Pew Charitable Trusts

States have employed a host of energy-saving programs, green-purchase requirements, building efficiency standards and financial incentive arrangements to meet those goals. So how are they doing in meeting targets they have set for themselves?

Wisconsin was only one of about two dozen states where members of Republican-led majorities in one or both chambers introduced either right-to-work bills, aimed at preventing workers from being forced to pay union dues, or measures to roll back prevailing wage laws that establish workers’ pay on public projects.

Fed up with federal inaction, many states found their own ways to address crumbling roads and bridges.

Rural areas are more likely to be poor, with limited transportation, making it that much harder for the homeless to get to a center that can provide counseling, a housing voucher or medical care.

Dallas County property owners paid more than $467million in taxes last year to Parkland Health and Hospital System, the county’s only public hospital, to provide medical care to the poor and uninsured.

Speeding past emergency vehicles is an everyday occurrence on the nation’s highways, even though every state has a “move over” law that requires drivers to slow down or switch lanes when emergency vehicles are on the scene.