The sections below summarize the strongest and weakest performers in each category. For each state, the results reflect the aggregate values of its major pension systems, including plans administered at both the state and local levels.

Funded ratio state ranking

The funded ratio is the most straightforward indicator of a pension system’s financial health. It states what share of liabilities can be funded with currently owned assets. States with higher ratios are better positioned to weather downturns, while those with persistent gaps carry a greater risk of future tax increases or benefit cuts.

Only three states had enough or more assets set aside to cover promised benefits. Tennessee (104%) ranked first nationally, followed closely by Washington (103%) and South Dakota (100%). 

Conversely, Illinois (52%), Kentucky (54%), and New Jersey (55%) posted the weakest funded ratios.

Among the five most populous states, New York ranks 6th (94%), Florida ranks 19th (82%), California ranks 20th (82%), Texas ranks 22nd (80%), and Pennsylvania ranks 41st (66%).

Investment performance state ranking

The investment performance ranking evaluates how pension plans’ long-term returns compare to their assumed rates of return. When plans fall short of expectations, unfunded liabilities accumulate and must eventually be addressed through higher contributions, typically from taxpayers.

Only four states have long-term returns exceeding assumptions. Kansas (+1.5%) leads this category, with long-term returns exceeding its assumptions by 1.5 percentage points. Michigan (+0.7%), Washington (+0.6%), and South Dakota (+0.4%) follow. 

Maryland (-1.5%), Alaska (-1.4%), and New Mexico (-1.3%) posted the weakest investment performance relative to their own expectations. 

Among the largest states, New York ranks fifth (-0.04%), Pennsylvania ranks seventh (-0.06%), Florida ranks 14th (-0.3%), Texas ranks 19th (-0.4%), and California ranks 35th (-0.7%).

Employer contribution adequacy state ranking

Contribution adequacy measures the extent to which states are providing sufficient funding each year to cover both the cost of new benefits and the amortization of existing debt. Underpaying contributions creates more pension debt, which compounds over time.

Thirty-nine states meet or exceed our contribution rate adequacy measure, which is based on actuarially determined benchmarks. 

Louisiana ranks first in this category, contributing 13.4% more than the actuarial benchmarks. West Virginia (+12.3%), Maine (+10.4%), Connecticut (+10.1%), and Michigan (+9.7%) also posted contributions above actuarial requirements. Many states are dedicating supplemental funding to accelerate the elimination of pension debt, thereby significantly reducing long-term interest costs.

Mississippi (-8.3%), Oregon (-3.7%), and Illinois (-3.5%) posted the weakest contribution adequacy. Their negative measurements indicate they are contributing below the mark set by actuaries to avoid adding more unfunded liabilities.

Among the largest states, California ranks 10th (+7.1%), New York ranks 24th (+2.5%), Florida ranks 32nd (+1.2%), Texas ranks 38th (+0.2%), and Pennsylvania ranks 36th (+0.5%).

Alternative asset allocation state ranking

The alternative asset allocation ranking evaluates states based on the share of their portfolios invested in alternative assets. This category includes assets such as private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and private credit. Larger allocations to alternative assets indicate riskier and more opaque investment strategies.

Georgia (1%) and Alabama (9%) report the lowest allocations to alternatives, placing them at the top of the rankings. Oklahoma (11%), Nevada (12%), and Nebraska (14%) also maintain more conservative portfolios. 

Seven states have at least half of their assets allocated to alternative assets, placing them among the riskiest systems in the country. Hawaii (60%) leads, followed by Maine (58%), Oregon (58%), and Washington (55%).

Among the largest states, New York ranks 15th (27%), Florida ranks 22nd (30%), California ranks 32nd (37%), Pennsylvania ranks 28th (35%), and Texas ranks 42nd (49%).

Assumed return rate probability state ranking

The assumed return rate probability ranking assesses whether states’ return assumptions are realistic, using forward-looking models to estimate the likelihood of success over a 20-year period.

Michigan (68%) ranks first, with the highest probability of hitting its target returns. Idaho (63%), Maine (63%), Virginia (63%), and Maryland (63%) also rank near the top. 

Nevada (43%), Alabama (44%), and Louisiana (44%) posted the lowest probabilities of hitting assumed returns.

Among the largest states, New York ranks 9th (61%), Florida ranks 17th (58%), Texas ranks 23rd (56%), California ranks 25th (55%), and Pennsylvania ranks 27th (55%).

Conclusion

These rankings show an uneven fiscal condition of state pension systems. Funding ratios vary widely: a few states, such as Tennessee, Washington, and South Dakota, are fully funded, while others, such as Illinois, Kentucky, and New Jersey, have funds to cover only half of promised pension benefits. 

When pension contributions are found to be inadequate retroactively, underfunding—pension debt—emerges. This gap arises because past contributions and investment returns proved insufficient to meet the cost of benefits already earned. Reckoning with this debt requires governments to allocate a greater share of their budgets to amortization payments, often diverting funds from education, infrastructure, and other essential public services. Over time, these legacy costs can compound, limiting fiscal flexibility and placing growing pressure on taxpayers.

But even among states that appear stable on funding measures, vulnerabilities persist across other dimensions, such as investment performance, contribution adequacy, and asset allocation risk.

Sustained fiscal discipline, realistic assumptions, and transparent reporting remain essential to securing the retirement benefits promised to public workers and protecting taxpayers from escalating pension debt. States that consistently make full actuarially determined contributions, align return assumptions with long-term market expectations, and manage portfolio risk prudently are best positioned to maintain solvent and resilient pension systems.

To read more about our national findings, click here.

The post How every state’s public pension system ranks appeared first on Reason Foundation.

But some long sentences, looked at years later in retrospect, don’t match with modern sentencing practices (think decades-old drug law prisoners) or otherwise don’t serve justice. Policymakers have turned to the concept of second-look laws to let judges review these old cases.

The growing body of second-look laws provides a judge-controlled review mechanism to safely reduce these kinds of old, lengthy sentences that may be out of step with current law, current sentencing strategies, or the interests of justice. The laws provide that individuals who have been incarcerated for a certain number of years—often 10, though versions of the legislation vary—receive a hearing in front of a judge (usually one who was not the sentencing judge) in which the judge considers any new evidence of good behavior and rehabilitation, changes in law, conditions of confinement as to that individual, or other factors that can convince the judge to resentence the person to a lower term.

Over the last several decades, sentences have exploded in length across the United States, fueled largely by drug sentences and the tough-on-crime politics of the ’80s and ’90s. Nearly one in five people in U.S. prisons—more than 260,000 people—had already served at least 10 years as of 2019. This is an increase from 133,000 people in 2000—which represented 10% of the prison population in that year.

By 2024, almost 200,000 people were serving life or virtual life sentences. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, long sentences (more than 10 years) in the states (based on data from 23 states) consist mostly of people convicted of a violent offense (56%), which include murders, sexual assaults, robberies, and other assaults; but it also includes 18% who were convicted for drug possession, distribution, and trafficking. Another 11% were sentenced to more than 10 years for “public order offenses” (defined to include firearms violations, habitual driving under the influence, nonviolent sex offenses such as prostitution, and disorderly conduct). This breakdown has remained stable since at least 2019, according to the study. Given that about 1% of the population commits 63% of all violent crimes, according to the National Library of Medicine, there must be a significant pool of people whose long-term incarceration is unnecessary for public safety.

But even as long sentences have left our prisons swollen with elderly and sick people and converted them into de facto mental health institutions, a large body of research has concluded that long sentences for many people make no sense at all and are actually costly and counterproductive.

First, long sentences are limited in achieving deterrence, one of the four goals of punishment, along with retribution, incapacitation (keeping dangerous people from the public for safety), and rehabilitation. While sentence length may have some deterrence effect, increasing already-long sentences produces diminishing returns. Evidence shows that, on the margin, deterrence is mostly a function of the certainty of punishment, not its severity. In other words, a typical thief is thinking less about whether he will be imprisoned for one year or three years, but more about whether he will get caught at all.

Second, lengthy sentences often exceed what is necessary to achieve the goal of incapacitation, considering that most people who commit crimes don’t persist in a criminal “career” for more than a few years. Evidence shows most people “age out” of crime, with criminal activity beginning to trail off after a peak at age 21. Though long-term incarceration may be justified for individuals who pose serious risks, housing many other elderly and infirm individuals who have already served long periods is a wasted expense. In 2013, the federal Bureau of Prisons spent about one in five dollars on housing and caring for prisoners over 50, and this population has grown since then as a proportion of all prisoners. All told, since 1990, the share of the imprisoned population over age 50 has quintupled to 15%.

On top of the data on age and likelihood of reoffense, there is growing evidence that the experience of being incarcerated itself, especially under poor and crowded conditions, is physically and mentally hazardous, even for the people who work in these settings. These harms compound over time and are worse for older people. Second look laws explicitly allow judges to take these facts into account when reviewing sentences. For example, during the pandemic, courts considered the likelihood of severe illness from COVID infection—greater in elderly people—when evaluating compassionate release motions. Under a second look law in a state, a judge could consider contemporary conditions in the facility of confinement when evaluating the appropriateness of a sentence reduction.

Second-look laws are already being used by 15 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government. Many of the states (six) focus second-look policies on youth, in keeping with the history, as the first adopters of these laws were juvenile systems. The focus on young people grew out of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama(2012), which ruled mandatory juvenile life without parole penalties unconstitutional for non-homicide crimes, and then all crimes. 

Maryland’s newly minted second-look law is no exception. As Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has explained, Maryland’s Second Look Act builds on the state’s Juvenile Restoration Act of 2021, which banned life without parole for juveniles and provided people serving life without parole who had been sentenced as juveniles the opportunity to file a motion to review and reduce that sentence.

California, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington have each adopted resentencing programs that allow a prosecutor (and only a prosecutor) to initiate a petition for resentencing under their second-look statutes. These prosecutor-initiated programs are likely to miss many cases worth review because prosecutors are generally wary of questioning their prior cases. These statutes can be a healthy component of any state’s laws, because they allow second look reviews recognized as meritorious by the prosecution to be handled efficiently, but they don’t reach enough cases to successfully reduce unnecessary incarceration.

Other states, including California, Colorado, Oklahoma, and New York, allow judges to consider resentencing for specific groups of individuals who are military veterans (California), those sentenced under habitual offender laws (Colorado), and domestic violence survivors, respectively. The federal system allows resentencing under a provision often referred to as “compassionate release,” with a variety of qualifying factors, and D.C.’s compassionate release statute is based on age, in keeping with data showing the short spans of criminal careers.

When crafting legislation in this area, policy choices center around the time of eligibility, retroactivity, inclusion of mandatory/plea-bargained sentences, the interval people must wait before subsequent review after a denial, and whether the state will pay for attorneys for petitioners seeking to earn a reduced sentence.

New York, West Virginia, Vermont, and New Jersey are among the states considering new or expanded second look statutes this session.

A model bill from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers allows a petition before the original sentencing judge, if available, after people have served 10 years; and then, if denied, after a successive two-year interval. The bill confers a right to counsel if the petitioner cannot afford one, and also provides that if the prosecutor agrees to the motion, the court “shall” grant the petition. The bill also provides a rebuttable presumption of approval for petitioners over 50 years of age.

Second-look laws offer a needed way to bring our justice system into alignment with both values and practical constraints. These second-look policies recognize that people change, laws evolve, and justice requires responsiveness as well as resolve. A sentence handed down decades ago should not be immune from review when it no longer serves any legitimate purpose but is costing the taxpayers greatly. By giving judges the authority to reassess sentences in light of time, growth, and changed circumstances, second-look provisions help restore balance and rationality to punishment—advancing public safety and fairness alike.

The post Second-look laws allow courts to reconsider long prison sentences appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The most common measure of a state’s pension health is the funded ratio, which compares what the system owes to retirees against what it has set aside to pay them. The three plans in the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA)—the Teachers’ Retirement System, TRS, the Employees’ Retirement System, ERS, and the Judicial Retirement Fund, JRF—have an aggregate funded ratio of 70.1 percent, according to Reason Foundation’s Annual Pension Solvency and Performance Report. This means the systems have only 70 cents set aside to pay for every dollar Alabama has promised its public employees, placing Alabama at 36th among all states for funding ratios.

In 2021, the state’s funded ratio was 75.2 percent, before dropping to 59.7 percent the next year. While Reason estimated this figure would recover to 72.7 percent in 2025, the volatility indicates a system that is heavily exposed to market swings.

The 2011 and 2012 pension reforms were substantive and brought about changes that significantly reduced projected future costs. These reforms also bought time. But solving the underlying problem is an entirely different matter, and the funded ratio trajectory since 2012 suggests that the structural gap has persisted.

Alabama’s pension assets have not kept up with liabilities

Despite reforms, the burden of pension debt on Alabama taxpayers has continued to grow. In 2012, the combined annual cost of RSA across all three retirement plans totaled $15.4 billion, according to actuarial valuations published by the system. By 2025, these annual costs had grown to 27.2 billion. Taxpayers are paying more, not because benefits have improved, but because the underlying debt kept growing.

