Our focus on this episode is wildlife crossings, underpasses or bridges built just for animals. Millions of animals are killed by vehicles annually on U.S. roads, and animal-vehicle collisions result in about 200 human deaths and 26,000 injuries each year. Two legislators and expert from Pew join the podcast to discuss.
Our focus on this episode is wildlife crossings, underpasses or bridges built just for animals. Millions of animals are killed by vehicles annually on U.S. roads, ranging from large mammals like deer to smaller creatures like squirrels and birds.
Animal-vehicle collisions result in about 200 human deaths and 26,000 injuries each year.
Joining the podcast to discuss the issue are Matt Skroch, director of Pew’s U.S. Conservation Project for the western U.S. and Alaska; Senator Mimi Stewart, a Democrat from New Mexico; and Rep. Katie Zolnikov, a Republican from Montana.
Skroch explained the dimensions of the problem and why a nation with about 4 million miles of roadway has a significant challenge with vehicle-animal collisions. He also noted that states are studying and acting on the issue.
In fact, nine states have enacted legislation related to wildlife crossings since 2020. I asked Senator Stewart and Representative Zolnikov, both of whom sponsored legislation on wildlife crossings in their states, to explain how state lawmakers are tackling the issue.
Stewart discussed the extensive planning that was done in New Mexico and how the fund received $50 million for this legislative year, the largest single amount appropriated for crossings in any state in a single year.
Zolnikov explained that Montana is No. 2 in vehicle-animal collisions in the country on a per capita basis and how the state is building up its fund to pay for crossings.
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Ed: Hello and welcome to “Our American States,” a podcast from the National Conference of State Legislatures. I’m your host, Ed Smith.
MS: Wildlife crossing facilitates safe passage. Safe passage not just for the animal, but there have been shown to be extremely effective in reducing wildlife vehicle collisions.
Ed: That was Matt Skroch, director of Pew’s U.S. Conservation Project for the western US and Alaska and one of my guests on this podcast. He is joined by Senator Mimi Stewart, a Democrat from New Mexico and Representative Katie Zolnikov, a Republican from Montana. Our focus on this episode is wildlife crossings, underpasses or bridges built just for animals. Millions of animals are killed by vehicles every year on U.S. roads ranging from large mammals like deer to smaller creatures like squirrels and birds. Animal vehicle collisions result in about 200 human deaths and 26,000 injuries each year.
Skroch explained the dimensions of the problem and why a nation with about 4 million miles of roadway has a significant challenge with vehicle animal collisions. He also noted that states are studying and acting on the issue. In fact, nine states have enacted legislation related to wildlife crossings since 2020. I asked Senator Stewart and Representative Zolnikov, both of whom sponsored legislation on wildlife crossings in their states, to explain how state lawmakers are tackling the issue. Stewart discussed the extensive planning that was done in New Mexico and how the fund received 50 million dollars for this legislative year, the largest single amount appropriated for crossings in any state in a single year.
Zolnikov explained that Montana is No. 2 in vehicle/animal collisions in the country on a per capita basis and how the state is building up its fund to pay for crossings.
Here is our discussion starting with Matt Skroch.
Matt, welcome to the podcast.
MS: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Ed: So, Matt why don’t we start out with you telling listeners a little bit about what your role is at Pew?
MS: Sure. I’m the director for the western United States and Alaska for Pew’s U.S. Conservation Project. We engage in a variety of conservation programs throughout the region supporting communities, wildlife, healthy rivers. We work on public lands finding creative solutions to solving as you can imagine a myriad of issues and challenges that we face in that region. We have a lot of extreme weather events that are happening. We have a lot of stress on our natural environment which affects our own wellbeing. We have clean water issues. We have wildlife issues, but there is also a lot of great things happening and we at Pew are always thinking about how we can use data and science to inform good public policy for the betterment of our wildlife heritage, our lands, our waters and our own communities.
Ed: We are here today, of course, to talk about wildlife crossings and I wonder if you can give us kind of a general explanation of what those are, what the benefits are and how common they are in this country.
