The eight states in the Mid-Atlantic region used a variety of methods to reduce budgets during the recession of the early 2000s. Their behavior was consistent with what had been seen previous recessions. They were similar to the classic cutback strategies and the administrative response models discussed in the literature. The findings have the potential to be instructive as to how states will handle similar situations in the future.

Land development processes are driven by complex interactions between socio-economic and spatial factors. Acquiring an understanding of such processes and the underlying procedures helps urban and regional planners, environmental scientists, and policy makers to base their decisions on valid and profound information. In this work, remote-sensing-derived land-cover data were used to characterize the patterns of land development from the beginning of 1985 to the beginning of 2015, in the state of West Virginia (WV), US. We applied spatial pattern analysis, ridge regression, and Geographically Weighted Ridge Regression (GWRR) to examine the impact of population, energy resources, existing land developments dynamics, and economic status on land transformation. We showed that in presence of multicollinearity of explanatory variables, how penalizing regression models in both local and global levels lead to a better fit and decreases the model’s variance. We used geographical error analysis of regression models to visualize the difference between the model estimates and actual values. The findings of this research indicate that because of shifting geography of opportunities, the patterns and processes of land development in the studied region are unstable. This leads to fragmented land developments and prevents formation of large communities.

Leadership changes can result in confusion for voluntary groups or community organizations. Traditionally, new leaders have received board training or been expected to learn by doing or reviewing existing policies. The National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals (NACDEP) took a new approach, with those in leadership roles developing "playbooks" to guide incoming leaders. The process has proved to be successful for NACDEP and is now being replicated by other organizations.

West Virginia governors ordered experienced mid-year or next-year budget reductions (or both) from FY2002 to FY2006. The state used most of the general budget cutting techniques to achieve these cuts. General fund spending, however, increased 13.2 percent over the same period. Likewise, most spending categories experienced double-digit percentage increases over the period. Only once did spending actually drop from one year to the next. Instead, it appears that spending shifted because of requirements and priority changes, creating winners and losers.