One major reason for this growth is a flawed assumed rate of return. This assumption determines how much the state is required to contribute each year. If the system maintains a high return expectation, required contributions remain low on the assumption that the returns will cover funding needs. If returns fall short of this expectation, this creates unfunded liabilities, and the funding gap widens. The RSA currently assumes its portfolio will earn 7.45 percent annually. Over the past 24 years, it has actually earned an average of 6.4 percent. That gap, compounded over decades, created unrealized losses that eventually became unfunded pension liabilities. Alabama ranks 47th nationally for the probability of achieving its assumed return, according to Reason’s annual pension report. Almost no state in the country is less likely to hit its return target than Alabama.

The flaw is not in investment management but in the assumption itself. Alabama ranks 26th in 24-year investment performance. Of the 25 states ranked above Alabama, only two have been able to achieve average returns above RSA’s assumption of 7.45 percent. Nearly every state system, including Alabama’s, has lowered its assumptions since 2008. But RSA’s adjustments have not been enough to match the system’s target with its demonstrated long-term performance.

In other words, there is likely still a significant amount of pension debt that Alabama will eventually realize as return assumptions continue to fall.

Alabama’s unfunded liability now sits at over $24 billion, up from roughly $14.4 billion a decade ago. Despite rising pension contributions, rather than shrinking, the debt has continued to grow, generating liabilities that compound the problem each year, even during periods of strong market performance.

Part of the reason the unfunded liability keeps growing is that the state just isn’t putting enough money into the system to close the funding gap. Alabama ranks 44th nationally in employer contribution adequacy rates, according to Reason. This ranking calculates the contribution needed to pay off unfunded liabilities over 20 years. Alabama’s actual contributions fall short of this benchmark. The state’s aggregate employer contribution rate is 13 percent of payroll, well below the national average of 21.6 percent, suggesting most states are contributing more to address their pension debt than Alabama. Low contributions today mean higher costs tomorrow, as debt continues to compound.

The path forward isn’t complicated, even if it comes with growing pains. Lowering the assumed rate of return toward something closer to the demonstrated long-term performance would increase the required state contributions and raise the measured unfunded liability in the short term, but it would give legislators and the public a more accurate picture of what the retirement system actually costs.

Alabama lawmakers made great strides in reforming the state’s retirement system for government workers back in 2012, but growing debt and runaway costs suggest the need for further reforms to the system’s market-return assumptions. Lowering return expectations to more realistic levels will require more from government employers up front, but it will slow the state’s current path of ever-growing annual contributions placed on the backs of taxpayers, driven by the ongoing realization of more pension debt. To get the state back on track with pension funding, policymakers need to enact lasting reforms that address the sources of the state’s growing pension shortfall.

The post Alabama’s unrealistic pension assumptions are putting the state in debt appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Concerns like Gov. Newsom’s about how social media and phones are affecting young people continue to grow. And, on the surface, setting age requirements for social media apps and other content seems to resonate with many people.

One frequent question from proponents of age-gating is that if minors aren’t allowed to buy cigarettes and alcohol without proving they are 18 or 21 years old, why should they have so much access to content on Instagram, TikTok, and websites? But the internet is not a convenience store, and social media is not a chemical or substance. Social media helps distribute and share content and information, make social connections, and enable shared experiences.

Age verification laws require social media companies, websites, apps, and other services to verify all users’ ages. This is typically done through identification document checks, but can also be done via biometric scans or other age-estimation tools of questionable value. Some of these methods make users’ information vulnerable to hackers.

For policymakers proposing age restrictions, an important question is: At what age should kids be allowed to access social media? Some parents may say their kids’ 13th birthdays are a good time. How about when they turn 16 and can start driving? What about 18, when they’re treated as adults in California?

Assembly Bill 1709, recently introduced with bipartisan support, aims to set a minimum age for social media use. A spokesperson for Newsom said the governor supports banning teens under 16 from having social media accounts, in part because he has watched Australia’s ban on social media for those under 16.

The choice of age 16 is not rooted in scientific data or reasoning. It is an arbitrary age set by lawmakers to restrict the content children can view. Policymakers may be equipped to parent their own children and decide when they’re ready for social media and other information, but they can’t and shouldn’t speak to the needs of every child.

The age requirements do not account for the fact that no two children are alike. Some 13- and 15-year-olds may be ready to use social media to responsibly connect with friends and family, people who share their hobbies and interests, and even use social media to find support and solace in like-minded communities. For some teenagers, online spaces offer vital sources of information that would otherwise not be available to them. Meanwhile, other teens might not yet be ready for responsible social media use at age 16, but that is a decision only their parents can make.

If Gov. Newsom and legislators want to implement effective policy change, their focus should be on solutions that empower parents to make the best decisions for their own children. The California Digital Age Assurance Act, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Newsom last year, already requires app stores to send an age signal to apps when parents choose to tell the app store they’re dealing with a child. It is a more targeted solution than age-gating, allowing parents to determine the type of content that is right for their children without resorting to more heavy-handed restrictions. Lawmakers should allow that law to be fully implemented and studied before passing additional laws.

Proponents of age requirements admit that many kids under the set age will still open social media accounts. The requirements won’t stop many of the other problems Gov. Newsom and others worry about, including allegedly addictive or endless scrolling by teens. They don’t change online content, reduce criminal behavior, or make kids safer.

Rather than more heavy-handed legislation, California should empower and trust parents.

A version of this commentary first appeared in The Orange County Register.

The post California doesn’t need new age restrictions on social media appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Many analysts have pointed out that institutional investors own only 1-2% of housing stock and hardly constitute a crisis. It is worth noting that Florida’s large vacation rental market leads to institutional investors owning a greater percentage of properties in coastal cities, but those markets are generally not where working families are trying to buy homes.

Data on housing markets shows that cities with higher levels of institutional investor purchases have experienced lower home prices than those with lower levels. Recent research examining extensive housing market data reaches similar conclusions, finding that institutional investors buying single-family homes raises home prices by 1-2% and reduces rents by nearly the same amount. Remember that when a house is purchased as a rental property, potential homebuyers may no longer be able to purchase it, but a family seeking a rental has a new opportunity. It is ridiculous to think policymakers can know whether a house should be available for purchase or for rent. That is a decision best left to markets.

Institutional investors not only identify where demand for rental properties exceeds supply, thereby creating investment opportunities, but also address several other problems in the housing market. Institutional investors tend to make more purchases when housing markets are struggling; in fact, over a third of their purchases are distressed homes or foreclosure sales, often where properties require substantial repairs and improvements to make them livable.

Consequently, the growth of institutional investors in single-family homes has already passed. These purchases became more popular after the housing crisis and subsequent recession almost a decade ago, and were sustained by the pandemic. Indeed, in the last two years, companies owning 1,000 or more homes purchased virtually no additional homes. These days, most homes are bought by families or by small investors who own 10 homes or fewer.

In response to economic changes, large institutional investors have adjusted their approach. As purchases of existing homes fell to nearly zero, they began investing in new developments of single-family homes intended to be rented rather than sold. These developments provide numerous suburban-family rentals to meet demand from families seeking safe neighborhoods and good schools, but who are not yet ready to purchase a new home.

The primary cause of housing affordability problems is local government restrictions on housing supply. In response to “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) objections, local governments have a strong tendency to reject new housing and prevent supply from keeping up with demand.

To their credit, Florida legislators are working on bills that would reduce local regulatory restrictions on housing supply and bring down housing prices across the state. President Trump could help solve a real housing problem by focusing on mortgage requirements. Currently, in many housing markets, the average mortgage payment on an average home is lower than the average rent, yet residents still rent rather than buy because they cannot qualify for a mortgage. Much of that is driven by federal mortgage-lending rules enacted after the housing crisis that have swung the pendulum too far.

Untangling the mess of mortgage rules and barriers to adequate and affordable housing supply would go a long way toward helping families get into their first homes. Lawmakers should direct their efforts where they can help, instead of fighting battles that offer good sound bites but little effect on affordability.

A version of this column first appeared in the Orlando Sentinel.

The post Why restricting institutional investors won’t fix housing affordability appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Under the status quo, parents are effectively the gatekeepers of their children’s use of these app stores. Parents can monitor a child’s downloads and online behavior, restrict access to certain apps, and set guidelines around screen time. Parents have at their disposal tools from the app stores themselves, along with a host of third-party apps and services.

Threats to children online come from a dizzying number of directions, and many parents cannot fully grasp the social complexities of being a kid in the digital age. The potential for fights, peer pressure, and kids making bad decisions behind their parents’ backs can feel almost limitless. Digital tools can help a great deal when applied well, as can more time-honored tactics like grounding and confiscating phones. Applying these imperfect tools can be painful, awkward, and leave parents agonizing over what they can or should do differently, which can make legislation such as this bill seem like a logical next step

However, beneath the veneer of a false sense of safety, the App Store Accountability Act amounts to little more than a change in the default settings of digital parenting. App stores must verify users’ ages and exclude children without parental consent. This shift would change parental controls from “opt-out,” where parents actively choose where to limit access, to “opt-in,” where parents must take time to allow access to all the content they want their children to view. 

As any parent knows, this change in default settings will not make conflicts at home any easier. Children will face the same peer pressure at school and retain the same ability to stay ahead of their parents with ill-gotten tools of their own. Some parents may find the idea of a government-imposed age gate appealing. Perhaps age verification and parental consent will change social norms and their kids’ expectations. Withholding a “yes” might be easier for some parents than saying “no,” though this is hardly a healthy role for government to play. The idea that kids with absentee or less-involved parents will be more “protected” may also have surface appeal, though such problems sadly cut both ways. Instead of being unsupervised online, kids with less-involved parents could wind up more cut off from the digital world than their peers.

The App Store Accountability Act would create a false sense of safety and ease while generating real privacy, security, and First Amendment concerns for all Americans. The age verification requirements at the heart of the bill are functionally equivalent to requiring all app store users to provide either a government ID or biometric data, such as facial scans. The bill’s sponsors attempt to sweep this uncomfortable truth under the rug by calling it “commercially reasonable” methods. They frequently cite the example of Apple Pay as a secure and unintrusive form of age verification. Apple Pay requires a credit or debit card. Credit and debit cards, of course, require their holders to provide items such as IDs and Social Security numbers to banks in order to obtain them. At the end of the chain, virtually any commercially reasonable method to verify age results in an ID check.

From a privacy perspective, age verification online has, historically, turned out poorly for companies that have tried to implement it. In the United Kingdom, where a similar law was passed, one of the third-party vendors for Discord, an online chat and streaming platform, suffered a breach, exposing the identification information of over 70,000 users. The Tea App, a dating app for women, required users to verify their gender through a photo or ID. The company left those identification documents exposed on the open web. Even age verification companies that tout the industry’s best data privacy protections have been subject to breaches, exposing the identification information of thousands more.

If the act’s proponents succeed in exchanging Americans’ privacy for a superficial sense of safety, they’ll next face extensive First Amendment battles in court. In December, a federal judge blocked Texas Senate Bill 2420—a model for the federal act—from taking effect. “The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robert Pitmann.

As a society, we prioritize the safety of children above almost anything else. We are at times forced to make difficult trade-offs regarding privacy and constitutionality to protect children. But the App Store Accountability Act does not force such a moral dilemma, because its protections for children are illusory. Underneath vague language like “actual knowledge” and “commercial reasonableness” sits the truth that the bill’s protections for kids amount to little more than cosmetic changes to default settings.

In truth, talking about “solutions” to kids’ online safety is misleading. However, more promising approaches than the App Store Accountability Act do exist. Proposals that involve parents voluntarily sending an age signal to app stores, which the app stores must transmit to developers, are wrongly rejected by many because they do not feel they offer perfect protection for kids. But to truly do better by kids online as a society requires that we admit the hard truth that no easy solutions exist. Parents, not laws, are the most important tool to keep kids safe online.

The post The App Store Accountability Act sacrifices privacy and free speech to give parents a false sense of safety appeared first on Reason Foundation.

HB 3313 increases minimum retirement savings

The minimum combined 10.5% of pay that the Pathfinder plan currently allows employers and employees to contribute is below industry standards for building adequate retirement savings. HB 3313 would increase minimum employee contributions from 4.5% to5% and minimum employer contributions from 6% to 7%, ensuring that everybody is saving at the industry-proscribed 12% of pay to provide a secure retirement.

HB 3313 removes vesting requirements.

HB 3313 eliminates Pathfinder’s heavy penalty applied to employees who leave for other jobs or life situations before completing five years of service. As currently constructed, employer contributions into Pathfinder accounts vest gradually over five years, leaving many hires with inadequate retirement savings built during their tenure in the system. HB 3313 completely eliminates this vesting requirement, ensuring that all employees are saving enough from the very start.

HB 3313 still allows members to contribute extra to their retirement.

HB 3313 maintains the current ability for members to contribute up to 2% extra toward their DC benefit.This means members will retain the option to save for even more post-employment security if they choose, with total contributions potentially rising to 14%. This will help ensure the Pathfinder plan remains a valuable retirement benefit for Oklahoma’s public workforce.