MS: Let me start with roads at a very basic level. I mean roads are as we all know extremely convenient things to have. They get us from point A to point B whether we need to pick up groceries or the kids or long-distance travel across the country. We can go almost anywhere on this continent on a road. We want to value this infrastructure, but these are the very things that actually impede a lot of wildlife movement. If we think about wildlife our natural heritage, these animals need room to roam. We have migratory animals that travel hundreds of miles by land. We have everything from frogs and butterflies to mule deer and elk who migrate for some portion of their life over the course of a year usually seasonally in the spring and the fall. And these migrations and these wildlife movements are really critical to the health of our wildlife heritage. And when you put a road that intersects that migratory route or that movement route, you can imagine there is a conflict. There is a bad outcome often for the animal who might be trying to cross that road and especially with larger animals like deer and elk, there can be a bad outcome for drivers as well in collisions with those animals. The good news is we have a solution in a form of these wildlife crossings. They are literally bridges or underpasses that are designed to facilitate not the movement of our cars, but the movement of these animals off of the roadbed. So, they are going to want to move in that direction. We are not going to be able to do anything about that unless we build a big wall all along our roads and highways and that wouldn’t be a good outcome either for the animals that I think we value for a variety of reasons. And so, these wildlife crossings facilitate safe passage. Safe passage not just for the animal, but there have been shown to be extremely effective in reducing wildlife vehicle collisions on the roadbed as well. So, you might hear me say more than once that we have a win/win scenario here with these structures. We are protecting our wildlife heritage and, in many cases, those wildlife are very important to communities in a cultural sense and a socioeconomic sense, in an inherent value sense and so we are doing that. And then we are also improving public safety. And I don’t want to discount the public safety side of this because when we look at certain states with a lot of rural land like Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, we have a large percentage of collisions that are actually involving wildlife in these rural areas. It’s not just in the west; it’s in the east as well and the Midwest. And so, we have this solution and we are coming up to speed I think as a nation in deploying the solution in a variety of different places.
Ed: You know one thing I’ve noticed doing podcasts about public policy for several years is that the way we communicate about issues is really critical. You’ve been doing this work for a long, long time and I wonder if the way you communicate about this issue has changed in recent years.
TM: 06:53
MS: It has. As a scientist, I started in this line of work looking at data. I was looking at data that was derived from satellite signals that were tracking animals. They were wearing these GPS collars and you could track their migration over time. Fascinating, fascinating information that has a lot of value for wildlife conservationist and managers. And that’s when we first started thinking about corridors and connectivity and as part of that, the importance of these wildlife crossings on roads and highways. But the more we started to delve into the public policy side of it, the more we started to realize that it takes public financing to build these structures. The more we found ourselves really blending the importance of these structures for wildlife with the importance of these structures for humans and drivers in particular and public safety. And when we can put those two things together and show politicians, decision makers and the general public that these are safe, effective, cost-effective solutions to a problem, in many places what we see is a considerable amount of support and in part what is really fueling the momentum and interest in this topic.
Ed: Well, as someone who lives in the West, like many people, I’ve avoided a deer on a highway and if anything will convince you of the importance of this, it’s that one heart stopping moment when you think you are going to run into a very large animal. Let me ask you about why you think so many states have now been motivated to take action on this.
MS: Well, I have to say just to your point about people having their own experiences with this issue. You had your own experience almost hitting a deer. I’ve had my own experience unfortunately by colliding with a deer in my vehicle. If people don’t have their own personal experience, its high likelihood they know somebody in their immediate family who has and so it’s something that people can really touch and feel if you know what I mean. They have their own direct experience with the problem and that translates to support for solving the problem. They can really connect with that reasoning and they can see and understand the value that it is going to have for them, for their family, for their communities. And I think at the end of the day, that’s why whether it’s in Pennsylvania or Montana or any of the other dozens of states that are starting to look at this issue why we are seeing so much support. And I want to stress it is a very bipartisan issue whether its Colorado, New Mexico or Oregon or Montana, Utah, Nevada, almost every Western state is taking action on this. Almost every Western state and many Eastern states as well are putting money on the table to match federal dollars and saying this is a solution we want. Let’s prioritize and identify where we need to build these and let’s improve our roads and highways and conserve our wildlife.
Ed: Yeah, you make a good point there because I think most of us think about this as a Western states phenomenon even though as I understand it, it actually started in Europe. What about other states in the U.S. You mentioned Pennsylvania. Are Eastern states, Southeastern states getting more involved in this even though they may not have these large migrating herds?
