Kevin B. Smith is the Leland J. and Dorothy H. Olson Chair of Political Science at theUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author or coauthor of 10 books on politics and policy,as well as numerous scholarly articles on state politics and policy. Prior to becoming an academic,he covered state and local politics as a newspaper reporter. You can follow him on Twitter at @nivek_htims.Alan Greenblatt is a reporter at Governing magazine and has been writing about politics andgovernment in Washington, D.C., and the states for more than two decades. As a reporter forCongressional Quarterly, he won the National Press Club’s Sandy Hume Memorial Award forExcellence in Political Journalism. At Governing, he has covered numerous issues of concern tostate and local governments, such as budgets, taxes, and higher education. Along the way, he haswritten about politics and culture for many other outlets, including NPR, the New York Times,and the Washington Post. He’s on Twitter at @AlanGreenblatt.