Bottom line

HB 3313 is a major step toward improving the Pathfinder plan that has been offered to OPERS members since 2015. It would significantly improve the retirement security of Oklahoma’s public workers and bring the plan up to minimum industry standards.

The post Oklahoma House Bill 3313 advances retirement goals of government employees appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• Can central planning revitalize U.S. shipbuilding?
• NTSB identifies the most vulnerable large bridges
• Bizarre case of U.S.-Canada bridge
• Could electric hydrofoils reshape urban transportation?
• Populist attack on potential California road charges
• The Railway Safety Act bill is back
• News Notes

Can Central Planning Revitalize U.S. Shipbuilding?

Last year, President Trump issued an executive order to “Restore American Maritime Dominance.” A recent article from the Eno Center for Transportation provided an update by summarizing the Maritime Action Plan (MAP) released on Feb. 13. The 30-page MAP offers four “pillars” of action:

• Rebuild U.S. shipbuilding;
• Reform workforce education and training;
• Protect the maritime industrial base; and,
• Support national security, economic stability, and industrial resilience.

There’s a name for this kind of program: it’s called “industrial policy” and is a form of central planning that has been tried many times in U.S. history and been practiced by governments in both market-based and non-market economies. One of many major federal government efforts to revitalize our economy was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (1932), which made low-rate loans to banks and other industries from 1932 to 1957. Franklin Roosevelt’s administration kept trying new versions of industrial policy, none of which got the economy out of the Great Depression. More recently, the Peterson Institute released an assessment, “Lessons Learned from Half a Century of US Industrial Policy.” While a few targeted efforts did have positive results, most programs providing subsidies were deemed failures—such as the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, Solyndra Corporation,
and Foxconn in Wisconsin.

The Morning Dispatch published an excellent overview of the state of U.S. shipbuilding. Commercial shipbuilding is essentially dead in this country, with the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard building its last ship in 1970. That yard was purchased by Korean shipbuilder Hanwha in 2024 and is now called Hanwha Philly Shipyard. Last August, Hanwha announced a $5 million investment in that shipyard. But the key question the article poses is this: “Can a country that builds virtually no commercial ships transform itself into a shipbuilding power?”

The world’s current shipbuilding experts are three Asian countries: China, which builds about 50% of all new ships, South Korea, which builds nearly 30%, and Japan, about 15%. That adds up to 95%. But it’s not just shipbuilding volume. Crucially important is the cost. For example, Hanwha Philly is now producing three Aloha-class ships for Matson, at $330 million each. But a comparable ship from an Asian shipyard costs about $75 million. Remember, Korean shipbuilder Hanwha now owns and operates the Philly yard. But it has to use U.S. labor and U.S. materials to build ships there, so it cannot get anywhere near to producing ships that are competitive with those it builds in South Korea.

Rather than embarking on a hopeless quest to make American shipyards competitive with Asian ones, what sensible alternatives exist? Colin Grabow of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies suggests that the government instead focus on expanding the existing Maritime Security Program, which pays for foreign-built vessels to fly the U.S. flag and stand ready for service in the event of armed conflict. (This is analogous to the Civil Reserve Aviation Fleet program under which U.S. airlines are paid to slightly modify airliners that can be called up in a national emergency to carry out military flights.) Currently, only 60 U.S. ships are registered for the Maritime Security Program.

Frankly, I see no reason in principle for the U.S. military not to consider outsourcing naval ship production to South Korean shipbuilders. They are world-class shipbuilders, and they could be relied upon to comply with a set of design and performance requirements specified by the U.S. Navy. No, this would not start with an aircraft carrier, but perhaps for a small order of patrol boats. Sensitive technical equipment could be installed after the ships were delivered to the U.S. Navy. Instead of pouring untold billions into subsidizing U.S. shipbuilding, let’s think outside the box and buy the ships we need from cost-effective providers.

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NTSB Identifies the Most Vulnerable Large Bridges

As part of the focus on major bridge vulnerability triggered by the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge in 2024, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) last month released a report identifying 12 bridges at high risk for ship/bridge collisions. The shaky dozen are as follows:

• Coronado Bridge in San Diego
• Four bridges in Louisiana (Crescent City, Huey Long, Veterans Memorial, and Sunshine)
• Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland
• Casciano Bridge in New Jersey
• Seaway International Bridge in New York
• Detroit Ave. and Carnegie Ave. bridges in Ohio
• Walt Whitman and Ben Franklin Bridges between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

These bridges are each vulnerable to a catastrophic ship/bridge collision similar to the one in Baltimore. Of the above dozen, only two are currently planned to be replaced: Casciano in New Jersey and Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. These 12 bridges are those that have reported thus far to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ survey of the owners of 68 bridges that may be above the “acceptable level of risk,” NTSB reported. Its report notes that all these bridges were designed long before the Federal Highway Administration started requiring vulnerability assessments for new bridges in 1994.

The NTSB has recommended that owners of all bridges over the risk threshold implement a comprehensive risk reduction plan. That could be either or both physical protections (such as “dolphins” protecting bridge piers) or operational limitations, such as restrictions in the waterways or requiring tugboat assistance for larger ships.

Politico’s story on the NTSB report has a dismaying subtext, typified by the following statement by John Hanson, CEO of the Delaware River Port Authority: “You can’t solve a national maritime problem by placing the burden on local bridge budgets.” That seems to be a not-so-subtle message to Congress to include massive new bridge funding in the forthcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill.

What about self-help? I went online to see which of these 12 problem bridges charge tolls, whose revenue streams can be bonded to cover large investments in upgrading and modernization. Today, only five of the 12 charge tolls, though four others used to but no longer have access to that important revenue and finance source. Just three have apparently never had tolls.

If Congress does provide some kind of new bridge funding for seriously at-risk bridges, the least it could do is make such assistance available only to self-help bridge owners who charge tolls to help pay for needed improvements.

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The Bizarre Case of the New Bridge Between the United States and Canada

On Feb. 9, President Trump threatened the planned opening of the new Gordie Howe Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. He demanded that the Canadian government, which funded and built the new bridge, give at least half-ownership of the bridge to the U.S. government. The U.S.-Canada bridge agreement had been negotiated years ago by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. The rationale for the new bridge was congestion on the aging Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor.

To understand what’s behind this, you need to know the story of the privately owned Ambassador Bridge, which I researched in writing my 2018 book, Rethinking America’s Highways. Because it was to be an international crossing, it required a Canada-U.S. agreement. It was privately financed based on its projected toll revenues, and it was completed and opened to traffic in 1929. Its private ownership has changed hands several times over the decades. Given how long ago it was designed, it has only two lanes in each direction. It remains the only truck route between Detroit and Windsor. Trucks cannot use the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel since it is sized only for passenger vehicles.

Needless to say, the Ambassador Bridge’s owners have long enjoyed their monopoly on Detroit-Windsor truck traffic. They have opposed any plans on the U.S. side of the border to add another truck-capable crossing. So I was hardly surprised to learn, via a New York Times article, that Matthew Maroun, part of the family that owns the Ambassador Bridge, met with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick shortly before Trump spoke out with demands for half-ownership of the Gordie Howe Bridge. The Maroun family has owned the Ambassador Bridge for decades, and it has a history of filing legal challenges against the Gordie Howe Bridge.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a reporter, “The fact that Canada will control what crosses the Gordie Howe Bridge, and owns the land on both sides, is unacceptable to the president. It’s also unacceptable that this bridge isn’t being built with more American-made materials.” Ironically, during his first term, President Trump promoted the Gordie Howe Bridge in a joint statement with Canadian officials as “a vital economic link between our two countries.”

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Could Electric Hydrofoils Reshape Urban Transportation?

I read The Economist every week to obtain a global perspective on governments, politics, economics, and sometimes interesting new technologies. The lead article in the Science & Technology section of the Feb. 14 issue unveiled a new transportation technology: the electric hydrofoil. According to the writer of this article, this invention “could reshape urban transportation by shifting traffic from clogged roads to underused waterways.”

Before pointing out some problems with that proposition, I will say (as an engineer with two MIT degrees and a first job at helicopter developer Sikorsky Aircraft), the technology for electric hydrofoils is impressive. Its computer-guided foils remain underwater at all times, but they raise the craft out of the water for greatly reduced friction and much less energy needed. That appears to make these craft relatively low-cost to operate as well as much quieter than non-electric hydrofoils. So I congratulate electric hydrofoil startups such as Sweden’s Candela. The article names a half-dozen other startups developing electric hydrofoils. They will likely be competitors in replacing ferries, including hydrofoil ones.

My concern as a transportation policy guy is the claim that e-hydrofoils could play a major role in urban transportation. What one needs to assess this claim is extensive data on existing urban/suburban travel patterns, starting with commuting. Bland statements in the article, such as “Nearly half of the world’s population lives in coastal regions,” and that “water-borne transit… is an obvious solution,” and that waterways are a city’s “forgotten highways,” are divorced from urban transport reality.

To be sure, if your city consists of 14 islands, like Stockholm, e-hydrofoils might be suitable for a modest fraction of urban trips. But the vast majority of urban (and especially suburban) travel can only take place on land, even in metro areas like Seattle and San Francisco that are located on large bays. Most of Manhattan is surrounded by water, and ferries serve a fraction of commuters. But what about where the vast majority of Americans live and work: places like Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, Chicago, Pittsburgh, etc.?

The idea, per the article, that a $22 billion global market exists for e-hydrofoils strikes me as unrealistic, and I doubt very much that “on passenger routes in cities, electric hydrofoils may be about to take off.”

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The Populist Attack on Potential Road Use Charges in California
By Baruch Feigenbaum

The per-gallon fuel tax, California’s primary transportation funding source, is living on borrowed time. The ongoing growth of more-fuel-efficient vehicles, hybrids, and electric vehicles in California suggests that the gas tax will not be a sustainable way to build, maintain, and expand highways, roads, and bridges.

There’s a fairly strong consensus among transportation professionals that, sooner or later, states will have to replace per-gallon fuel taxes with some kind of road user charge. But instead of being constructive about how and when to do this, many Republican legislators are attacking road charges with claims such as “Politicians want to track how far you drive and tax you for every mile.”

The underlying reality is that those who use roads and bridges should pay for building and maintaining them. That has been the case since Oregon legislators invented the per-gallon gas tax in 1919 as their highway funding user charge. That principle is still very sound, but the need to replace per-gallon taxes with a more durable road user charge is something Republicans and Democrats should both support. 

The Southern California News Group recently noted that Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Lori Wilson introduced a bill (AB 1421) explaining that the state’s Road Charge Technical Advisory Committee is finishing up its research and will be making recommendations to the legislature by the end of this year. What it proposes should not be controversial, since it is building on what has been learned from five small pilot programs looking into the viability of replacing fuel taxes with road charges.

Republican legislators claimed that what will be proposed would be a big-government tax increase and a means of spying on drivers. But Assemblywoman Wilson’s bill merely requests policy recommendations for ensuring that California will have the funding needed to keep its roadways in good shape in the coming decade. The recommendations would be non-binding.

Given the importance of ensuring sound highways, Republican legislators should be working with their Democratic colleagues to find common ground on creating an effective road user charging system to replace obsolete per-gallon fuel taxes.

A starting point for such a replacement user fee would be to set it to generate the same initial level of funding as the current state fuel tax, while retaining the fuel tax’s inflation index. The new road charge should be a replacement for the fuel tax, not an addition. All previous California road charge pilot projects envisioned them as a replacement for fuel taxes, not an additional charge. This change would ensure proper ongoing funding for roads and bridges, regardless of changes in vehicle propulsion in the coming decades.

Republicans who are concerned about a road charge being implemented in addition to the current fuel tax should point to strong bipartisan support that already exists to replace the fuel tax, not add a road charge on top of it. That premise was explicit in the California road charge pilot projects, which most participants understood and agreed with.

If legislators are concerned that road charges will be easier to increase than fuel taxes, to support things like bailing out transit agencies or expanding trails and sidewalks, they should make sure that the law authorizing road charges requires the revenues to be dedicated to paying for the roads that generate them.

Also, legislators should be diligent in protecting drivers’ privacy. For example, every state that tests road user charges offers a low-tech odometer-reading method of reporting miles driven; this could be performed during an annual vehicle inspection or during routine maintenance. Some states are also looking at prepaid options for drivers.

Oregon’s permanent road user charge program has state-of-the-art privacy protections. It uses private vendors to process mileage data and requires that any location data be deleted within 30 days. Legally, all Oregon mileage data is confidential and exempt from public records requests.

California roads and highways need maintenance, repair, and modernization. Fuel taxes will not ensure this in the coming decades. The best path forward is to continue to study mileage-based road charges so that per-gallon fuel taxes can be replaced in a timely manner.

A version of this column first appeared in the Orange County Register and Southern California News Group newspapers.

