NCSL Podcasts NCSL

It's budget season in state legislatures, and we sat down with two experts on state budgets to discuss the key steps in the budgeting process, revenue estimates and the overall state of state budgets going into the new fiscal year.

Two legislators join the podcast to discuss why they sponsored legislation to abolish fees and fines for juveniles in the court system, and why those changes were needed.

Two experts on the nation’s drug overdose crisis join the podcast to discuss how state and federal governments are tackling the problem that has led to more than 110,000 deaths in the 12-month period that ended last September. The vast majority of those deaths, near 80%, involved fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.

State legislatures in blue and red states are taking up measures to protect children on social media, especially because Congress has been unable to agree on solutions and the evidence of harm to young users continues to mount. It's a complicated problem and most of the states' laws are being challenged in court by a trade association and other groups who believe they are unconstitutional.

Part of modernizing the nation’s electric grid involves adding long-distance transmission lines. On this episode, we talk with Melissa Birchard, a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy, who explained the need for new transmission lines to bring renewable energy from remote areas of the country to the cities and towns where it’s needed.

Don Kettl, an expert on federalism, joined the podcast to discuss the current state of power sharing between the state and federal governments, why he sees states increasingly at the center of domestic policymaking, and how he expects the balance of federalism to shift in the coming decades.