B&G REPORT.

“This is the last B&G Report we’ll be publishing in 2025 (the next new column will appear in this space on January 12, 2026 )  And so, we thought it only appropriate for us to look back at the columns we’ve done over the last year to pick out ten of our favorites – and provide them to our readers who may have missed them the first time around. Take a look, and as NBC used to say  in a campaign to get people to watch its reruns, “If you haven’t seen it, it's new to you.”   Unc

For well over 30 years, we’ve been researching, analyzing and writing about state and local government for a whole variety of publications and organizations. Our most significant foray into this field began when we were covering management issues for Governing Magazine from 1997 to 2019. We left Governing at a time when it briefly appeared that it was going to cease publication, to do similar coverage for Route Fifty. We held onto that gig until 2024, at which point it cut ba

Today is the first day of Public Service Recognition Week and since much of our readership is made up by people who have devoted their...

Generally speaking, we see the positives in the world in which we live. We’re grateful for our work, family, and one another. Right now,...

Recently, we were involved in a project that involved reaching out to dozens of officials in cities across the United States.  As you...

Over the course of the years, we’ve happily written about scores (probably hundreds) of reports that are focused on broad areas of state...

We’re looking forward to participating in a panel at the upcoming annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration...

As regular readers of this website know, we generally avoid covering politics or the federal government. That said, we’re beginning this...

We recently came across an online report by a local NPR station that began with a headline that stated that, “Philadelphia and Wilmington...

Over the course of time, we’ve written repeatedly about the confusion many Americans have about which level of government provides which...

Back in March, in collaboration with Donald F. Kettl professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public...

In conversations that we’ve had lately with people in human resources and elsewhere in government, we’ve found ourselves repeatedly...

We love cities. Though we moved out of Manhattan a few years ago for the little town of Bethel, Connecticut, we’ll live the rest of our...

When we attend social gatherings like weddings and are seated with people who don’t know us, one of the obligatory first questions...

About a year ago, we wrote a B&G report titled “ Is Speedy Government Good Government? ” in which we made the case that the pressure for...

We’ve just been catching up on one of our favorite podcasts, Freakonomics Radio, and came across a wonderful conversation with Samuel...

We’ve just been reading a splendid book by Erik Larson, titled “The Splendid and the Vile,” that tells the tale of Winston Churchill in...

In the tension-filled political week before the midterm elections, we were particularly grateful for a relatively new podcast called “You...