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Railway Safety Act Reintroduced in Congress
By Marc Scribner

In late February, a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) introduced the Railway Safety Act of 2026. A companion bill was introduced in the House the following week. Despite three years having passed from the original introduction of the Railway Safety Act, the sponsors have been unable or unwilling to address major legislative deficiencies. As written, the bill would not improve rail safety and could perversely make freight transportation more dangerous in the United States. Congress should again discard the Railway Safety Act and instead work to advance serious safety policy.

The original 2023 bill was championed by then-Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who introduced it less than a month after the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and just a week after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its preliminary report on the accident. While it was touted as a response to East Palestine, the bill was in reality a hastily assembled concoction of previous legislative proposals backed by unions and other special interests.

When the NTSB issued its final report on the East Palestine incident in June 2024, the legislation proved largely unresponsive, and in some cases contrary, to the NTSB’s findings and recommendations. Here’s how the eight core provisions touted by sponsors of the Railway Safety Act of 2026 line up with the NTSB final accident report.

1. Mandates the use of defect detection technology to make railroads stop trains when something is wrong which could have prevented the East Palestine derailment. The bill requires hotbox detectors to be deployed an average of every 15 miles, compared to every 25 miles currently (Sec. 107)

• The bill mandates the installation of bearing defect detectors every 10, 15, or 20 miles depending on population density and complementary wayside equipment characteristics.
• This highly prescriptive provision plainly violates the NTSB recommendations to first conduct a thorough study of defect detection technologies and their use (R-24-002) before mandating any changes (R-24-003).

2. Expands the list of hazardous materials that are subject to higher safety standards, like vinyl chloride carried by the East Palestine train, and require speed restrictions, better braking and route risk analysis (Sec. 102)

• This provision is unresponsive to the NTSB’s findings or recommendations because the NTSB found that cargo and operational characteristics such as train speed played no role in the derailment and subsequent release of hazardous materials.
• While the NTSB recommends expanding the definition of “high hazard flammable train” to account for survivability differences between tank car specifications and to include hazardous materials other than flammable liquids (R-24-014) that can contribute to cascading hazardous materials releases (such as combustible liquids and Division 2.1 flammable gases), this provision would include in the definition of “high-hazard train” non-combustible substances that could not initiate or propagate a cascade of hazardous materials release.

3. Improves emergency response by notifying states about the hazardous materials being transported by rail through their communities and strengthening railroad emergency response plans (Sec. 102)

• The part of the provision on notification is moot because the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration promulgated a final rule in June 2024 to require railroads that carry hazardous materials to generate, maintain, and provide to parties involved in emergency response the information needed to enhance emergency response and investigation. The NTSB considers this matter closed. 
• The part of the provision requiring the federal government to take over certain responsibilities from local first responders was not recommended by the NTSB.

4. Prevents improper railcar inspections and mandates a new requirement that ensures railcars are properly maintained (Sec. 105)

• The NTSB investigation found “[t]here was not enough evidence to determine whether a mechanical inspection conducted before the derailment failed to identify signs of bearing failure; the bearing may not have been showing visible problems at the time of the inspection,” so this provision is unresponsive.

5. Increases civil penalties for rail safety law violations from $100,000 to $10 million to ensure safety laws are taken seriously (Sec. 109)

• The NTSB is silent on civil penalties as a matter of policy and federal statute prohibits NTSB reports from being entered into evidence in civil actions for damages, so this provision is unresponsive to the NTSB investigation. 
• However, Norfolk Southern reached a $310 million settlement with the federal government in May 2024, including a $15 million civil penalty. In addition, Norfolk Southern agreed to pay another $600 million in compensation to settle class action lawsuits tied to the incident and response. Thus, real-world events have proven this provision to be wholly unnecessary.

6. Requires two crewmembers to operate a train to prevent a situation where only one person is on the train in an emergency (Sec. 108)

• This provision is entirely nonresponsive to the NTSB’s findings or recommendations because the train involved had a crew of three at the time of derailment and the NTSB explicitly found that crew handing played no role in the derailment or broader incident. 
• Further, there is no evidence that two-person crews are safer than single-person crews (or vice versa), which the Federal Railroad Administration itself has conceded.

7. Ensures firefighters are made whole after responding to major derailments. (Sec. 204)

• This provision was mooted by subsequent legal settlements, as well as being unresponsive to the NTSB’s findings.

8. Expands the existing Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness grants to allow fire departments to purchase the personal protective gear that keeps them safe (Sec. 203)

• This provision isn’t responsive to the NTSB’s findings or recommendations but could be defended (or opposed) independent of the East Palestine derailment.

The Railway Safety Act is clearly not a coherent policy response to the East Palestine derailment, specifically, or to rail safety concerns more broadly. Both the Senate and the House have, to date, chosen wisely to reject this legislation.

To be sure, Congress could play a valuable role in advancing rail safety if it stays focused. Lawmakers should conduct careful oversight of the various regulators at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to ensure that any new regulatory requirements proposed in response to the East Palestine incident or any other event are determined through a careful assessment of the evidence, supported by robust technical, risk, and cost-benefit analyses. New technologies, especially those related to automated inspections, should be embraced.

Importantly, Congress should keep in mind that rail safety rules with high costs and little benefit may make our transportation system less safe if they cause rail traffic to be diverted onto the highways, where truck accident fatality rates are six times greater than rail’s, and injury rates are 17 times higher. All too often, the impulse in Washington to “do something” fails to address the problem at issue and also creates new ones.

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News Notes

NC Shortlists Teams for $3.2 Billion I-77 Express Toll Lanes
The North Carolina DOT last month announced four short-listed teams for implementation of elevated express toll lanes on 11 miles of I-77, between Uptown Charlotte and the South Carolina border. As Eugene Gilligan reported in Infralogic (Feb. 23), the four teams are headed by (1) ACS, Kiewit, and Meridiam, (2) Plenary, Sacyr, and Shikun & Binui, (3) Acciona, Stichting Pensioenfonds, and Balfour Beatty, and (4) Cintra, John Laing, Star America, and Global Sustainable Infrastructure Partners IV. The project is intended as a design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3 with an operations term of 50 years.

Brightline West Rail Project Won’t Finish in Time for 2028 Olympics
Equipment World reported that the 218-mile high-speed rail (HSR) line from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga in San Bernardino County has a revised completion date of late 2029. An earlier schedule had the rail line being finished before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Originally estimated to cost $12 billion, the project’s budget is now $21.5 billion. The article noted that Brightline West is now seeking an additional federal loan for $6 billion. Though referred to as connecting Las Vegas and Los Angeles via high-speed rail, the western terminus of the line (Rancho Cucamonga) is 41 miles from downtown LA and requires passengers to transfer to a much-slower Metrolink commuter rail line to get there.

South Africa Looking Into Truck Toll Lanes
Moneyweb reported that the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) is considering the introduction of “special toll roads” for heavy trucks. Heavy trucks have far greater impact on highway pavement than automobiles, but the reasoning is that users of personal vehicles should not bear the extra cost of beefing up regular highway lanes. The alternative is building heavy-duty truck lanes, paid for by tolls. Board chairman Themba Mhambi told legislators that “We do not want ordinary members of the public to suffer [from roadway damage], so our focus is going to be on freight traffic that ordinarily should not be on [regular] roads.” Truck toll lanes have been proposed a number of times in the United States since 2002, but none have been implemented.

Caltrans Plans HOV to HOT Conversions in San Diego County
The state DOT is planning to convert the carpool lanes on I-5 and I-805 to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. Caltrans District 11 deputy chief Allan Kosop says that the HOV lanes are regularly congested, partly by non-HOVs illegally using those lanes. He told KPBS that, “We always knew at some point they were going to need to evolve from HOVs to express lanes, so that’s always been a part of the vision. We’ve determined that now is the time to make that switch.”

Panama Supreme Court Rules China-Run Ports Are Unconstitutional
On Jan. 29, the Supreme Court of Panama ruled that certain provisions of the ports concession held by CK Hutchison’s Panama Ports Company are unconstitutional. The decision came after a review by the comptroller of the Panamanian government, which raised concerns over the 25-year extension of the concession in 2021. The Wall Street Journal noted (Jan. 31) that the termination of Hutchison’s license upsets its plan to sell more than 40 ports (including those two) to BlackRock and Mediterranean Shipping Company. The decision was based on a provision in the Panama-U.S. treaty that bans foreign governments or state-run firms from being involved with the Canal.

Nebraska Becomes Third State With Full NEPA Assignment Authority
On Feb. 26, Nebraska DOT and the Federal Highway Administration signed an agreement under which NDOT received full “NEPA Assignment Authority.” That means NDOT can carry out environmental assessments (EAs) and environmental impact statements (EISs), rather than this process being carried out by the federal government. Nine state DOTs have some version of this shift (e.g., for categorical exclusions), but at this point, only three have full Section 327 NEPA Assignment Authority.

Australia Begins East Coast High-Speed Rail
Infralogic reported (Feb. 17) that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had announced that the first stage of a planned east coast HSR system would begin with a 119-mile line linking Sydney with Newcastle. The estimated cost of this link is $63.6 billion in U.S. dollars. When I went online for more plans, the map I found had a northward extension to Brisbane and a southwesterly extension to Canberra and on to Melbourne. With a few online map queries, I estimated rail miles for each of these future routes. The cost per mile of the Sydney-Newcastle starter segment is $534 million. Applying that number to the 403 miles Newcastle to Brisbane and the links to Canberra (204 mi.) and from there to Melbourne (316 miles), my ballpark estimate for the 923 additional miles came to $493 billion. And that is in current US dollars. I’m not surprised that the P.M. has not announced a cost estimate for the whole eastern network.

First Express Toll Lanes on an Ordinary Highway
On Feb. 16, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly went to Overland Park to celebrate the opening of the first express toll lanes in Kansas. They are also the first ones added to a non-limited access highway (US 69). The project is 6 miles long, with one express lane each way, added in the former median. Pricing is congestion-related with morning, evening, and night/weekend rates. US 69 is not a limited-access highway, which makes this project unique, besides being the first express toll lanes in Kansas.

Argentina Continues with Highway Concessions
The reformist Argentine government has launched Stage III of its 9,000 km federal highways concession program. The latest (and last) stage encompasses 2,423 km of limited-access highways, for which the government is seeking bids for public-private partnership (P3) concessions. This last stage includes eight highways for which the winning bidders will be responsible for (re)construction, operation, administration, and maintenance, according to Infralogic (Feb. 23). After completion of this final stage, more than 9,000 km of federal highways will be under P3 concessions.

Cube Highways Negotiating Purchase of India Highway Concession
Rouhan Sharma reports that Cube Highways is negotiating to acquire 207 km of HKR Roadways from Kotak Special Situations Fund. (Infralogic, Feb. 10). Back in 2024, Sharma notes, Vinci Highways sought to acquire HKR Roadways but was not successful.

North Carolina Express Toll Lanes Opened on I-485
$346 million worth of express toll lanes opened to traffic on I-485 in Charlotte on Feb. 28. The 18 miles of ETLs run from I-77 to Highway 74. The project, managed by NCDOT, was built over a seven-year period. While variable tolls are in the plans, the initial rates will be fixed prices, with NC QuickPass users receiving a 50% discount.

Penn Station Redevelopment P3 Under Way
Three teams have been shortlisted for the P3 redevelopment of Penn Station in New York City, reports Public Works Financing. The teams are being led by 1) Macquarie, 2) Fengate, and 3)Halmar. Amtrak is managing the procurement process, and the agency is hoping to get the redevelopment started by the end of 2027.

Another Electric Vehicle Write-Off
After reports of multi-billion-dollar write-offs on EVs from Ford and GM, auto industry people were not surprised last month when Stellantis revealed its own write-off: $26 billion. That beats both Ford ($19.5 billion) and General Motors ($7.6 billion).

California Drops $4 Billion High-Speed Rail Litigation
At the end of 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a notice of dismissal, ending the state’s lawsuit against the U.S. DOT and the Federal Railroad Administration over the Trump administration’s cancellation of $4 billion worth of federal grants for the HSR project. The HSR project’s current focus is a route in the Central Valley, far less ambitious than the original 500-mile route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Possible Tolled I-42 Being Studied in Northwest Arkansas
A small group of states, for many years, has called for creating a new I-42, an east-west route that would partly be joint with I-40 but in other stretches would be created by upgrading US 412. The Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission last month passed a resolution in favor of a toll feasibility study for the portion of US 412 in Northwest Arkansas.

Why U.S. Railroads Are the World’s Best
That’s not the title of a well-researched article by Andrew Miller. Its title is “Why Are American Passenger Trains Slow?” compared to those in other countries. But in assembling the data comparison, especially railroads in Europe and the United States, Miller explains the rationale for our railroads prioritizing freight over passengers. The article, from American Affairs, was released on Feb. 20.

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The post Surface Transportation News: Can central planning revitalize U.S. shipbuilding? appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Given that the largest transportation funding source, the fuel tax, is no longer fiscally sustainable, four states have begun transitioning to permanent mileage-based user-fee (MBUF) programs: Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia. 

