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Across the country, electric demand is growing and could explode if green goals like electrifying home heating, industry and transportation come to fruition. At the same time, many states, utilities and businesses have pledged to decarbonize, helping push older coal and gas power plants that have struggled to stay economically competitive into retirement. Yet in the queues run by the organizations […]

The post New scorecard rates nation’s grid managers on connecting renewables appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A portion of the road will be shut down Wednesday until next spring to allow replacement of a bridge over Coldwater Creek and removal of contaminated soil from the site.

On March 19, 1995, No. 1 seed UCLA defeated Missouri in the NCAA Tournament in a game that Tiger fans would never forget.

Worried about hospitals closing and higher costs for patients, state lawmakers are increasingly tangling with hospitals over potential health care mergers, in some cases derailing deals they think don’t serve the public interest. Financially strapped hospitals often look to merge with or be acquired by other systems. After a pandemic-era slowdown, health care mergers and […]

The post Facing public backlash, some health care companies are abandoning hospital deals appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Under a law passed in 2022, residents during the last two weeks before an election can vote early without an authorized excuse for failing to show up on Election Day.

Ledisi is channeling an old-fashioned R&B aesthetic inspired by Luther Vandross and Anita Baker for her concert at Stifel Theatre on March 23.

Mayor Tishaura Jones wants red light cameras in St. Louis — but their fate at the Board of Aldermen seems inextricably linked to a bill meant to provide oversight of police surveillance.  Aldermanic President Megan Green is adamant that it’s important not to implement an automated traffic enforcement system that would enable another vast network of cameras in the city, without first passing a bill that would allow for accountability and transparency for citizens’ civil rights.  As a result, bills that may seem unrelated to one another have led to tensions between the former allies.

The Sydney Sweeney train keeps chugging along, as the physically blessed actress/influencer takes command of the box office one movie genre at a time. Anyone But You, the silly Much Ado About Nothing redo she did with that pretty boy from Top Gun: Maverick, shocked the hell out of everyone by making more than $200 million worldwide. What wasn’t shocking was how much Madame Web, the sisterly superhero movie she co-starred in with Dakota Johnson, was reviled by critics and audiences.

Looking for a mellow evening happy hour, perhaps something cannabis-related? (Yeah, us too.) Swing by Hello Juice & Smoothies(1000 South Newstead Avenue) this Thursday, March 21, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for their Chill Happy Hour.

The Beer: Sunny Cat The Brewery: 2nd Shift 2nd Shift Brewing’s beloved New England-style IPA, Sunny Cat, owes its inspiration — and name — to the orange tabby immortalized on its label, Sunny.  According to Libby Crider, co-owner of 2nd Shift Brewing, Sunny lived the first few years of his life as a barn cat before he decided to join the Crider family.

Spring is finally springing in the Gateway City, and with the temperate weather comes three new exhibitions at the Saint Louis Art Museum. The first of the three, Concealed Layers: Uncovering Expressionist Paintings, is currently on view in the Caro Nichols Holmes Gallery 214 and the Sherry and Gary Wolff Gallery 215, and will run through August 4. According to press materials, this exhibit "will take visitors behind the scenes and below the surface for an inside look at art from the museum’s permanent collection."

A cool start to Tuesday, but it very well could be the warmest day this week. Spring officially begins in the evening, though with it comes a bit of a cold front.

On March 19, 1994, about 100 spectators were on hand as the 66 Park In Theatre was torn down.

No-excuse absentee voting begins Tuesday in Missouri.

Tuesday marks the day of the Illinois primary election. One of the hottest races in the bi-state area is a Republican race for Congress.

Two wildfires consumed more than 1,000 acres of the Mark Twain National Forest in late February. Firefighters contained the burns, but the unseasonably warm and windy conditions that let them spread quickly underscore the importance of the forest service's plans to set some fires on purpose.

One of the leading candidates for Missouri Secretary of State drops his bid in the race.

Meanwhile, the Mega Millions grand prize is now estimated at a whopping $875 million — the sixth-largest in game history — ahead of Tuesday’s drawing.

by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with_ WPLN/Nashville Public Radio_. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services publicly said this month that the agency was working with lawmakers to address oversight gaps at juvenile detention facilities across the state. But behind the scenes, the department is working to water down a bill that would do just that, according to one of the bill’s sponsors and others working on the legislation.

