STATE-BY-STATE
News from across the USA
ALABAMA Dothan: A music festival that brought big names to Alabama is ending after a fiveyear run. The Dothan Eagle reports that the Toadlick Music Festival won’t be held this year.
ALASKA Juneau: Columbus Day would be known as Indigenous Peoples Day in Alaska under a measure in the state legislature. Columbus Day falls on the second Monday in October.
ARIZONA Phoenix: Arizona lawmakers are working on a plan to lease parts of the state mental hospital in Phoenix and its 93acre grounds to private providers. Department of Health Services Director Cara Christ says the agency wants to build a Center for Psychiatric Excellence on hospital grounds.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: Pulaski Technical College’s merger with the University of Arkansas System is official. Both schools approved the merger last year.
CALIFORNIA Los Angeles: Los Angeles County health officials say they’ve identified four cases of an infection linked to contaminated heart surgery equipment. All four patients survived. The patients had surgeries in 2014 and 2015.
COLORADO Fort Collins: A former nurse withdrew his not guilty plea to charges related to the sexual assault of three hospital patients who were sedated at the time of the abuse. The Colora
doan reports that Thomas Mark Moore remains jailed in Larimer County.
CONNECTICUT Hartford: A teenager accused of setting five fires in Enfield has pleaded guilty to arson. Davidson Izzo, 18, admitted setting two barn fires in a plea deal.
DELAWARE Harrington: Delaware police say a Felton man faces his seventh drunken driving charge. Joseph Dopirak Jr., 50, was stopped last month and taken into custody after a field sobriety test.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Some 95% of the housekeepers and guest-room workers at President Trump’s downtown Washington hotel have voted to unionize, The
Washington Post reports. Bartenders, servers, porters and other workers will vote next.
FLORIDA Miami: Federal authorities charged more than 100 people last week with numerous identity theft and fraud offenses in a Florida crackdown. The charges range from filing false tax returns to taking over bank and credit card accounts.
GEORGIA Appling: A Columbia County middle school teacher is charged with failing to report suspected child abuse. The mother of a 14-year-old girl discovered Snapchat messages between her daughter and the teacher. One of them stated that the girl had been sexually assaulted by her father.
HAWAII Wailuku: Molokai’s unemployment office is losing its sole employee. Chocho Kaupu’s retirement leaves residents of the island with the state’s highest unemployment rate without access to face-to-face services when filing claims, The Maui
News reports.
IDAHO Moscow: Police in Moscow are telling residents to stop calling in with moose sightings. The agency says it’s well aware that moose are in the city and there’s no need to report one unless it poses an immediate safety threat.
ILLINOIS Paxton: Police have closed without an arrest in the case of a dog that was shot and tied to an Illinois bridge with his mouth taped closed so he wouldn’t bark. The (Bloomington)
Pantagraph reports that the Lab mix survived and lives with a new owner.
INDIANA Portage: The Portage City Council is calling for the mayor to resign after he was charged with tax evasion and bribery. The (Northwest Indiana)
Times reports that Mayor James Snyder’s trial is scheduled for April 10.
IOWA Mitchellville: Nearly 230 inmates at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women were relocated to temporary housing after the heat in their unit went out when the outside temperature was about 25 degrees.
KANSAS Manhattan: A ferret is recovering after being fitted with a pacemaker last week during a rare surgery at Kansas State University. The pacemaker had to be special ordered because of the animal’s small size.
KENTUCKY Frankfort: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has signed an order giving people with criminal records a “fair chance” to get state government jobs. The order removes a box for applicants to check if they have a criminal record.
LOUISIANA Bossier City: Police arrested a suburban Shreveport couple after authorities say their five children tested positive for marijuana and cocaine exposure. The children range in age from 6 months to 10 years old.
MAINE Portland: A prosecutor says a plea deal with 17 Black Lives Matter protest participants who blocked traffic in Portland is off the table. A meeting between protesters and police was canceled last week when protesters demanded to gather as a single group.
MARYLAND Relay: A Guinness brewery is planned in Baltimore County. Visitors will be able to tour the brewery, sample experimental beers in the taproom and purchase Guinness merchandise.
MASSACHUSETTS Wellesley: Hillary Clinton has been chosen to give the 2017 commencement speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College. The former Democratic presidential candidate is scheduled to address the graduating class on May 26.
MICHIGAN Detroit: A man who was released from prison for a wrongful conviction says he wants to help Detroit’s youth avoid life behind bars. The Detroit
News reports that Davontae Sanford launched a nonprofit called Innocent Dreams to provide GED and job skills training.
MINNESOTA Minneapolis: Lawyers for over 700 people committed indefinitely to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program are asking the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a panel’s ruling that the program is constitutional. Hardly anyone is ever released from the program.
MISSISSIPPI Jackson: Jackson State University will pay $1.17 million to settle claims that it didn’t keep records on how it spent National Science Foundation grants, and then faked the records given to auditors.
MISSOURI Jefferson City: Gov. Eric Greitens has nominated the first female superintendent to lead the Missouri Highway Patrol in its 81-year history. Lt. Col. Sandy Karsten’s appointment needs state Senate confirmation.