The Maryland proposal is modeled on Virginia’s, in part because Virginia’s program is the largest, with almost 30,000 drivers enrolled. The program generates $80 million in revenue for transportation purposes. The success is due to Virginia’s program providing drivers with a range of reporting options and enabling all types of fuel-efficient vehicles to participate. 

This program addresses today’s problems (fuel-efficient vehicles) and tomorrow’s (electric vehicles). 

But Virginia’s approach is not perfect. Maryland can improve upon the Virginia plan. 

Maryland could incorporate lessons from Utah, whose revenue now exceeds its costs, by using quarterly reporting, smartphone-based odometer capture, and emerging telematics. Utah reduced its administrative costs by 64% by eliminating plug-in devices. 

Maryland could adopt Oregon’s privacy protections by storing all mileage data on the vehicle, adopting data retention policies that destroy data within a few months, and mandating a court order to access it. 

Maryland could examine Hawaii’s approach, which begins with a pilot program and expands it across the fleet over a 10-year period. Vermont, which is close to adopting a permanent program, has lessons for electric vehicle penetration. And Washington, which studied outreach, has lessons on communicating with the public. 

Maryland has a major transportation funding shortfall, and MBUFs are one potential solution. I encourage lawmakers to look at Virginia and other states examining this technology as potential models to adopt and implement.

The post Maryland can improve upon its proposal for a mileage-based user fee program appeared first on Reason Foundation.

HB 2034 reduces LEOFF asset holdings

The LEOFF 1 plan is currently estimated to be overfunded, with assets equal to approximately 168.5% of projected liabilities. This provides a significant financial cushion designed to protect retirees and taxpayers against market volatility, economic downturns, and actuarial uncertainty. HB 2034 would transfer assets out of the plan, leaving it funded at 110% of liabilities, and grant politicians access to $4 billion that police and government employers have saved for pension benefits. 

While 110% funding exceeds the estimated amount needed to pay promised pension obligations, it reduces the plan’s financial resilience, raising the potential for unexpected costs imposed on taxpayers. 

HB 2034 raids police officers’ pension assets to use for unrelated projects

HB 2034 allocates $569 million from the surplus of LEOFF 1 assets to a climate program (CCA). These are pension contributions collected solely for the purpose of paying for retirement benefits for police officers. These funds were originally contributed by employers and plan members to secure guaranteed pension benefits, not for the other interests of today’s politicians. 

HB 2034 permits further transfers to non-pension accounts

In addition to the direct $569 million transfer, HB 2034 directs remaining excess funds into the Pension Funding Stabilization Account (PFSA). Under HB 2034, these funds may then be transferred into the State General Fund through further legislative action. The bill establishes a statutory pathway for pension assets to be used for broader budgetary purposes. This establishes a dangerous precedent for redirecting pension funds and reduces the funding cushion available to absorb unpredictable market shocks. 

HB 2034 could generate new costs for taxpayers

LEOFF 1 has operated without member or employer contributions since 2000. Depleting the current surplus introduces significant financial vulnerability. Should investment returns falter or medical liabilities escalate, the plan may be forced to resume mandatory contributions for the first time in 25 years.  

Bottom line

Redirecting billions in surplus police pension assets to non-pension projects goes against the purpose of these funds and the interests of the stakeholders who contributed them. HB 2034 introduces legal and moral questions that should concern lawmakers.

The post Washington House Bill 2034 redirects pension funds for non-pension spending appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• States pursue legislation to expand access to psilocybin
• A report on the White House opposing the fast-tracking of drug approval
• Drug Enforcement Administration legal production quota increases

States fund research into psychedelic therapies

The new legislative session has opened, with multiple states proposing bills to expand access to psilocybin and fund research. New Jersey will allocate $6 million to fund a pilot program for psilocybin in three hospitals. Multiple states, including Missouri and New Hampshire, have proposed appropriations for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research on the psychedelic ibogaine through an interstate consortium. Read more about progress in the states in our regular state round-up here.

Federal psychedelics fast-tracking blocked by the Trump administration

Multiple outlets have reported that federal officials are reluctant to accelerate approval of psychedelic substances by the FDA for use as pharmaceuticals. Stat News reports that White House officials blocked a psilocybin-like compound sponsored by pharmaceutical company Compass Pathways from admission to the FDA’s new fast-track system.

The FDA Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher pilot program is a new initiative that would significantly accelerate the development timeline for drugs addressing national health priorities. It would entitle drug sponsors to faster communication with the agency and a “rolling review” process that allows the sponsor to gather regulatory feedback on clinical trial designs and results as they become available, rather than waiting until a trial is completed before results can be submitted. According to reports, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary recommended that Compass Pathways receive this treatment, but higher-ranking officials in the administration shot down the idea.

Compass Pathways investor Christian Angermayer was apparently not bothered by the snub. He posted on X on Feb. 4 that, “Today’s chatter about @COMPASSPathway’s Comp360 drug being ’snubbed’ for a National Priority Voucher is making a mountain out of a molehill.” Angermayer argued in the post that psychedelics should not receive special political treatment and should succeed through the normal drug approval process.

Politico reports that advocates and lawmakers are frustrated that no psychedelic drugs have yet been approved by the FDA. U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), for instance, has called on the president to sign an executive order to prioritize psychedelics through the drug approval process. However, no such executive order has materialized, and Congress has also not enacted a law that would significantly improve the drug approval process or grant priority for certain treatments.

DEA increases psychedelics legal production quota

The Drug Enforcement Administration has increased the amount of allowable psychedelic drugs that can be produced for research. “The production goal for psilocybin rose from 30,000 grams last year to 40,000 grams in the initial rule for this year—and has now been raised to 50,000 grams in 2026’s final rule,” reports Marijuana Moment. The agency did not comment on why it increased production.

The post Psychedelics Policy Newsletter: States pursue psilocybin expansion, Trump administration denies drug fast-tracking, and more appeared first on Reason Foundation.

I appreciate the opportunity to share our concerns about Senate Bill (SB) 6129, which would restructure Washington’s nicotine and tobacco tax code in ways that are likely to produce outcomes opposite to the bill’s stated public health goals. Specifically, the bill would effectively tax safer nicotine alternatives such as nicotine pouches, e-cigarettes, and heated tobacco products at similar rates to combustible cigarettes, undermining the financial incentives that encourage Washington’s more than 500,000 smokers to switch to safer alternatives.

The goal of protecting youth has largely been achieved

A central purpose of this bill is to discourage youth nicotine use. We applaud this ambition, and Reason Foundation shares it without reservation. But it is essential that this committee examine whether the proposed remedy is proportionate to the current problem, because the data suggest that youth tobacco use has already been dramatically curtailed.

Youth tobacco use is at a 25-year low. E-cigarette use among teenagers has fallen 70 percent since 2019. When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized ZYN nicotine pouches for sale in 2025 as “appropriate for the protection of public health,” it specifically weighed the risk of underage use. After an extensive scientific review, the FDA determined the product was not sufficiently appealing to drive widespread uptake among minors. Fewer than three percent of high school seniors report current nicotine pouch use in the most recent National Youth Tobacco Survey.

These figures should give the committee significant pause before imposing a 100 percent effective tax rate on products that the federal government’s own scientific review has determined are helping adult smokers quit and are not driving youth uptake. The youth use of nicotine that SB 6129 is designed to deter has already largely been addressed.

Taxing products with unequal risks equally is not equitable

The sponsor has described the bill’s approach as taxing nicotine products “equitably.” This framing reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of sound tax policy as it applies to products of differing health risk.

The FDA recognizes a “continuum of risk” among nicotine products, with combustible cigarettes being the most dangerous and alternatives such as e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco being far less so. Around half of lifelong smokers die of a smoking-related disease. No comparable mortality risk exists for nicotine pouches or e-cigarettes.

SB 6129 imposes a 90 percent base tax on all alternative nicotine products and an additional 10 percent surcharge on flavored products. Because approximately 80 percent of non-cigarette nicotine products on the market are flavored, the effective tax rate on the vast majority of nicotine pouches and e-cigarettes is 100 percent of the wholesale price. Meanwhile, the cigarette tax rises to $5.00 per pack. In concrete terms, a typical can of nicotine pouches and a packet of cigarettes would both cost around $15. SB 6129 treats the most dangerous consumer product on the market and one of the safest nicotine delivery systems as equivalents. That equivalence does not exist in science, and it should not exist in the tax code.

Substitution effects

We know with a high degree of confidence what happens when safer nicotine alternatives become significantly more expensive relative to cigarettes. A majority of smokers do not quit. A substantial portion of them stay on cigarettes or return to them.

An analysis of Minnesota’s 95 percent wholesale tax on e-cigarettes—a tax structurally similar to what this bill proposes—found there were 32,400 additional smokers in Minnesota than there would have been without the tax. A separate peer-reviewed study found that for every e-cigarette pod eliminated from the market by a tax increase, consumers purchased nearly two additional packs of cigarettes.

The pattern holds across populations. Research focusing on young adults found that higher e-cigarette taxes were associated with reduced vaping but were similarly associated with increases in smoking. Studies of youth aged 18 and younger reached the same conclusion, with the authors finding that “the unintended effects of taxation may considerably undercut or even outweigh any public health gains.” Washington should weigh those findings carefully before advancing this legislation.

Smoking is disproportionately concentrated among low-income households. For smokers who are weighing whether to switch to a safer and cheaper product, narrowing the price differential between cigarettes and alternatives is not a neutral act. It is a policy decision that tilts the ledger back toward the product with the largest health risks.

These substitution effects are not surprising. Because safer nicotine products are substitutes for cigarettes, policies that make them more expensive relative to cigarettes predictably drive consumers back to the more dangerous product. Risk-proportionate taxation is essential to ensuring that the tax system supports rather than undermines public health. Taxing lower-risk products at the same rate as cigarettes sends a perverse signal to consumers that the products are equally dangerous.

The principle of risk-proportionate taxation is straightforward: Taxes on safer nicotine products should always be substantially lower than those on cigarettes, if they are taxed at all.

The wider the tax gap between cigarettes and safer alternatives, the stronger the incentive for smokers to switch, improving their short- and long-term health.

Conversely, taxing safer alternatives at rates comparable to cigarettes removes this economic incentive and disproportionately burdens the populations most in need of affordable harm-reduction options. High taxes on safer nicotine products represent one of the most regressive forms of taxation, penalizing consumers for making a choice that improves their health and reduces the burden on the healthcare system.

Conclusion

More than 8,000 Washingtonians die each year from smoking-related diseases. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in Washington. The tax code is one of the most powerful tools available to change consumer behavior. SB 6129 moves in the wrong direction.

By taxing products with profoundly different risk profiles at effectively equivalent rates, the bill further reduces the financial incentive for smokers to switch, replicating the policy failures documented in other states.

We urge the committee to pause consideration of this bill and instead explore a risk-proportionate tax structure that widens the price gap between cigarettes and safer alternatives.

The post Senate Bill 6129 would undermine tobacco harm reduction in Washington appeared first on Reason Foundation.

While we support the underlying aims of Senate Bills 757 through 760 and the effort to empower parents and protect kids online, the bills included in this “Kids Over Clicks” package will not achieve these goals and will instead create a vast web of regulatory controls that would degrade the overall user experience online.

The Kids Over Clicks bills attempt to break social media platforms and AI companion chatbots down into a complicated list of features and product settings, making subjective judgment calls about which may be provided to minors and which to adults. The overly complex definitions intended to create a less “addictive” experience for minors will inevitably become obsolete as online platforms continue to innovate and evolve in unforeseen ways. This is the wrong approach for an industry defined by rapid and unpredictable technological change. 

For example, Senate Bill 757 (SB 757) places too much emphasis on the type of algorithms used by platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to recommend content to all users. Some highly publicized research has claimed that “addictive” properties arise from algorithms predicting what content users might like based on others’ recommendations and past user behavior. For example, the bill permits minors to view content from authors they have subscribed to, but bans content that an algorithm predicts subscribers to a given author would enjoy. 

SB 758 is even more granular, with a laundry list of 11 features and settings deemed inappropriate for minors, including the “ephemerality” of prompts delivered to a user. SB 759, on the other hand, is the simplest of the package, simply tacking on additional penalties for violations of SB 758. 

SB 760 takes a similarly problematic approach to regulating AI companion chatbots, creating subjective requirements for a technology that continues to evolve and even disrupt social media platforms. 

Rather than empowering parents, these bills would simply put the government in charge of doing the parenting for them by putting rigid technical requirements into law. These bills ignore the tools available to parents–offered both by third parties and by platforms themselves–to put safeguards around their children as they enter the online world, and would subvert the choice of parents to guide their children through this online world before they’ve left home. 

For these reasons, we urge the committee to reject this set of bills.

The post Michigan’s “Kids Over Clicks” bills would replace parental oversight with government rules appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Congress has responded to these trends by authorizing grants to fund the testing and implementation of mileage-based user fees (MBUFs) as a propulsion-neutral alternative to fuel-user taxes, most recently with the Strategic Innovation for Revenue Collection (SIRC) competitive grant program contained in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 at Sec. 13001. 

