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In response to government efforts to promote renewable energy development, Cape Wind Associates proposed the first offshore wind farm in the United States. The plan has been met with both vehement opposition and ardent support. In response to an increasingly unproductive debate over the project, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC), a quasi-state agency, held a series of stakeholder meetings to establish a shared framework for analyzing the proposed wind farm. Through a facilitated process, stakeholders established rules and agendas for the six resulting meetings, which included presentations, discussions, and questions and answer sessions. The MTC compiled a wealth of materials generated by these meetings and made the results widely available both online and on compact disc. Most participants in the stakeholder sessions found substantial value in the opportunity for information exchange in a neutral setting. The MTC concluded that unbiased, reliable information is a powerful tool in fostering acceptance of new renewable energy technologies; however, in the case of offshore wind development, aesthetic concerns and the absence of an established regulatory framework for ocean-based renewable energy projects remain significant obstacles.

In early 2013, the California Legislature will consider bills implementing a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which required states to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults under age 65, including those without children living at home. This Expansion was effectively made optional for states by a 2012 Supreme Court decision and has not yet been formally enacted in California. In this report, the authors find that the Medi-Cal Expansion offers California the opportunity to significantly increase health insurance coverage at minimal cost to the state budget. Using the California Simulation of Insurance Markets (CalSIM) model, the authors predict that more than 1.4 million low-income adults will be newly eligible for Medi-Cal under the Expansion beginning in 2014. Other mandatory provisions of the ACA will lead to increased enrollment among Californians who are already eligible for Medi-Cal but not enrolled. This increase in coverage will have far-reaching benefits for Californians' health outcomes and the California economy. The report also estimates that the federal government will pay for at least 85 percent of new Medi-Cal spending in 2014 through 2019. In the initial years of implementation, most new state Medi-Cal spending will result from required Medicaid changes and will occur whether or not the Expansion is implemented. We find that the new state spending on Californians newly eligible for Medi-Cal will be largely offset by increased state tax revenues and potential savings in other areas of the budget. This is a joint report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and funded by The California Endowment.

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are public-private partnerships that focus on natural resource challenges which transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries and require a more holistic, collaborative, and adaptive approach to conservation that is firmly grounded in science and strives to ensure the sustainability of land, water, wildlife and cultural resources. The Great Northern LCC, covering Western Montana and parts of several other states and provinces, is nearing completion of a process that synthesizes conservation priorities among the 25 organizations represented on the Steering Committee and their partners. This Strategic Conservation Framework identifies priority species, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes across the landscape represented by the Great Northern LCC based on synthetic summarizations of five state-based Wildlife Action Plans, 40 other regional conservation planning documents, and focused interviews with key personnel across the region. Here we report on the process by which we analyzed data from the State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) of ID, MT, OR, WA, and WY and from Strategic Habitat Conservation as one piece of information for strategic planning. Thirty-five species of greatest conservation need (as defined in the SWAPs) were identified as having commonality across the five states. The ranges of these species were then overlain and a map of areas with the greatest number of species of conservation need can be visualized across the Great Northern LCC.