State And Local

A Change of Management

Publication Date: October 01, 2004

This case tells the story of the establishment and growth of public television in New Jersey, focused on the rise and fall of its first executive director, Lawrence Frymire. It implicitly raises the question of why Frymire--someone with a...

"Almost a Worst-Case Scenario": The Baltimore Tunnel Fire of 2001 (C)

Publication Date: September 01, 2004

In the late afternoon of a hot day in July, 2001, an accident beneath the streets of Baltimore threatened to turn into a disaster. A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel that ran beneath one of the...

"Almost a Worst-Case Scenario": The Baltimore Tunnel Fire of 2001 (B)

Publication Date: September 01, 2004

In the late afternoon of a hot day in July, 2001, an accident beneath the streets of Baltimore threatened to turn into a disaster. A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel that ran beneath one of the...

"Almost a Worst-Case Scenario": The Baltimore Tunnel Fire of 2001 (A)

Publication Date: September 01, 2004

In the late afternoon of a hot day in July, 2001, an accident beneath the streets of Baltimore threatened to turn into a disaster. A freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel that ran beneath one of the...

The Yofu River Crossing

Publication Date: April 07, 2004

This fictionalized case describes a public finance policy analysis problem faced by a city in China. In order to reduce downtown congestion and create a pedestrian area, the city wants to provide shuttle transportation in and out of the city...

"Dealing with the Devil": The Tobacco Control Negotiations of 1997-98

Publication Date: March 25, 2004

The decade of the 1990s was one of increasingly bitter public criticism of the major US tobacco companies on the part of a number of anti-tobacco advocacy groups, who were collectively known as the tobacco control movement. In their zeal to...

Closing the Weather Service Office in Lake City

Publication Date: March 01, 2004

This case tells the story of a public campaign to halt plans to close, for budgetary reasons, a local weather service office, whose forecasting functions would be assumed by other larger offices in the area equipped with state-of-the art radar...

A Duty to Leak?

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

This case describes the challenge faced by the executive director of a (disguised) human rights watchdog agency. The state wants to increase the number of inmates in its prisons (without increasing the size of the facilities). This requires the...

"Big Media" Meets the "Bloggers": Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks at Strom Thurmond's Birthday Party

Publication Date: February 01, 2004

The resignation of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott from his position as Majority Leader was an event unprecedented in the history of the US Senate. It occurred precipitously, in the wake of remarks he had made at an event where no one expected...

Neighborhood Conservation Services of Barberton: Responding to Change in the Magic City

Publication Date: November 01, 2003

In the late 1990s, the leadership of Neighborhood Conservation Services (NCS) of Barberton, Ohio--a nonprofit housing rehabilitation organization founded two decades earlier to help reverse the decline of this aging industrial city--found its...

Urban Homesteading Assistance Board

Publication Date: October 01, 2003

Thirty years after its founding in 1973, New York City's Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) found itself at a crossroads. The nonprofit, church-related organization that had long-provided tenants with assistance in renovating abandoned...

Portland's Urban Growth Boundary and Housing Prices: Note on Measuring Housing Prices (B)

Publication Date: August 06, 2003

In December of 2002, the Metro Council of Portland, Oregon had to decide whether or not to expand the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) for the metropolitan area. The UGB had been created as a tool to help promote a more compact, livable, and...