Unfortunately, SIRC grant awards have been criticized among would-be project sponsors and other observers for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s slow rollout and questionable selections. Yet the declining utility of per-gallon motor fuel taxes as the dominant source of highway revenue remains the largest transportation fiscal challenge faced in generations, and the need to identify and implement a viable alternative is more urgent than ever.

To signal Congress’ commitment to identifying a durable solution to the fuel tax problem, lawmakers could reestablish SIRC as an apportionment (formula) program under the Highway Trust Fund, rather than a competitive grant program funded through a set-aside from the Highway Trust Fund’s Highway Research and Development Program. This approach offers several advantages:

• All states would be guaranteed funding for eligible projects;
• Apportionments give states more funding predictability;
• Guaranteed apportionments would allow states to better scope contracts related to studies, pilot programs, government information technology modernization, and other related activities;
• The administrative burden would be significantly lower for the U.S. Department of Transportation; and
• The negative impact of competing policy and political priorities that lead to delayed and questionable grant award selection would be minimized.

Establishing SIRC 2.0 as an apportionment program raises the immediate question of whether the computed per-state funding amounts would be sufficient to encourage states to test and eventually implement MBUFs. SIRC’s predecessor program, Surface Transportation System Funding Alternatives (STSFA), was modest in size, with awardees receiving from $250,000 (Wyoming) to $18 million (Eastern Transportation Coalition multistate: Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Vermont) over the five-year life of the program. 

STSFA helped spur nationwide interest in per-mile road usage charging among the states. It also played a significant role in leading four states—Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia—to establish permanent MBUF programs.

In comparison, assuming a $500 million five-year SIRC 2.0 authorization ($100 million per year) and using FHWA’s FY 2025 computation of apportionments among states & programs table, the lowest apportionment share—excluding the District of Columbia—would be $417,100 per year for New Hampshire ($2.06 million over five years). The highest would be $9.26 million per year for California ($46.32 million over five years). 

To narrow these apportionment disparities between states, these amounts could be further adjusted by setting a minimum annual allocation. For instance, if the computation formula was adjusted to set a $500,000 minimum apportionment, New Hampshire would instead yield $810,700 per year ($4.05 million over five years) and California would be allocated $7.4 million per year ($37.01 million over five years).

These predictable annual funding levels to examine, and potentially implement, new MBUF programs would provide states a stronger incentive than the existing SIRC or legacy STSFA competitive grant programs. Beyond converting SIRC into an apportionment program under the Highway Trust Fund, Congress should pay close attention to the following elements.

Eligible entities: The original SIRC competitive grant program allowed local governments and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to apply. While these units of government undoubtedly have areas of expertise that could be relevant to future road-usage charging programs, the central problem facing existing road-user tax systems is at the state and federal levels. This apportionment program, like others authorized under 23 U.S.C. § 104, should flow directly to the states. States may wish to partner with their local units of government and MPOs as part of activities funded under SIRC 2.0 apportionments.  

Eligible projects: SIRC was originally focused on encouraging the creation of pilot projects. This goal should be maintained. However, four states have now established permanent MBUF programs (and a fifth is under development), a number expected to increase in the coming years. As such, SIRC 2.0 should encourage both new pilots and the establishment of permanent programs. 

From the limited permanent program sample, we have learned that startup capital costs can be significant and fixed operating costs are large. For instance, many state motor vehicle and revenue departments presently lack the necessary information technology infrastructure to implement a pilot or permanent program. In addition, contracts with third-party account managers require upfront customization before any users are enrolled. As enrollment increases, fixed operating costs will be spread across more users, and states should realize economies of scale in their variable operating costs. To support states through the initial implementation cost “sticker shock,” both capital and operating costs should be eligible for funding.

Reporting: A central goal of the original SIRC program was to evaluate various approaches to and aspects of per-mile road charging, results of which were to be reported to the Department of Transportation. The Secretary of Transportation, in coordination with the Secretary of the Treasury and Federal System Funding Alternative Advisory Board, were to summarize SIRC pilot program results and make recommendations to House and Senate authorizing committees. The original SIRC program’s IIJA Sec. 13002 National Motor Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot, was not implemented and therefore failed to collect timely results and recommendations to inform the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization, as Congress had intended.

To ensure Congress is provided with timely information necessary to make informed decisions about mileage-based highway revenue mechanisms, any state seeking reimbursement from the SIRC 2.0 apportionment program should be required to submit an annual report to the Department of Transportation by Sept. 30. The Department of Transportation should be required to submit an annual report to House and Senate authorizing committees by March 31 summarizing the annual SIRC 2.0 program activities in the states and making recommendations to Congress that the department deems appropriate.

Duration: A SIRC 2.0 apportionment program is designed to facilitate the transition to propulsion-neutral highway revenue collection methods. As such, if enacted, Congress should reevaluate the necessity of this program in advance of the subsequent reauthorizations. This program is not meant to provide a permanent federal subsidy to state highway revenue-collection activities and should be eliminated when adequate solutions have been developed and implemented.

As part of its upcoming surface transportation reauthorization, Congress should build upon its past work of supporting propulsion-neutral alternatives to fuel taxes. The SIRC 2.0 apportionment program approach outlined here offers the greatest promise of success. 

The post How to improve the federal mileage-based user fee grant program appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Iowa

House File 2085, sponsored by state Rep. John Wills (R- District 10), would establish a regulated system for psilocybin production and administration.

The bill creates a psilocybin production establishment licensing board within the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, requires security systems at regulated sites, sets up registration categories for cultivators, testing labs, qualified medical psilocybin providers, qualified therapy providers, and applies misdemeanor penalties for violations. The bill does not require a medical condition to qualify for psilocybin services.

A version of this bill was introduced in 2025 and passed the Iowa House by a vote of 84-6. It then became the basis for an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) template bill. ALEC is a membership organization that offers a national forum for state lawmakers to share ideas and vote to endorse generic statutory language as a “model policy” that lawmakers in other states could use as a basis for their own proposals.

The current version of the bill was introduced Jan. 15, referred to the Iowa Senate Health and Human Services Committee, and assigned for consideration at a subcommittee meeting on Jan. 26, which was later canceled. The sponsor requested the cancellation to secure more experts for the next hearing.

House File 978, also by Wills, is a narrowly tailored regulated-access bill for psilocybin services, capped at 5,000 patients. Those patients must be 21 or older, and the psilocybin is obtained from state-certified manufacturers and administered by licensed clinicians. Under a previous bill number, 650, it passed the House and is currently progressing through the Senate.

If HF 978 passes the Senate, provisions in Wills’ other bill, HF 2085, could be added in

Missouri

House Bill 1717, sponsored by state Rep. Richard West (R-District 102), authorizes psilocybin services for veterans who are over 21 and who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder, substance use disorder, or end-of-life care needs. It requires enrollment in a psilocybin study, advance notice to the Missouri Department of Mental Health, and supervised use with a qualified facilitator.

The bill also directs the Missouri Department of Mental Health to issue $2 million in research grants (subject to appropriation) and to produce annual reports, while creating confidentiality and liability protections for participating patients and clinicians.

The bill was read into the chamber on Jan. 8 and has not yet been scheduled for a hearing.

House Bill 1643, sponsored by state Rep. Matthew Overcast (R-District 155), would create a broader therapeutic psilocybin carveout for adults and similarly revise Missouri’s “right-to-try” statute to allow access to investigational new drugs that include otherwise controlled substances.

Psilocybin access under HB 1643 is not limited to military veterans and does not require enrollment in a study. Instead, it allows access for adults who are over 21 and who need end-of-life care or suffer from PTSD, major depressive disorder, a substance use disorder, or “any other condition” where psilocybin has shown efficacy in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered clinical trials.

Unlike HB 1717, HB 1643 adds a new registry requirement for manufacturers of investigational drugs that involve a controlled substance, directing the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to create the registry before Nov. 1, 2026.

The bill was pre-filed on Dec. 1, received its first reading Jan. 7, and was read a second time Jan. 8. It has not yet been scheduled for a hearing.

House Bill 2817, sponsored by Rep. Richard West (R-District 102), would direct the Department of Health and Senior Services to fund tightly regulated ibogaine clinical trials and to capture any resulting intellectual property value for Missouri. The bill requires the Department of Health and Senior Services to award grants only to Missouri‑based entities running FDA‑overseen “certified clinical drug development trials” of ibogaine to treat opioid use disorder, co‑occurring substance use disorders, or other neurological or mental health conditions where ibogaine shows efficacy, with applicants providing matching non‑state funds and submitting regular progress and financial reports.

It creates two special funds: the “Ibogaine Study Fund,” which holds appropriated and donated money used solely for these grants, and the “Ibogaine Intellectual Property Fund,” which receives all revenue from patents, licenses, and other commercial rights arising from the trials and restricts that revenue to programs helping veterans or other at‑risk Missouri populations.

The bill was considered in a committee hearing on Feb. 16 in the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee, with no publicly planned next steps.

House Bill 2961, sponsored by state Rep. Richard West (R-District 102), would create the “Veterans Mental Health Innovation Act” and establish a state grant program to support FDA-approved ibogaine drug development trials for opioid-use disorder and related conditions. This bill is based on language drafted by Reason Foundation and an ALEC model policy that would allow other states to join a multi-state public-private partnership originating in Texas with the goal of getting ibogaine approved by the FDA as a treatment for opioid-use disorder, traumatic brain injury, or other conditions for which it demonstrates efficacy.

The bill limits grants to an in-state entity with specified clinical capacity and requires a signed agreement with a multistate consortium that has submitted an investigational new drug application and requested a breakthrough therapy designation to the FDA for ibogaine. The award of any state grant is also conditioned on the grant recipients’ receipt of matching funds from other sources.

The bill creates an “Ibogaine Study Fund” for grant dollars and an “Ibogaine Intellectual Property Fund” to capture Missouri’s share of commercialization proceeds, restricting use of those proceeds to programs that assist veterans or other at-risk populations in Missouri.

It does not allocate a specific amount of funding. The bill was read on Jan. 14 and also had a committee hearing on Feb. 16 in the Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee.

There is an emerging plan to consolidate the ibogaine bills.

New Hampshire

House Bill 1796, sponsored by state Rep. Michael Moffett (R-Merrimack-4th), would create the “Therapeutic Psilocybin Act” and allow regulated psilocybin use in approved clinical settings to treat qualified medical conditions. This bill is a version of the ALEC model policy, which Iowa House File 2085 (discussed above) is also based upon.

The bill establishes a medical psilocybin program within the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), creates a licensing board, and directs the department to license qualified medical and therapy providers. Qualifying conditions include depression, PTSD, and other conditions approved by the department.

The bill received a public hearing on Jan. 14, and on Feb. 3, a majority committee report recommended “inexpedient to legislate” (opposing the legislation).

Rep. Moffett is also the primary sponsor of House Bill 1772, legislation that would have New Hampshire join a multistate consortium to conduct clinical trials using ibogaine as an investigational new drug, with a nominal $1 appropriation. As with Missouri House Bill 2961 (discussed above), it is also based on the ALEC model policy “Veterans Mental Health Innovation Act.”

House Bill 1809, sponsored by Rep. Buzz Scherr (D-Rockingham 26th), would authorize medical psilocybin through a DHHS program where approved providers are also approved producers of the psilocybin used in their sessions. Unlike HB 1796, HB 1809 makes implementation contingent on a newly created medical psilocybin advisory board certifying that the program is ready within two years. If the board fails to meet this timeline, the bill’s other provisions would be delayed indefinitely.

HB 1809 received a public hearing on Jan. 14 and was reported “ought to pass” on the House calendar on Feb. 3.     

Policymakers seem to have misinterpreted the bill to imply the agency would oversee trials rather than just administering a grant. Passage may be contingent on the agency gaining an improved understanding of the bill.

New Jersey

On Jan. 20, former Gov. Phil Murphy signed S. 2283 into law before leaving office. The new law creates a pilot program in the New Jersey Department of Health overseen by a new Psychedelic Therapy and Research Advisory Board that is designed to support hospital-based psilocybin research compliant with FDA and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) protocols. The Department of Health would select three hospitals to participate, and the bill appropriates $6 million to a Psychedelic Therapy and Research Fund, directing $2 million to each participating hospital, with reporting requirements intended to inform whether the pilot should be continued or expanded.

A prior version of the bill would have established a regulated system of state-licensed clinics offering psilocybin therapy, but that version did not progress following its introduction in Jan. 2024.

New York

A. 3845, sponsored by Asm. Patrick Burke (D-District 142), would establish a psilocybin-assisted therapy pilot program for New York veterans and first responders and create a dedicated pilot program fund to provide access for up to 10,000 patients. Funding would be terminated if the federal government approves psilocybin for medical treatment. The bill is awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Standing Committee on Health.

