Declarations

Workplace Fatalities

“Killing 35 citizens isn’t acceptable to us. We all can do a better job. It’s just frustrating. We’re all in this.”

—Kim Floyd, executive director of the Wyoming AFL-CIO, questioned the success of efforts to improve worker safety in the state. Workplace fatalities in Wyoming reached the highest number in five years in 2012 when 35 people died on the job in Wyoming.

Still Displaced From Sandy

“We are exhausted and frustrated, and feel let down.”

—New Jersey resident Lee Ann Newland’s comment during her testimony at the Aug. 15 joint N.J. Senate-Assembly hearing on the pace of rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy. She said she and her husband still can’t return to their home in Neptune, N.J., yet must still pay its mortgage and taxes.

The Votes to Pass

“The way things are going, it looks like they have the votes to pass it. … But what’s sad to me is I’m getting email from the medical community urging me to support the bill. But, at the same time, these same people have stayed silent on Medicaid expansion.”

—Oklahoma State Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, anticipates that tort reform legislation would pass both chambers of the legislature in a special session slated for September.

More Clarity

“The goal is to make federal crop insurance more objective and to provide clarity for the producers facing prevented planting losses.”

—Risk Management Agency Administrator Brandon Willis, who met with North Dakota farmers about changes to clarify rules for prevented planting insurance in five Upper Midwest states in 2014. He was accompanied by U.S. Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.

Katrina Lesson

“By far the most important lesson Mississippi has learned is the value of preparedness.”

—Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant on the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking his state.