MS: One hundred percent and I mentioned earlier that you know this is about amphibians. This is about frog migrations in some places just as much as it is maybe about a mule deer migration. Florida for example. Florida has a lot of effort going into conserving their Florida panther. It’s an imperiled species there and connectivity and habitat connectivity for the Florida panther is extremely important so Florida has really doubled down on building wildlife family transportation infrastructure in tandem with protecting habitat for the Florida panther. Whereas in North Carolina, a black bear might be a primary interest in terms of conserving connectivity between habitat patches and therefore constructing wildlife overpasses or underpasses for black bear and other myriad species. In Virginia, the elk population is growing and they are talking about building wildlife overpass for elk in Western Virginia. The list goes on and on. It really depends on what the particular animal or species it is that a state is interested in doing in looking at and then it also depends on where you get these wildlife vehicle collisions. Where can you get the biggest bang for the buck in reducing accidents as well. But we see it everywhere. There’s even wildlife crossings for turtles in the Northeast, some of the Northeastern states and some of the design parameters they put into these small little underpasses. They are just like small culverts but they are really fascinating and lot of work goes into making them effective for those animals as well.
Ed: As you mentioned earlier, public policy runs up against money at some point. You have to figure out how to get the public will behind that. Now as I understand it, Pew has published an assessment of some sustainable funding policies and I wonder if you could highlight some of those and what you would point to as maybe one’s legislators, legislative staff in our audience might think about as they look at this issue.
TM: 12:57
MS: Let me first say that the federal government puts quite a bit of money into this issue to begin with. They for the first time in 2021 when they passed the bipartisan infrastructure law, they created a dedicated program just for wildlife crossings and so states have an opportunity to match that money. To apply for those funds and put their own match money on the table in order to attract those funds to their state and so what we are often talking about with lawmakers in the United States is how do you create that match. Where do you find the funds. Maybe it’s not the majority of funds that you need, but how can you create the initial match in order to compete for those federal dollars. There’s a variety of ways of doing it so there’s not a one size fits all here at all. There is a lot of creativity that goes into it. If we go back five or six years, lawmakers were primarily just doing one-time general fund appropriations. They were saying OK, we are going to put $5 million, $10 million, Utah even put $20 million into a dedicated fund at one point. But I think lawmakers and others working on this topic soon realize that that’s a hamster wheel they are going to have to get off at some point. We are not going to do general fund appropriations year after year after year and this issue is not going away. So, what’s a more sustainable revenue mechanism for this and that’s where we really get creative. We’ve seen a lot of different ideas. For instance, in Colorado, lawmakers and the governor have looked at a more holistic approach to just collision prevention and creating a new enterprise within the state of Colorado that would be funded by a small increase in insurance premiums and that would not only go to wildlife crossings, but it would also improve pedestrian and bicycle safety efforts as well.
In Montana just a week ago, the governor signed a bill that allocates a small proportion of tax revenue derived from marijuana sales to wildlife crossings. In Oregon and Nevada, lawmakers have proposed or are looking at tire tax opportunities. At the end of the day, you have to find the money somehow, right. We often run up against challenges with creating new fees, quote unquote tax and so thinking creatively and trying to match the source of revenue with the outcome of wildlife crossings is something we are constantly trying to do. But it’s actually lawmakers who are really driving that creative process. Where is the opportunity? Where is the need? How can I best match this need with a potential revenue mechanism? There’s lots of different ways to do it.
Ed: Well Matt, thanks very much for taking us through this. I think this is a really fascinating topic and maybe one that a lot of lawmakers are not that keenly aware of so thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Take care.
MS: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.
Ed: I’ll be right back after this break with Senator Mimi Stewart of New Mexico.
TM: 16:12
Senator, welcome to the podcast.
MS: Well, thank you Ed. Thank you for inviting me.
Ed: On this podcast, we are focusing of course on wildlife crossings and I wanted to ask you about the wildlife corridor fund that New Mexico created by legislation. As I understand it, there’s 50 million dollars appropriated to that fund for this legislative year. That’s a lot of money and I wonder how you got your colleagues in the legislature to appropriate such an amount.