A. 2142, sponsored by Asm. Amy Paulin (D-88), would allow the regulated adult use of psilocybin for the treatment of certain health conditions and create licensure and certification categories for the supply chain and support services. It allows for any medical condition “where there is evidence of potential use of psilocybin with positive outcomes.” The bill was first introduced Jan. 15, 2025, and was re-referred to the Assembly Standing Committee on Health on Jan. 7.

A. 3775, also sponsored by Asm. Burke, would establish a psilocybin-assisted therapy grant program for members of the public other than the first responders in his other bill, A. 3845. The bill was re-referred to the Assembly Standing Committee on Health on Jan. 7.

A. 628, sponsored by Asm. Linda B. Rosenthal (D-District 67), would legalize adult possession and use of certain “natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogens,” including DMT, mescaline, psilocybin, and psilocyn. It would allow for supportive services, including supervision and harm-reduction-style guidance, as well as religious and other non-commercial organizational use.

Notably, the bill includes ibogaine in the list of included substances that would be lawful. The bill was re-referred to the Assembly Standing Committee on Health on Jan. 7.

Given the lack of progress on these bills, they are unlikely to pass this year, but instead keep the issue open for debate.

Oklahoma

House Bill 3834, sponsored by Rep. Stan May (R-80), would create the “Oklahoma Breakthrough Therapy Act” to support multistate ibogaine drug development clinical trials intended to reach FDA approval. It is a version of the ALEC model policy “Veterans Mental Health Innovation Act.”

As introduced, the bill authorizes the Oklahoma Department of Health to contract with a drug developer that already has an ibogaine drug development agreement with at least one additional state, requires the developer to match the state’s investment and prioritize in-state clinicians, facilities, and participants, and sets reporting and financial verification requirements for the trials.

The bill also creates an Ibogaine Intellectual Property Account in the Office of the State Treasurer to receive Oklahoma’s proportional share of proceeds from commercialization tied to the trials, limits spending to appropriated uses benefiting at-risk populations with conditions treatable with ibogaine, and prohibits adverse licensing action against Oklahoma medical professionals for recommending psilocybin or ibogaine therapy services.

The bill had a public reading on Feb. 3 and received a “Do Pass” by the Human Services Oversight Committee on Feb. 19th. The bill is in the process of being advanced.

Virginia

House Bill 1347, sponsored by Del. Laura Jane Cohen (D-15), would direct the Board of Pharmacy to promulgate regulations allowing the prescribing, dispensing, possession, and use of psilocybin if and once an FDA-approved formulation exists and DEA rescheduling occurs.

As introduced, the bill is limited to FDA-approved psilocybin formulations and would legalize prescription by licensed prescribers, dispensing by pharmacists or other authorized dispensers, and patient possession, transport, and use for legitimate medical purposes, with the Board of Pharmacy initiating rulemaking at its next quarterly meeting following DEA rescheduling.

 The bill was heard in the House Health Subcommittee and the Committee on Health and Human Services. It was engrossed during the second reading on Feb. 10.

Washington

Senate Bill 5921, sponsored by state Sen. Jesse Salomon (D-District 32), would place a medical-use program under the Washington Department of Health.

As introduced, the bill requires all psilocybin to be naturally occurring and excludes “synthetic or synthetic analogs,” relies on clinician judgment for adult patients, and restricts dispensing to clinician-to-patient distribution rather than third-party pharmacies.

A previous bill introduced last year by Sen. Salomon would have permitted non-medical, adult use. This version narrows the scope to medical use only.

The bill states that a “qualifying condition” is a diagnosis that is not enumerated in the bill. “The determination of appropriate qualifying conditions rests solely with the prescribing clinician, who assumes all associated professional liability, consistent with state law governing medical conduct, malpractice, and negligence,” reads the bill.

In other words, the bill allows a prescriber to determine whether an individual has an illness that qualifies them to receive psilocybin. Rather than give specific conditions, such as depression, it allows the prescriber to assume the risk of making their own determination. It is unclear how this would affect the ability to obtain liability insurance, since there is little legal precedent regarding what courts have determined to be an appropriate prescription for psilocybin.

The current bill was prefiled on Dec. 19 and referred to the Ways and Means committee on Feb. 4. The bill failed to meet the Feb. 9th committee cut-off deadline, effectively killing it.

The post State psychedelics legalization and policy roundup — March 2026 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

However, to maximize this promise, it’s important to remove barriers to innovation and adoption. In practice, this includes scaling tools like drug-checking technologies, digital overdose-prevention platforms, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI)-based prediction systems that can detect risk earlier and support faster, more targeted responses.

These technologies are not magic-bullet solutions nor a substitute for structural reforms that address the underlying drivers of drug dependence, overdose risk, poverty, housing insecurity, and limited access to care. What they can do, however, is help shift overdose prevention and response away from approaches that rely primarily on arrests, seizures, and drug interdiction, and toward more pragmatic and effective harm-reduction strategies. These approaches better reflect how risk and drug-related harms are actually experienced and managed in people’s everyday lives. 

A brief history of harm reduction

Born from a philosophical position of steadfast pragmatism, “harm reduction” is a framework that accommodates innovation in addressing the overdose crisis. Approaches include syringe service programs, which provide sterile injection to reduce the transmission of HIV, hepatitis C, and other bloodborne infections while serving as points of contact for healthcare, drug testing, and treatment referrals. They also include overdose prevention centers, which offer supervised environments where individuals can use previously obtained substances under medical oversight, allowing for immediate intervention in the event of an overdose and connection to health and social services. Naloxone distribution is another core component, involving the widespread availability of a medication that reverses opioid overdoses in community settings. Collectively, these services are designed to and are effective in preventing avoidable deaths, reducing strain on emergency systems, and maintaining engagement with individuals who are not reached by traditional healthcare models.

Federal efforts under the Great American Recovery Initiative emphasize coordinated recovery and treatment models, including partnerships with faith-based organizations, many of which prioritize abstinence-based approaches in their funding structures, program requirements, and outcome metrics. While effective for some individuals, this emphasis may unintentionally constrain the development of complementary harm-reduction interventions needed to reach populations not engaged in abstinence-based care. As state policymakers plan for the coming months and years, they will have access to a steady stream of opioid settlement funds that could be used to enable innovation in harm reduction and treatment. This moment creates space for a long-overdue question to be asked: What role might technology play in how we diversify, scale, and deliver care to those who need it most?

As technology begins to enter harm-reduction settings, it brings real potential to expand access and improve overdose response. But particularly in the drug harm-reduction space, uptake is shaped as much by trust as by technical performance. Many people who use drugs have learned, often through experience, to be cautious about systems that collect personal or behavioral data, especially when those systems overlap with policing or criminal justice. This pushes many away from programs or seeking care at all. Without clear limits on how information is used, even well-designed tools are likely to be ignored or avoided.

Drug-checking technology

In the 1920s, Americans didn’t stop drinking when alcohol was prohibited; they simply lost the ability to know what they were drinking. During Prohibition, people regularly purchased alcohol that was, in fact, industrial spirits adulterated with methanol or other toxic additives, sometimes indistinguishable by taste or smell. Thousands were poisoned or killed simply because they drank something fundamentally different from what they believed they had purchased. The danger lay not in intoxication itself, but in supply-side market volatility and a lack of transparency created by prohibition. This is the current reality for Americans who consume drugs from today’s unregulated drug markets. Drug-checking technologies offer a direct response to this volatility. Tools such as fentanyl and xylazine test strips, portable Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers, and mail-in drug checking services allow people to identify what is actually present in their drug sample. 

In New York City, a recent drug-checking pilot program operated within community harm-reduction centers, allowing trained technicians to test small samples voluntarily brought in by participants. Using various testing methods and laboratory confirmation, the program provided participants with real-time information about the contents of their drugs and connected them to harm-reduction education and services. Over its first two years of operation, analysis of more than 1,600 samples revealed widespread fentanyl contamination, including in drugs not typically associated with opioids. Crucially, as the testing program was located within an overdose prevention center, trained health professionals were then able to equip clients with actionable information based on participants’ real-world drug use, enabling them to make informed decisions about whether, how, and when to use, inherently reducing risk by allowing them to discard contaminated supplies, encouraging smaller doses, avoiding using alone, or ensuring they have Narcan—the antidote to an opioid overdose—when they use opioids. 

At the state level, more advanced spectrometry tools also serve a broader public health function by detecting emerging trends in the toxic adulterants, like xylazine, that are present in the drug supply in near-real time. More dispersed approaches, such as mail-in drug-checking programs, can also assist in early identification of shifts in the wider drug supply while preserving individuals’ privacy and allowing states to issue targeted alerts to communities and service providers. This capacity for rapid surveillance is vastly different from traditional overdose data systems that often lag weeks or months behind trends on the ground.

As Amber Lashbaugh, a Georgetown University addiction policy graduate student and researcher, explains, most states still rely on ambulance call-out and toxicology reports that arrive long after harm has already occurred, limiting their ability to proactively protect people. In contrast, drug-checking programs use portable testing devices and rapid screening strips to analyze street drugs on-site, identify dangerous contaminants within minutes, and share this information with health officials and service providers. This allows services to issue timely warnings that can prevent overdoses and reduce avoidable emergency hospitalizations. 

According to the Pew Research Center, the number of U.S. states allowing drug-checking has risen from just a handful in 2018 to 45 by 2024. Although the specifics vary among state programs, in practice, individuals and organizations can possess and distribute various forms of drug checking equipment (primarily rapid test strips). Despite this, legal and regulatory barriers continue to limit these programs’ ability to scale up. For example, many states maintain anti-drug paraphernalia laws that criminalize possession of drug-checking equipment in public, leaving its legality ambiguous and discouraging providers from offering these tools widely. These laws also dissuade people who use drugs from carrying take-home equipment in public spaces. Clarifying the legal status of drug checking services, supporting open data sharing between counties and states, encouraging technological innovation within this sector, and integrating these technologies into existing harm reduction services would all be relatively low-cost policy moves that could yield high returns when comparing the cost of overdose deaths and the cost of the fentanyl test strips themselves.

Digital overdose-prevention platforms

An estimated 69% of fatal overdoses occur when people are alone. This happens across both urban and rural communities, often in private homes or other unsupervised settings. These deaths are almost always preventable if Narcan is available, even if administered by untrained bystanders. This insight underpins the rationale for supervised consumption sites and overdose prevention centers, so rather than using alone, users can remain in the presence of trained professionals capable of addressing any potential complications from their use. 

Digital overdose-prevention platforms have provided new ways to connect drug users with supervision and services that can save their lives in the event of overdose. From apps to telehealth services, newly emerging platforms range from “spotting” call-in services, in which trained operators stay on the line with individuals using drugs and can dispatch emergency help if needed, to smartphone apps that monitor vital signs or automatically trigger alerts when overdose symptoms emerge.

One example is SafeSpot, a 24/7 national overdose “spotting” hotline that connects people using drugs with trained operators ready to respond if the caller becomes unresponsive. To date, SafeSpot has supervised more than 32,000 use events, handled over 12,800 calls, and facilitated at least 33 overdose detections requiring emergency response. This is just one example of how virtual monitoring can reduce the risks associated with solitary drug use.

Even in jurisdictions that authorize in-person supervised consumption sites, practical and logistical barriers continue to prevent widespread access to facilities, such as disability, limited operating hours, geographic isolation, and transportation challenges. To address these barriers to physical supervised consumption spaces, Canada has encouraged the development of virtual supervised consumption services. Canada’s National Overdose Response Service (NORS), a peer-run community-based service, provides a model for how virtual supervised consumption could be implemented in the United States. Rather than functioning as a traditional emergency hotline, NORS is staffed by trained peers with lived experience in using drugs who remain on the line during drug use and coordinate emergency response only when needed, offering a low-threshold alternative for people who face barriers to accessing physical supervised consumption sites.

Complementing this, digital tools such as British Columbia’s Lifeguard App, launched by the Provincial Health Services Authority, allow users to initiate a timed virtual safety check before drug use, triggering an alert to emergency responders if the user does not respond in time. Beyond phone lines and apps, Canadian researchers and companies are also developing wearable overdose detection devices, such as a wrist-worn vital-sign monitor being created in partnership with Simon Fraser University and ODEN Health Solutions—a medical device company—that autonomously tracks physiological indicators of overdose and notifies emergency services when critical thresholds of overdose symptoms are crossed. 

Program evaluations suggest that these virtual monitoring platforms can be effective not only in preventing overdose deaths but also in generating public savings by reducing avoidable emergency responses and hospitalizations (with savings estimated at around $1.53 – $15.28 per dollar spent on programs). At the same time, researchers note that these services raise unresolved legal and operational risks, including liability in cases of delayed response or device malfunction, as well as concerns about quality assurance and safety standards for these emerging technologies. In addition, many services rely on sensitive location, health, and drug-use data to coordinate emergency responses, creating ongoing risks to both service providers and users related to data security, informed consent, and data access by law enforcement or third parties. Without clear regulatory frameworks, licensing standards, and explicit protections for providers and users, these legal and privacy vulnerabilities may limit broader adoption of these potentially life-saving technologies. Strengthening liability safeguards, data governance rules, and confidentiality protections are therefore essential for digital harm reduction tools to be scaled up responsibly in the United States.

