In Spring/Summer 2020, most individuals living in the United States experienced several months of social distancing and stay-at-home orders because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Clinicians, restaurant cooks, cashiers, transit operators, and other essential workers (EWs), however, continued to work outside the home during this time in order to keep others alive and maintain a functioning society. In the United States, EWs are often low-income persons of color who are more likely to face socioeconomic vulnerabilities, systemic racism, and health inequities. To assess the various impacts of COVID-19 on EWs, an online survey was distributed to a representative sample of individuals residing in six states during May/June 2020. The sample included 990 individuals who identified as EWs and 736 nonessential workers (NWs). We assessed differences between EW and NW respondents according to three categories related to health equity and social determinants of health: (1) demographics (e.g. race/ethnicity); (2) COVID-19 exposure risk pathways (e.g. ability to social distance); and (3) COVID-19 risk perceptions (e.g. perceived risk of contracting COVID-19). EWs were more likely to be Black or Hispanic than NWs and also had lower incomes and education levels on average. Unsurprisingly, EWs were substantially more likely to report working outside the home and less likely to report social distancing and wearing masks indoors as compared to NWs. EWs also perceived a slightly greater risk of contracting COVID-19. These findings, which we discuss in the context of persistent structural inequalities, systemic racism, and health inequities within the United States, highlight ways in which COVID-19 exacerbates existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities faced by EWs.

Collaborative governance processes seek to engage diverse policy actors in the development and implementation of consensus‐oriented policy and management actions. Whether this is achieved, however, largely depends on the degree to which actors with different beliefs coordinate their actions to achieve common policy goals—a behavior known as cross‐coalition coordination. Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework and collaborative governance literatures, this study analyzes cross‐coalition coordination in three collaborative environmental governance processes that seek to manage water in the Colorado River Basin. Through comparative analysis, it highlights the complex relationship among the institutional design of a collaborative governance process, how and why actors choose to engage in cross‐coalition coordination, and the consequent policy outputs they produce. The findings advance policy scholars’ nascent understanding of cross‐coalition coordination and its potential to affect policymaking dynamics.

Whether due to climate change, human development in risk-prone areas, or other factors contributing to vulnerability, communities globally face risk from hazards that can lead to disasters that impact human livelihoods. Some disasters become focusing events that can catalyze a search for solutions to the policy problems uncovered by disaster. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) was developed to provide policy scholars with the tools to analyze the role of narratives in such policy debates. The NPF, however, has not been systematically applied to narratives surrounding hazards and disasters. This study examines media coverage from two cases of catastrophic wildfire in Colorado, the United States, to understand the evolving policy narratives over time, with specific attention to three key NPF variables: policy problems, solutions, and characters. Findings indicate that narratives concerning disasters are different than other policy issues in ways that are vital to understand as scholars apply and refine the NPF.

Natural disasters may be windows of opportunity for policy change and learning by local governments, which are the entities primarily responsible for the recovery and rebuilding process after a disaster strikes in the United States. During disaster recovery, local governments are faced with myriad policy challenges, from technical issues concerning the repair and replacement of infrastructure to broader substantive questions of reducing vulnerability to future hazards. Their actions are constrained by federal and state policies related to disaster recovery, and yet they must make their own decisions regarding disaster recovery finance within those constraints. These decisions may then influence a local government's long‐term fiscal planning, such as their target level of budget reserves, borrowing, categories of spending, and mechanisms to generate revenue. To assess how local governments respond to and learn from fiscal constraints during disaster recovery, we analyze flood recovery in seven Colorado communities in the three counties most impacted by extreme flooding in 2013. Data from in‐depth interviews with local finance personnel and other administrators, budgets, and public documents are used to analyze recovery decisions and postdisaster fiscal policy learning. While most local governments drew instrumental lessons from the disaster experience, such as how to better manage grant reimbursement processes, some also drew broader lessons that may contribute to achieving longer term community resilience, fiscal stability, and disaster preparedness.

Although the water management sector is often characterized as resistant to risk and change, urban areas across the United States are increasingly interested in creating opportunities to transition toward more sustainable water management practices. These transitions are complex and difficult to predict – the product of water managers acting in response to numerous biophysical, regulatory, political, and financial factors within institutional constraints. Gaining a better understanding of how these transitions occur is crucial for continuing to improve water management. This paper presents a replicable methodology for analyzing how urban water utilities transition toward sustainability. The method combines standardized quantitative measures of variables that influence transitions with contextual qualitative information about a utility's unique decision making context to produce structured, data‐driven narratives. Data‐narratives document the broader context, the utility's pretransition history, key events during an accelerated period of change, and the consequences of transition. Eventually, these narratives should be compared across cases to develop empirically‐testable hypotheses about the drivers of and barriers to utility‐level urban water management transition. The methodology is illustrated through the case of the Miami‐Dade Water and Sewer Department (WASD) in Miami‐Dade County, Florida, and its transition toward more sustainable water management in the 2000s, during which per capita water use declined, conservation measures were enacted, water rates increased, and climate adaptive planning became the new norm.