MONTANA Helena: More than 1,000 people rallied in the Montana Capitol last week against federal land transfers. The In
dependent Record reports that opponents of such transfers to state control worry about the land ending up under private ownership.
NEBRASKA Lincoln: Nebraska lawmakers are looking to expand a pilot program designed to keep more neglected children with their families as long as steps are taken to keep them safe. The program in 57 counties is aimed at parents deemed a low risk to hurt their children.
NEVADA Las Vegas: The new head of athletic training of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights is a veteran Cirque du Soleil staffer. Jay Mellette also will serve as director of sports performance for the first major sports team to call Las Vegas home.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: New Hampshire could soon be home to one of the largest solar projects in the region. The town of Hinsdale has conditionally approved building a solar field up to 65 megawatts on a 400-acre site. The project would power as many as 19,500 homes.
NEW JERSEY Linden: Authorities say a Linden High School student is responsible for sending threatening social media posts that spurred a lengthy lockdown at the school last week.
NEW MEXICO Santa Fe: New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has vetoed $800,000 in emergency funding for jury trials. Martinez says public discussion of how courts can operate more efficiently is needed first.
NEW YORK Cornell: Cornell University officials say the school will use a household products company’s $150 million gift to bolster the college’s business schools. H. Fisk Johnson, chairman and CEO of Racine, Wis.based S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., received his undergraduate degree from Cornell.
NORTH CAROLINA Benson: North Carolina transportation workers found six peepholes in two rest area men’s restrooms on Interstate 40. No peepholes were found in women’s bathrooms at those rest areas.
NORTH DAKOTA Halliday: This North Dakota town of 230 residents is getting its U.S. post office back after it closed last year. Service was moved to Golden Valley, nearly 20 miles away, but hours were limited and inconvenient for some workers, The
Bismarck Tribune reports.
OHIO Marietta: The Bureau of Land Management says it will make more land available at auction next month for oil-andgas drilling leases in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest. The Co
lumbus Dispatch reports that the online auction March 23 is for nearly 1,200 acres.
OKLAHOMA Tulsa: Oklahoma has been placed under a national fire advisory. Much of the state is struggling with persistent drought and tinder-dry vegetation capable of igniting and quickly spreading out of control.
OREGON Salem: Oregon hazelnut growers harvested 40% more nuts in 2016 than the year before,
The Capital Press reports.
PENNSYLVANIA Malvern: Immaculata University near Philadelphia has chosen its first lay president in its 97-year-history. Barbara Lettiere, a 1972 graduate, is the school’s 10th president.
RHODE ISLAND Providence: Children in Rhode Island public schools would no longer need a doctor’s note to bring in sunscreen under a bill moving through the state legislature. The
Providence Journal reports that a student who came home from a field trip sunburned because she wasn’t allowed to have sunscreen prompted the legislation.
SOUTH CAROLINA Columbia: The director of South Carolina’s transportation department says road deterioration is so bad that it’ll take a decade just to climb out of the maintenance hole. Director Christy Hall says roughly $28 billion is needed over the next 25 years.
SOUTH DAKOTA Deadwood: A broken water line sent more than 70,000 gallons rushing through the first floor of the Deadwood Comfort Inn & Suites last week.
The Rapid City Journal reports at least $60,000 in damage to the 69-room hotel and casino.
TENNESSEE Nashville: The federal government is investigating sexual violence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The Ten
nessean reports that the investigation began Jan. 13. It’s not known what prompted it.
TEXAS Austin: Travis County officials have approved a $500,000 payment to a judge who was shot and seriously wounded outside her Austin home in 2015. Judge Julie Kocurek said she doesn’t think authorities appropriately handled a tip from an informant about a judge being a target.
UTAH Salt Lake City: A bill in the Utah legislature would send people to jail for harassing farm animals with drones, all-terrain vehicles and even dogs. The sponsor, rancher Scott Chew, says farmers incur significant costs when livestock are injured.
VERMONT Brattleboro: A man who admitted robbing multiple banks in Vermont and New Hampshire in 2015 is headed to prison. Matthew Martin, 32, of Weathersfield, was sentenced last week to 15 years behind bars and ordered to pay more than $25,000 in restitution.
VIRGINIA Waynesboro: Officials in this Shenandoah Valley city are unhappy that it isn’t guaranteed funding from a proposed $50 million environmental settlement. The money is to make up for toxic mercury that DuPont released for decades into the South River, The News Leader reports.
WASHINGTON Bellingham: A 10-foot-tall wolf carving, a totem pole marking a grave and other sacred items were stolen from the Lummi Reservation last week.
The Bellingham Herald reports that some objects that couldn’t be removed were defaced.
WEST VIRGINIA Wheeling: Wheeling Jesuit University has named Debra Townsley as its interim president. Townsley most recently served five years as president of William Peace University in Raleigh, N.C.
WISCONSIN Madison: Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to boost funding for Wisconsin’s rural schools is winning praise. Director John Forester of the School Administrators Alliance says the biggest priority for rural schools is an increase in the per-pupil revenue cap.
WYOMING Cheyenne: A man charged with stealing an unmarked patrol vehicle parked in front a Laramie County deputy’s home faces three to five years in prison. The Wyoming Tribune
Eagle reports that the vehicle, which had weapons inside, was found abandoned at a McDonald’s restaurant.