Last year, an investigation by WPLN and ProPublica revealed that the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville was illegally locking children alone in cells and that the facility had faced few consequences even as DCS repeatedly documented violations.

In response, one Democratic and two Republican state lawmakers drafted proposed legislation that would give an independent state agency the power to require changes at facilities that violate state standards, effectively forcing DCS to act.

As it stands, DCS inspects and writes reports on youth detention centers across the state. If inspectors document persistent problems, DCS says, it can freeze or slow admissions, decrease capacity or refuse to approve a license. DCS said it has used those interventions at other facilities but never at the Bean Center.

DCS is pushing for different language that would strip the independent agency from having enforcement power and leave DCS in charge of deciding how to respond to problems.

The bill is scheduled for discussion in both the Tennessee House and Senate on Tuesday.

DCS declined to comment on the legislation but said it is working to address the problems at the Bean Center.

WPLN and ProPublica found that inspectors documented that the Bean Center had been improperly using solitary confinement for years. While DCS noted the violations in its reports, the department failed to effectively intervene. DCS says it cannot revoke the Bean Center’s license, but it has not approved its renewal either.

“The Bean Center has been in a nonapproved status for quite some time,” DCS Commissioner Margie Quin told lawmakers in a hearing this month. “We're in that facility on a quarterly basis and continue to work with them.”

But some Tennessee lawmakers and child welfare advocates say it’s not enough to simply document that a facility is out of compliance with state standards. In a letter in November, 14 Democratic lawmakers called on DCS to intervene at the Bean Center and called for the superintendent and namesake of the facility, Richard L. Bean, to lose his job.

Bean did not respond to a request for comment.

“Why is there no accountability, and why isn’t there any attempt to remedy that?” asked state Sen. Heidi Campbell, D-Nashville, one of the sponsors of the bill. She said in the past DCS has improved with oversight. “But right now, there’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just the wild, wild west.”

Despite acknowledging the ongoing problems inside the facility, DCS continues to contract with the Bean Center to place children there, paying about $175 per day per kid.

“Although the facility is not currently in an approved status, there is nothing to indicate conditions at the facility are unsafe,” Ashley Zarach, DCS communications director, said in an emailed statement. DCS said the Bean Center is no longer using seclusion and that its current violations are largely clerical. “We are holding approval to ensure the facility updates its policy and schedules an annual fire inspection,” Zarach said.

But that arrangement is part of the reason lawmakers like Campbell want a third party involved. In the time DCS has been licensing juvenile detention centers in the state, it said, it has never terminated a license.

The original draft of the bill gave enforcement powers to the ombudsman at the independent state agency, the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. The ombudsman’s office has existed since 1996 to respond to individual complaints about DCS, but it does not have enforcement power. The commission already has access to juvenile detention centers to monitor federal standards but not state standards.

Kylie Graves, policy director at the commission, declined to comment on the bill, saying, “We are going to let the General Assembly go through the legislative process.”

If a facility is in violation and doesn’t follow the ombudsman’s recommendations, the original draft would force DCS to suspend the facility’s license or, for detention centers like Bean’s, stop placing kids there until the violations are fixed.

But those enforcement mechanisms are no longer included in the DCS version.

Instead, the ombudsman would notify the facility of the problems, and if the facility doesn’t comply within a year, DCS would be notified in writing. Then “the department shall provide the ombudsman with an update on actions taken to remedy the findings by December 1, 2025, and annually thereafter,” the agency’s amendment says.

“If you de-fang it enough, you’re not going to have a useful piece of legislation,” Campbell said.

The DCS version does not detail what exactly would happen after that to a facility that is routinely out of compliance, as the Bean Center was. But it would require the ombudsman to report violations publicly to the General Assembly on a regular basis, offering some public accountability.

State Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said he is not surprised that a state agency would push back against oversight legislation of this size and scope.

“DCS is probably arguing right now, ‘Hey, a little bit of flexibility for us is a good thing,’” Roberts said. “And I think some legislators are looking at it and say, ‘Well, we're not sure that we agree with that, because we want to know that certain standards are being met in every situation.’”

Campbell said incremental progress is better than nothing.

“I would love to have a much stronger way to approach this,” she said, “but that having been said, as we say all the time around here, let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”