Governors, States | featured news

According to the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, since the passage of Prop 30 in the November election, California-based company relocation inquiries have doubled, possibly tripled, in Central Texas. West Coast entrepreneurs feeling the personal financial stress of an out-of-control state budget and tax policy have heard Texas’ message, and they’re responding.

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a leading Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law, said he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid to cover more poor people.

Republican governors who long opposed President Barack Obama's remake of the health insurance market are struggling to square their opposition with the new law's requirements as it starts to take effect.

Republicans in the Congress attacked each other on Tuesday over their leadership's "fiscal cliff" offer to Democratic President Barack Obama as a group of governors visited the White House to voice concern about the impact on the states of the year-end tax-and-spending deadline.

As many states continue recovering from the recession, governors say they fear that talks to avert the so-called fiscal cliff will actually lead to deep cuts.

"You are still paying for that coverage expansion but not getting the benefit of it," said Herb Kuhn, president of the Missouri Hospital Association. "So you as a state are exporting your dollars to another state. If you have some adjoining state that accepts (the Medicaid expansion) then you are basically sending your dollars to your neighbor."

Health-care reform. Same-sex marriage. Illegal immigration. The social safety net. When it comes to some of the top issues facing the states, it might seem that the partisan divide among the country’s governors is as wide as it has ever been.

Tax income has been outpacing forecasts — good news as Sacramento struggles with a $15-billion budget deficit. GOP leaders are already using it as fodder against Gov. Brown's proposed tax increases.

On the recession's front lines, governors are struggling to chart the road ahead for states staggered by unrelenting joblessness and cut-to-the-bone budgets even as Washington reports signs of economic growth.

"The worst probably is yet to come," warned Gov. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., chairman of the National Governors Association, at the group's meeting Saturday. He called the situation "fairly poor" in most states, adding that it "doesn't look too good."