AI-assisted overdose prediction

While drug checking services and digital supervision platforms focus on reducing risk at the time of use, emerging AI systems may be able to anticipate overdose risk before it becomes fatal. Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York are among several U.S. jurisdictions that have already begun integrating machine learning and automated data processing into their overdose surveillance and response modelling. In practice, these systems combine multiple related datasets to model where emergency services, harm reduction providers, and drug treatment programs should focus for the greatest impact. Inputs typically include real-time emergency service call-out data, emergency department visits for overdose, medical examiner and toxicology reports, prescription drug monitoring program records, and hospital discharge data. These databases are updated far more frequently than traditional annual mortality statistics. Some models also incorporate drug-checking alerts, naloxone distribution records, wastewater analysis, and law enforcement seizure data to capture sudden changes in the drug supply, such as adulteration with dangerous contaminants like fentanyl or xylazine.

Once these data sets are combined, machine-learning techniques analyze them simultaneously to identify patterns and correlations that are not visible in isolation. This allows public health agencies to detect and forecast short-term overdose spikes, as well as identify neighbourhoods or populations at rapidly increasing risk. Rather than producing a single prediction, many of these systems generate dynamic risk scores or heat maps that can be updated daily to support operational decisions, such as where to deploy outreach teams and the selection of ambulance staging locations, where to extend supervised consumption hours or increase naloxone availability, when and where to issue targeted drug alerts, as well as helping health departments prioritize funding and staffing during periods of elevated risk.

In Canada, researchers at the University of Alberta have developed a machine learning model using anonymized health-system data from millions of residents that, in combination with personal data, can predict individual risk of future opioid overdose. The model draws on health system records, including treatment encounters for substance use, prescription histories, and co-occurring mental health conditions, and demonstrates strong prospective performance, with balanced accuracy ranging from 83 to 85 percent across multiple years. 

Although these models are still relatively new, and outcome data from real-world implementation are not yet available, their significance lies in their ability to move beyond retrospective surveillance towards accurate current and future predictive modelling. If integrated thoughtfully, such tools could support clinicians and wider care teams to proactively engage patients before an overdose unfolds, again, provided they are paired with voluntary, supportive, and non-punitive interventions.

Finally, AI is also increasingly being embedded in wearable and sensor-based overdose detection technologies. Researchers at the University of Washington have developed and tested a wearable injector system that continuously monitors breathing and movement to detect signs of overdose. When signs appear and respiratory arrest is detected, the device automatically delivers naloxone to the wearer. The prototype integrates on-body sensors with a real-time detection algorithm and a commercially available injector platform, creating a closed-loop system that can intervene instantly without waiting for outside assistance or naloxone administration. 

Despite the potential of AI technologies within this sector (which have been publicly recognised in recent statements by both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), experts have warned that these tools raise concerns about privacy, surveillance, data governance, and algorithmic bias, especially when public health data intersects with systems historically used by law enforcement and the wider criminal justice system. Without transparent safeguards in place and explicit protections against civilian data being repurposed for policing, the “predictive” promise of AI could deter engagement with services that use these technologies, or exacerbate inequities in who is targeted for care. For these technologies to fulfill their promise, a serious challenge for both public health systems and the companies creating these technologies will be building trust.

Looking to the future

The U.S. has routinely deployed new technologies to prevent heart attacks, manage diabetes, and predict infectious disease outbreaks. At the same time, the overdose crisis claims a comparably staggering number of lives annually, yet these tools have not been systematically integrated into the public health response with the same speed or coordination seen in other areas of medicine. The tools discussed in this article can allow us to detect risk earlier and respond more efficiently. However, policymakers must be willing to embrace experimentation, remove outdated legal and regulatory barriers, and align market incentives towards investment in this sector. 

For drug-related deaths to continue along the post-pandemic downward trajectory, irrespective of changes in the drug supply, these technologies need to be integrated into an infrastructure of housing, mental health care, low-barrier drug treatment, and continued support for traditional, evidence-based harm reduction services. 

The post Technology can help shift overdose prevention and response to more effective harm-reduction strategies appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on Senate Bill (SB) 350.

Strong open enrollment laws can benefit students and school districts. They ensure students can attend public schools that are the right fit for their goals and needs, with many using these programs to enroll in A- or B-rated school districts, escape bullying, access Advanced Placement (AP) courses and specialized learning models, enjoy smaller class sizes, or shorten their family commutes.

A report from the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office and a 2023 Reason Foundation study both found that the competitive effects of open enrollment also encourage public school districts to improve. In fact, when interviewed for a 2023 EdChoice report, public school district administrators in Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida stated that open enrollment encouraged them to innovate by creating new programs and improving existing programs to better attract and retain students.

Research also shows that K–12 open enrollment is widely used and supported. Reason Foundation’s K–12 Open Enrollment by the Numbers: 2025 study found 22% of Delaware students and 28% of Colorado students in public schools used open enrollment to transfer and attend schools that were the right fit for them. Furthermore, according to a 2025 national poll by EdChoice, open enrollment is supported by 75% of school parents across party lines—80% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 74% of independents—in favor of allowing families to attend public schools outside their assigned district’s boundaries. This bipartisan support led, in part, to open enrollment legislation being passed and signed into law in Idaho, Montana, and West Virginia (2023) and Nevada (2025).

Yet, as explained in this year’s edition of Public Schools Without Boundaries, Maryland is one of only four states that deprives students of any cross- or within-district open enrollment options, scoring a 0 out of Reason’s 100-point best practices criteria (an “F” letter grade). This leaves significant room for policy improvements across all seven key metrics that the study evaluates.

Maryland SB 350 is a first step toward filling that gap in public-school opportunities available to students, empowering families to match their children with schools that best fit their needs.

The bill would allow Maryland’s local county boards of education to adopt a cross-district open enrollment policy for enrolling students residentially assigned to other counties. Participating county boards would be prohibited from charging tuition or fees to such transfer students and would be required to determine and publish their program-related policies and transfer capacity (by school and grade level; updated every four weeks) on their website.

In doing so, the bill would make Maryland the 47^th state to adopt an open enrollment policy and would improve the state’s related score (from a zero) to 44 out of 100 possible points on open enrollment best practices, surpassing states such as New Jersey and Virginia.

Even still, SB 350 leaves plenty of room for future improvement. Within-district open enrollment—allowing students to transfer between schools within their residentially assigned districts—should also be codified, and all districts should be required to accept within- and cross-district transfers so long as they have space available at the applicant’s grade level.

To ensure fairness, student transfer applications should be explicitly guaranteed equal consideration without regard to their economic background, abilities, or disabilities, preventing districts from discriminating. Moreover, districts should be required to inform rejected applicants in writing of the reasons for their denial, and those applicants should be permitted appeal of their rejection to the state board of education.

Lastly, the Maryland State Department of Education should be required to annually publicly report district-level open enrollment data (including the numbers of transfers accepted, applications rejected, actual transfers received, and why applicants were denied) to promote program accessibility, transparency, and accountability.

The post Improving educational opportunity through Maryland Senate Bill 350 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Authorization Act of 1994 requires all commercial service airports to annually file financial reports with the FAA detailing:

• All amounts paid by the airport to any unit of government and the purposes of those payments, as well as all services and property provided to other units of government and any compensation for each (Sec. 111(a), codified at 49 U.S.C. § 47107(a)(19)); and
• All funds collected and spent by the airport (Sec. 111(b), codified at 49 U.S.C. § 47107(a)(15)).

Yet the actual information reported to FAA is often incomplete, inaccurate, or missing. Unfortunately, the FAA lacks the authority to require more rigorous reporting. The United States can and should do better. 

One of the metrics commercial airports must report is cost per enplanement (CPE). Cost per enplanement is the average passenger airline payment per enplaned passenger at an airport. It is a key indicator of the financial costs of airlines to operate at airports. Unfortunately, the cost per enplanement data that many airports report has numerous financial problems, including no shared formula for CPE and varying reporting windows.  

A comparison of two large hubs illustrates these flaws. Most private data sources show that Charlotte Douglas International Airport has a lower CPE than Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Yet, the FAA has very different results. 

Compare the two in Table 1 for 2024. 

Table 1: Atlanta Hartsfield and Charlotte Douglas Cost Per Enplanement Data Comparison

Source: FAA data from Federal Aviation Administration, “Form 5100-127,” Certification Activity Tracking System. www.cats.airports.faa.gov/Reports/Form127_Line_Item_query.cfm (accessed 20 Jan. 2026). DWU data from “Large Hub Cost per Enplaned Passenger,” DWU Consulting. www.dwuconsulting.com/airport-finance/large-hub/cpe (accessed 26 Jan. 2026).

FAA’s Form 5100-127 data, Line Item 16.5, shows Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s passenger CPE is $3.93, the same as what leading consulting firm DWU Consulting reports. Charlotte Douglas International Airport, on the other hand, has a much lower CPE according to DWU Consulting than the FAA report shows. Why is that?

Per DWU’s website, FAA forms use the cost per enplanement, “calculated by using accounting data without allowing any specific modification.” This, in other words, means that airports are not allowed to tweak the formula at all and report based on whatever their latest batch of accounting data says. No, excluding one-time capital costs as they do in bond documents sometimes, or litigation settlements, or non-recurring operating costs. These discrepancies are not a one-time problem and it dates back years. In a separate report, DWU detailed the CPE variance between 2012 and 2013.

Table 2 shows the discrepancy between FAA-reported and airport-reported CPE between 2012 and 2013 based on a table compiled by Dafang Wu with DWU Consulting. The complete table found in Wu’s full article is more exhaustive.

Table 2: DWU Consulting 2012-2013 CPE Airport vs. FAA Comparison

Source: Table adapted from Dafang Wu, “Cost per Enplaned Passenger,” DWU Consulting, 15 Mar. 2015. www.dwuconsulting.com/airport-finance/articles/cost-per-enplaned-passenger (accessed 26 Jan. 2026).

Of the five large-hub airports selected, four had discrepancies between the FAA-reported CPE and the airport-reported CPE in 2012 and three had discrepancies in 2013. Wu found that there are three major contributors to these discrepancies:

• Which segments were reported: DWU’s example was that Honolulu Airport reported a 2013 CPE of $8.56, which was actually the average passenger airline payment per enplaned passenger in the 15-airport Hawaii Airport System rather than the CPE at Honolulu specifically. Wu’s article says this led to a “difference of nearly $2.”

• Airline revenue sharing: This greatly explains the Table 1 difference between Charlotte and Atlanta. Per DWU, “Some airports […] share net remaining revenues with signatory airlines and make payments from the account balance after a fiscal year closes.” This is one of the major problems with not allowing any specific modifications to data reported to FAA. This means that while CLT’s strong parking revenues ultimately reduce what airlines pay, the FAA’s CPE calculation reflects the gross airline charges recorded for the year rather than the net amount after revenue-sharing payments are returned.

• Other factors: Some airports include cargo airline-paid landing fees in CPE, but the FAA line item only includes passenger airline CPEs. 

These airports are reporting entirely different numbers, be it net or gross CPE, or reporting systemwide averages instead of the CPE for an individual airport (like DWU’s example of Honolulu’s CPE). This means that the data FAA accepts can be inaccurate (or outright missing in some cases).

What researchers are left with is a data set that can barely be compared to itself, let alone any other airport in the country. It distorts airport-to-airport comparisons and is less transparent than an audited system—if the CPE changes dramatically depending on whether it’s a FAA filing, official statement, or an airline briefing, than transparency suffers. And, when the data is more comparable, it ensures federal grants are spent by airports more responsibly. 

What best practices can the airport industry adopt for reporting data? 

First, airports can adopt standardized reporting windows in which they submit their annual comprehensive financial reports (ACFR). FAA doesn’t have a mandatory reporting window for airports to submit so most airports submit ACFRs at the end of their local fiscal year. This means while some may submit in June of a year, others will submit in December, having undergone six additional months of inflation since the June reporting airport’s CPE was calculated.

Second, airports can adopt a shared calculation formula. Imagine Airport A calculates CPE by subtracting non-aeronautical revenue (producing net CPE) and Airport B does not. If both were to report a CPE of $5.00, they aren’t actually the same—Airport A is much more expensive to airlines in reality. Requiring both to report both types of CPE, clearly labeled, would allow for better apples-to-apples comparisons.

Finally, Congress should reevaluate its airport financial reporting mandate and consider giving FAA the authority to impose more consistent, accurate reporting standards, such as requiring uniform definitions and standardized formulas for each airport that reports to it. The current law is silent on the submission of audited financial data, leaving FAA to state that it simply “prefers” to receive audited financial data from airports. 

Mandatory data auditing would improve data quality immensely. Implementing this kind of oversight could help FAA identify and resolve discrepancies in the data. It would also better ensure federal grants are spent by airport recipients responsibly, which was the motivation for Congress’s original public financial reporting mandate more than 30 years ago.

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