’s website connects visitors to a wealth of resources including policy models and incentives-related legislation, insightful case studies, an overview of business incentives and needed reforms, current reading and research, and links to other resources. To download Accountability and for more information, visit http://www.cfed.org/sustainable_economies
/business_incentives/

Welfare Rules Database Simplifies TANF Research
Online Resource Helping Legislators Put TANF Dollars to Work

Since the early 1990s, researchers and policy- makers have had an increasingly difficult time understanding how states operate their cash assistance programs for needy families. The complexity of welfare programs increased in the early 1990s, as more states received waivers to experiment with their welfare programs. Given the difficulties associated with researching state TANF policies, there was a need to establish a single location where the broad range of welfare stakeholders could research information on program rules across states and across time. The Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism project responded to that need in 1997 with the creation of the Welfare Rules Database (WRD). The WRD provides a comprehensive, sophisticated resource for anyone comparing cash assistance programs between all 50 states, researching changes in cash assistance rules within a single state, or simply looking for the most up-to-date information on the rules governing cash assistance in one state.
To take advantage of this resource, visit
http://newfederalism.urban.org/WRD/WRDWelcome.CFM

Children’s Mental Health Needs Neglected

One in 10 children and adolescents suffer from severe mental illness, while less than 20 percent receive required treatment according to a newly released Surgeon General’s report, A National Action Agenda for Children’s Mental Health. To address this public health crisis, the report calls for several action steps that include implementing comprehensive prevention and treatment services, creating a mental health care infrastructure to increase coordination and consistency among providers, continuing research, and connecting findings to specific policy measures. For a copy of the Surgeon General’s report, see http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/cmh/childreport.htm.

Mental health treatment and services tend to be fragmented and inequitable across the country. CPA’s recent policy brief, Mental Health Parity: State of the States, takes a look at state-based mental health policies that can improve access to quality mental health care, especially for the uninsured. The policy brief is one in a series for the Kellogg Foundation initiative – Community Voices. For more information, contact Bernie Horn at [email protected] or 202-956-5135.

New Guidebook Identifies Steps States Can Take to Help Millions of Eligible Children Gain Health Coverage

A new report has been published that can aid progressive legislators interested in accelerating enrollment for the increasing number of uninsured children into SCHIP and Medicaid. The guidebook, Putting Express Lane Eligibility into Practice, describes how states can take advantage of the fact that over 70 percent of all low-income uninsured children live in families that participate in school lunch, WIC, food stamps, or unemployment compensation programs. The report, released by the Children’s Partnership and the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, explains how to facilitate the enrollment process for uninsured children by leveraging the extensive eligibility information submitted from other public assistance program applications. For a copy of the report, tools and fact sheets for states wishing to implement Express Lane Eligibility, visit http://www.childrenspartnership.org/express_lane.