local governments

When the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission faced a tidal wave of public input—more than 30,000 comments—the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) and Ford School students stepped in. Their analysis helped the commiss...

The latest installment of the Michigan Public Policy Survey, conducted by CLOSUP, found that Michigan leaders believe not enough residents are running for elected office.

Over a snowy weekend in January, Anneke Craig (MPP ‘27), Madeleine Gibbons-Shapiro (MPP ‘27), and Emma Schwartz (MPP ‘27) traveled to Washington, D.C. for the annual U.S. Conference of the Mayors (USCM) as part of the David Bohnett Foundation Leaders...

CLOSUP's Stephanie Leiser, Debra Horner, and Natalie Fitzpatrick discuss the Michigan Public Policy Survey and how it has shown that, although there is concerns over the state of democracy in the United States, democracy remains strong at the local l...

Molly Kleinman delivered the keynote address at “Local and State Government in the Age of AI: Innovation, Civil Rights, and Policy,” a forum hosted by the Michigan Council on Government and Education on July 16. The event brought together leaders fro...

Debra Horner, The Daily Telegram: "Back in 2012, only about 18 percent of local officials told us their governments used social media (including 48 percent of jurisdictions with more than 30,000 residents). In 2021, that was up to 29 percent (includi...

Stephanie Leiser, Accounting Today: "There's an enormous amount of municipal government financial data locked up in PDF documents. Unlocking that data has the potential to radically improve transparency and dramatically enhance our ability to underst...

Michigan’s local government leaders report generally good relationships among officials and residents, despite well-documented examples of coarsening discourse and antagonism in public gatherings, according to a new University of Michigan report. ...

Many local governments across Michigan expect to cut service levels in the next year, according to a new survey by the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, a research center at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy...