State Legislatures Furthering Their Agendas By Overruling City Officials

Newswise — When Texas A&M University Professors Ann Bowman and Kent Portney examined interactions between state legislatures and city governments, they found numerous cases of state legislatures taking action to thwart the policies and programs created by their respective cities. They found in recent years, it’s almost always Republican-controlled state legislatures overruling the acts of Democratic or progressive city officials. “Where actions of local governments were once considered superior to those of other levels of government because they are ‘closer to the people,’ many state legislatures and governors have seemingly decided that their respective ideologies and views about the meaning of ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ are superior to those of city officials,” the professors say.