CALIFORNIA

• The CALIFORNIA STATE ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES is encouraging its members to get the message out sooner rather than later this session. Political campaigns for the fall are likely to shorten the legislative session and speed it up.
  
  CSAC wants the state to address: an $11 billion backlog in street and county road repairs; a redesign of the state-local financial relationship to include reliable funding streams; reform of the trial court personnel system; and a secure, permanent source for funding flood control projects.
  
  “There are many ways to get your points across, but nothing can take the place of personal visits with state legislators,” CSAC President Steve Perez, a KERN COUNTY supervisor, wrote in the May/June issue of California County.

FLORIDA

• MIAMI-DADE COUNTY officials are debating what should be done about the Miami International Airport. The commission controls the airport and its $500 million annual budget.
  
  A panel appointed by Mayor Alex Penelas to study the issue has recommended that the airport should be run by an independent panel. This would isolate the airport from politics.
  
  Penelas and Commissioner Miguel Diaz de la Portilla have competing plans of how best to formulate a panel to run the airport. The two men are both vying for the mayor’s office in September.

NEBRASKA

• You are getting sleepy. Sleeeeepyyyy.
  
  Now, when I snap my fingers, you will discuss LB 628, legislation that addresses accessing public documents filed with government offices. LB 628 …
  
  When the NEBRASKA ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES held its annual workshop for clerks, treasurers, election commissioners and registers of deeds in June, they broke up the full agenda of official business with a performance by Ray Thompson, hypnotist.
  
  No word from the Nebraska association if any of the clerks left for home clucking like chickens…

NORTH CAROLINA

• Those who meditate in MECKLENBURG COUNTY can focus on two things now. Add to “the sound of one hand clapping,” “the sound of a no-flush toilet flushing.”
  
  The county’s parks department is installing 10 waterless, no-flush urinals at Memorial Stadium. Its part of a bigger effort to get citizens to conserve water.
  
  Each toilet stands to save the county 45,000 gallons of water a year. If they work out well, no-flush toilets could be showing up in all the parks department’s facilities.

Pennsylvania

• They haven’t lost their marbles in ALLEGHENY COUNTY. If anything, they’re in complete control of them.
  
  The county has produced 28 national marbles champions since 1923 and officials have high hopes that number 29 is on his or her way to Wildwood, New Jersey, home of the Marbles Hall of Fame.
  
  Andrew Stoyer, 11, and Larin Miler, 12, both won a trip to the national tournament by besting more than 250 other players in the county parks division’s marbles tournament in the courtyard of the County Courthouse.
  
  This is the 77th annual tournament, which means the county has been home to more than one-third of all national marbles champs.

TENNESSEE

• County officials in the state are watching as two locomotives approach each other at full speed. Estimated time of impact? July 1.
  
  That’s when the state will shut down if some sort of compromise isn’t reached over the state’s budget. The sticking point is a proposed state income tax. The revenue would be used to balance the $18 billion budget.
  
  There’s talk of using the $202 million the state is expecting from the national tobacco settlement to balance the budget, but state Attorney General Paul Summers is balking at that idea. An appeal could delay the money, he said.
  
  Meanwhile, legislators are split about whether they should work on an interim budget to avert a train wreck if a larger compromise can’t be found.

VIRGINIA

• Fetal library cards? Where else but FAIRFAX COUNTY, one of the wealthiest, most highly educated counties in the nation. The card is registered to “Baby Young,” the soon-to-be daughter of Robert and Christine Young of Herndon.
  
  So, how does a fetus go about applying for a library card? Turns out Louise Young, the paternal grandmother to be, applied for the card. She had the idea when she read about the county’s Millennium Baby Project, which gave library cards to the first 5,000 babies to arrive this year.
  
  “It shows how much the library cares about its community,” Louise Young said.
  
  Baby Young is expected to enter the world on July 14, when her library privileges will officially begin.
  
  “Although Fairfax County Public Library has no minimum age for obtaining a card, this is the youngest person I have ever registered,” said Sharon Scott, the library’s circulation manager. “As far as I know, it is the first issued to a child before birth.”
  
  
• Not all water fights happen on playgrounds, and probably few of them go to the Supreme Court for resolution. But that’s not the case in a standoff between Virginia and the State of Maryland over a FAIRFAX COUNTY water plan.
  
  The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to become involved in a dispute that pits the two states in a fight over water rights in the Potomac River. The Potomac, which forms the boundary between Maryland and Virginia, was given to the State of Maryland in 1632 by King Charles I of England.
  
  Maryland has refused to grant permission to the Fairfax County Water Authority to build a pipeline to the middle of the river. The Fairfax authority, which draws water from a pipe closer to the river’s edge, says it needs the pipe to access better quality water.
  
  Underlying the dispute is a clash in philosophies over growth in the two states. Maryland’s Gov. Parris Glendening has made a name for himself as a champion of “smart growth.” Meanwhile, Virginia’s Gov. Gilmore has discouraged curbs on development.
  
  And speaking of the Fairfax County Water Authority, it recently became the first water authority in the country to receive a AAA bond rating.

WASHINGTON

• The PIERCE COUNTY Council just turned up the heat on criminals running methamphetamine labs. The council unanimously passed an ordinance declaring meth labs an epidemic.
  
  The ordinance has bite to go with its bark. The county authorized $1 million to beef up the team that busts the labs and prosecutes the meth makers.
  
  “This ordinance is a major step forward to help us meet this most critical need of our community,” said Sarah Casada, who chairs the council.
  
  The county is already busting a lab “every other day,” Councilmember Wendell Brown said, adding that “this is a war situation.”