MS: Well, what a great question to start off with. Just a little history. It was 2019 that I passed the wildlife corridor’s act and, in that act, we required the Department of Transportation and Game and Fish to work together to map out the entire state of New Mexico to determine and to show us where we had the worst killings, lost the most animals, had the most damage to people and vehicles. And so that bill in 2019 Senate Bill 228 amazingly got $500,000 from Department of Transportation in part because of our new governor wanting to work with me Michelle Lujan Grisham and so they put $500,000 to develop a plan. And they took more than the year that the bill gave them. It took several years. They have come up with an incredible plan to impact every place in New Mexico where this is a problem where we really need corridors for wildlife. So got the plan. It’s really good. They are 11 places around New Mexico. The entire cost is $350 million. So, I had been trying since then to get money in the budget for it. The very first project the place where we have the most problems are along highway 550 that goes from Burley Oak all the way through the northwest corner of New Mexico up to Farmington and then to Durango actually. So, this plan was developed and that first project was $45 million and it is four overpasses and five underpasses and I’ve been up there to see what they are doing. That was one of the ways I got the $50 million. Yes, we then did Senate Bill 72 that created a nonreverting fund where we would put money in. At that time, we were still hopeful about getting money from the federal government because they have three or four pots of money for wildlife corridors to connect in between the states and the Western Governors’ Association also has plans to do that. So, I was able to get that money in part because we have a budget surplus and in part because I had been haranguing them every year. The first year they put in $5 million. The second year they put in $2 million. This year $50 million was my bottom line.
Ed: Let me ask you about the base cause at least one of the issues which is motorists running into wildlife. How big of an issue is that in New Mexico?
MS: Well, we are expending about $20 million a year on that. We are losing people every year. We have anywhere from 1,200 to 1,600 crashes every year so we have costs both for the automobile and for the health issues because you know some people are really harmed by these and we are killing animals every day in New Mexico. So, it’s about the total cost between people’s injuries, the property damage is about $20 million a year and that all came out well in that plan that we devised. They said yes and by the way this is an underreporting. What the other states in the West are telling us is that you know you don’t get all these reports. You get the animals that die and they are brushed off the side of the road or you know carry and home, etc. And it’s happening not all over the state, but in very significant areas the northern part of the state, the middle part of the southeastern part of the state. You know we are the fifth largest geographic state in the country and yet we only have 2 million people. We have more animals than we have people in New Mexico.
Ed: I want to ask you about some of these key locations. I’ve been on 550 north. I’ve spent a lot of time in New Mexico. I live in Colorado and I wonder if you could talk a little bit maybe specifically about some of the things that have happened there that have been particularly alarming and help motivate people to get behind this.
TM: 22:38
MS: Well, I think the most alarming about 550 is that it’s the place where most of this carnage is happening. It’s No. 1 in our plan to fix. It’s the top priority. We’ve seen the beautiful overpasses in Canada and what they are doing with the cougars in southern California. I mean overpasses can be a thing of beauty if they work if they are done right. We have problems with the underpasses on 550 because of rain and flooding and other things. They’ve been filled up with plants and animals can’t even get through so Colorado has a manufacturing plant for these under and overpasses and we intend to work with them to purchase some of their basic structures to do these over and underpasses. So, we are starting at the top. We are starting with our highest priority and that is 550 that kills cougars, bears, elk, antelope, raccoons, the small animals along with the game animals, which are important to our economy.
Ed: What are some of the other areas, senator, around the state other than that northwestern section?
MS: Up in the more eastern part of the state up near Raton and Raton Pass, we’ve had some just major collisions up there. So lucky for us the Department of Transportation, they were already in the process of reconfiguring I-25 that goes up through Raton Pass and the interaction between the town of Raton and other small rural areas up there. So, we got them to prioritize that also because they were in the process of renovating anyway, we got really great underpasses. We got fencing and lighting to move animals into those areas into the corridors so we are not finished with it, but that certainly is an area. There is another area in the southeastern part of the state there’s near Silver City and Ruidoso. The area near Ruidoso needs an overpass and 8 underpasses. This plan is so specific as to how many projects and what kind of projects and the cost of it. We hope we are just going to start at the top and keep moving down so I won’t need $50 million next year. I’ll need $40 million. After that, I’ll need $20 million.
Ed: I was surprised that this issue of wildlife tunnels has come up in a lot of Eastern and Southeastern states as well. What would your advice be to your colleagues around the country if this is a topic they are interested in and they want to really understand how it affects people in their state and wildlife in their state.
MS: You know I really think the method we took was the one that really worked. You get your Department of Transportation working with your Department of Wildlife or Game and Fish whatever you call it and put some money in. You don’t need a lot, but you need to put some money in so they can do a complete plan. We actually went to Arizona and borrowed some of their underpass cameras. They have these incredible underpass cameras. We put them around. We of course you know the Department of Transportation has these statistics. But get your 2 agencies that would be the ones dealing with this and give them some money and set them on a path to give you a plan so you know where it is happening, how much is happening, what the cost is, what kind of animals we are losing, how much damage there is to people. You know the auto industry supported this bill. Auto Insurance Industry supported this bill. They are the ones that have to pay for these damaged cars. So, get yourself a plan and then work with them to make sure that it is like what I’ve got. I mean I’ve got a sheet with these 11 projects telling me what kind of elements they need and what the cost is. Now those costs have gone up you know supply chain and labor, etc. and I don’t think there will be as much money from the federal government moving forward although this really does bring states together. This is one of the things that the Western Governors’ Association really wants to promote the interaction of corridors cause these animals don’t stop at the corridors. They don’t have that in their lexicon so we really need to work together and we’ve done that in the west. We’ve done that with Colorado and Arizona so get a plan so you know how much money it is going to cost. I now know you know what each of these are going to cost plus a little bit more as I said. So, I’m just starting down the list to try to fund the worse and keep going. So, once you have people who are working together and the Department of Wildlife and our Department of Transportation are very good at talking to stakeholders, talking to farmers and ranchers, talking to the agricultural people, bringing them in to show them where and what they want to do. Where they want to put these corridors. Where they want to change the mechanisms that are part of our Department of Transportation. We really had to do that and we had to tell people because there was a lot of angst against this from farmers and ranchers. And we reached out to our tribes Pueblos and Nations. They are better at wildlife corridors than the rest of us. It is part of their culture. They already do wildlife corridors on their reservations, on their Pueblo lands so we’ve really worked together on this plan. You know I did the first bill in 2019. The second bill in 2022 and only now in 25 have I got the money I need. So, persistence, patience, stakeholder engagement. You know we are losing our wildlife. We are losing a million species a year. This is urgent for us to have the land and the animals that we grew up with. You know do I want our children and our grandchildren to want to learn about wildlife and go out into wildlife. So, it is important that we all work on this now and that’s my suggestion.
Ed: Well Senator thank you so much and I think that sounds like really good advice both in terms of preserving wildlife and also in terms of how you actually get things done in the legislature so. Thank you for that and take care.
MS: Thank you so much Ed.
Ed: I’ll be right back after this break with Representative Katie Zolnikov of Montana.
TM: 30:40
Representative, welcome to the podcast.
KZ: Thanks so much for having me.
Ed: My guests earlier on the podcast talked about the important role wildlife crossings play particularly in road safety and I wonder if you could talk about how that applies up in Montana.
KZ: Montana, we are kind of a unique state because we have very high numbers of wildlife collisions in our state because we are very rural so we have a lot of miles of road and with ruralness comes a lot of animals. So, this is something that affects Montanans maybe a little more than your average American. They are pretty important up here in Montana.
Ed: Yeah, let me ask you a little bit more about that. I mean some of these wildlife crossings are in all states with all kinds of different situations. I wonder what you could tell me is really unique about Montana and how did that motivate the folks in the legislature to actually fund wildlife crossings.
KZ: Just for a little bit of context, this is my third session so this is actually something that I worked on in the 2023 session, but it just didn’t quite get done so I came back in 2025 and worked with some stakeholders to try to get a piece of legislation that would make everybody happy. So, this is something we’ve been working on you know for a while. And just to throw some data at you, Montana has the second highest rate of wildlife vehicle collisions per capita so I think that alone kind of makes us unique. So, if you are driving in Montana, you have a 1-in-53 chance of hitting an animal every year. The national average across the United States is a 1-in-127 chance so it is just a lot higher here. And then if you think about the kinds of animals that you see in Montana, we have a lot of big game, so whether that is you know deer or elk. As I mentioned earlier, we are a very rural state so we’ve got lots of miles of road and we have very high rates of wildlife collisions.
Ed: Let me ask you about the specialty license plate. How does that work and how did that idea come up?
