The Latest

This memo from Local Solutions Support Center (LSSC), the hub dedicated to defending and advancing local democracy, details the trends our team is tracking during the first three months of the 2024 legislative season.

The piece was written by Jessy Correa, a program manager with Cornerstone Connections in Orange County, and a survivor of domestic violence who advocates for women; and Santra Denis, executive director of the Miami Workers Center.

Lawmakers in Tallahassee are poised to wrap regular session later next week (3/8), but there are a number of abusive preemption bills we’re tracking between now and then.

In 2024, state lawmakers are once again seeking to undermine local democracy and take power away from people and communities with preemption bills that weaken our democracy and the ability of everyone to participate in it. Here are a few states, initiatives, and bills to have on your radar in the days ahead.

In a new paper from A Better Balance, Local Solutions Support Center, and Equality Federation, we highlight the different types of abusive preemption that target local authority to protect LGBTQ+ individuals. 

To strengthen this defense against prosecutorial preemption, we need a multi-pronged approach: we must continually monitor and assess of strategies’ effectiveness, we must correct false media narratives, and we must build coalitions with communities to ensure that the approaches they support are allowed to flourish.  

“If we want to create policy that solves housing problems and endures across the shifting whims of politics, we cannot rely on simple rubrics dictating that local is good, while state is bad, or vice versa. We need to propose solutions that actually solve problems, rather than just stymie the level of government in which the opposite political party holds power. “

“New preemption” is moving in a dangerous new direction, with states not just targeting specific local policy decisions but rather impairing or eradicating whole realms of local authority entirely,

LSSC is looking for the next leader of our Legal Team. Our Legal Team Lead is a member of our Core Team of consultants and is responsible for advancing our strategic priority of rebalancing the power between state and local governments by creating and deploying the foundation of legal expertise on preemption issues

“Citizens are recognizing the effects of preemption and other forms of state- and interest-driven control over their lives and communities, and they are fighting back in both traditional and non-traditional ways.”