KZ: Yeah. That’s a great question. So, one of the reasons that the bill in the 2023 session didn’t really come to fruition was because there was this sort of misunderstanding or disagreement if you will on like where the money is going to come from for these wildlife crossings and who is going to manage them. So, anything about wildlife management you know you are going to think about your fish, wildlife and parks department. But when you think about you know your roads or your highways, you are going to think about the Department of Transportation. So, the specialty license plate I think it is kind of a creative and unique fix to this problem because currently there is kind of no way for those two departments within our state government to collaborate and talk to one another. It kind of has to be either the FWP or the Department of Transportation you know applying for grants and working on that and a lot of times like in the case of the Department of Transportation you know it’s not that they don’t see the value of wildlife crossings. It’s just you only have so much money you need to fix the bridge before you can add a wildlife crossing. So how it works is when you are renewing your license plates for your vehicle, there is a license plate, there’s a lot of them for different organizations, but if you choose that one then you pay an extra fee on top of your registration and then that money goes into this fund and that fund can be accessed by Department of Transportation and fish, wildlife and parks. So, it gives them an avenue to work together for wildlife crossings and that’s how the money is raised for those crossings.
Ed: In the West, I know a lot of these animal crossings are because these are migratory routes for some of these large herds of animals. And Montana, as anyone who has ever been there knows, there’s a lot of different typography. There’s mountain ranges, hills, valleys, the Rockies, so on and so forth and how does that geography affect how wildlife move around the state?
KZ: I am not a biologist by any means, but I do know that that does play a part in it. What parts of the states you are traveling in because we do have a wide range of geography in Montana. It does impact you know where you see wildlife crossing and just their patterns which then in turn I think affects you know what kinds of wildlife crossings are best fit for different areas.
Ed: Looking down the road, what do you see as the future for this. Is there a plan? Are there some areas of the state that need more attention than others to try to improve highway safety, road safety really.
TM: 35:34
KZ: Yeah, so that’s a great question. So, what I would like to see in the future so we have the funds set up and part of the function of this special revenue account is that different donations or grants or different funding sources outside of just the money collected from the license plates that can go into that fund. And like I mentioned before, there wasn’t really a place for all of that money to collect that was that specific purpose. So, for the future and kind of looking ahead what I would love to see is as that fund builds and there’s money in there to you know build different wildlife crossings across the state, I would love to have some really positive results that we can then turn around and show you know whether that’s the legislature or various stakeholders hey this works. This is proven. This wildlife crossing was built here and it improved safety by X percentage. Since the fund is now created, I would say that is kind of step 1. Step 2 would be I mean obviously building the fund and then step 3 is being able to come back with results because a lot of the opposition that I ran into in the legislature is there’s some people that just think okay well animals don’t know how to read. You know, how are they going to read a sign that says oh elk crossing here, and so I think there’s some question of like the legitimacy of how effective wildlife crossings are. What I would like to see in the future is just some results that we can come back and show people.
Ed: So, you’ve created this fund for wildlife crossings and we know some license plate revenue is going to be directed there. I understand that some marijuana tax will be going to that fund. And are there other revenue streams?
KZ: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, as you alluded to, my bill was the bill that set up the fund and now it has the ability to be funded whether that’s through pieces of legislation or like maybe grants like I mentioned earlier. The specific marijuana tax revenue stream of revenue that was a different bill. But I think the logic behind that was in Montana our recreational marijuana was actually passed by a citizen’s initiative and so when that happened, there as a whole host of provisions for this money and one of them being towards conservation and recreation. So that was like baked into the citizen’s initiative, but that was the logic behind taking some of that tax revenue and putting it towards the wildlife crossings.
Ed: Well representative, thanks so much for letting us know how you are handling this in Montana and just a good demonstration of how different things are in all our states and the different approaches people take so thanks very much for filling us in on that and take care.
KZ: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Ed: I’ve been talking with Matt Skroch from Pew, New Mexico Senator Mimi Stewart and Montana Representative Katie Zolnikov about wildlife crossings. Thanks for listening.
You can check out all the podcasts from the National Conference of State Legislatures by searching for NCSL podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast “Our American States” dives into some of the most challenging public policy issues facing legislators. On “Across the Aisle” host Kelley Griffin tells stories of bipartisanship. Also check out our special series “Building Democracy” on the history of legislatures.