As The Washington Independent reported Wednesday, utility companies are fighting over who’s going to pay for the poles and wires, and the federal government hasn’t so far been a very effective referee.

“While a broad energy bill authored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) addressed some electric transmission issues, those provisions are not expected to come up for a vote in the Senate this year,” TWI’s Andrew Restuccia wrote. “

The most recent casualty of the scandal was New Mexico’s top-paid staff person, State Investment Officer Gary Bland, who resigned in late October. State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, a member of the State Investment Council, said a private law firm hired by the State Investment Council (SIC) found that Bland had “pressured investment firms doing business with the state to hire certain third-party marketing or placement agents,” The Associated Press reported.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Massachusetts has proposed a law to streamline the process used to appeal wind energy projects in hopes of speeding up approval, the Boston Globe reports. Apparently a third of all wind-energy projects in the Bay State are stalled because of lawsuits or permit appeals. But the proposal isn’t without its critics, meaning there will be a battle getting it codified.

Today is election day in many parts of the country. In addition to the high-profile gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, Maine voters go to the polls to decide whether to uphold a gay marriage law signed in May. As the Christian Science Monitor reports, if supporters prevail, Maine will become the first state in which voters have backed gay marriage.

Texas educators forcibly pinned down students with disabilities more than 18,000 times in the last school year, sometimes injuring them in the process, according to a review of state data by the Texas Tribune, a  much-anticipated non-profit news outlet that debuted today.

Moving along to water issues, the California state Senate approved three measures early Tuesday that are part of a broad attempt at water reform in the nation’s most populous state, reports the Los Angeles Times. The measures included a $10-billion bond measure that would pay for new infrastructure, ecosystem restoration in the San Joaquin- Sacramento Delta and water supply improvements and watershed protections around the state. It also passed a conservation target requiring a statewide reduction in per capita urban water use, as well as a bill creating a new state council to oversee the delta, the heart of the state waterworks.

But as the Times notes, “the legislation’s success is far from assured.” Not only must that state’s other chamber, the State Assembly, vote on the Senate measures, but the Senate itself still must vote on two other measures that are part of this broad water reform effort. “The policy parts are linked. If the two remaining measures dealing with water rights enforcement and groundwater monitoring fail, it will take down the entire package,” the Times reports.

In the media world, the Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers will do without the majority of Associated Press content it usually receives next week. “The goal,” writes Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal, “as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday.” This is potentially huge because the Associated Press, for more than a century, has been the backstop for many newspapers across the nation. If a paper didn’t have the staff or the time to report a story at the state Capitol, it usually could count on the Associated Press to do it.

On the techno beat, call it the battle of the maps. MapQuest, once the unchallenged ruler of online directions, has been dethroned by GoogleMaps and continues to lose market share, report the geeks over at ReadWriteWeb. MapQuest is putting up a fight, coming out with recent improvements. But is it too late, RWW asks. For anyone who has found themselves frustrated by unclear, or downright inaccurate, directions on MapQuest, this is a comeuppance.

“By facilitating renewable energy projects on our public lands, we can create jobs while building the clean energy economy,” Heinrich said. “This is a common sense, cost effective approach to promoting clean energy development.”

The Clean Energy Promotion Act would dedicate up to $5 million per year, coming from existing rental payments paid by wind and solar developers for projects on BLM lands, to these offices to process current and future renewable energy applications.

So far no solar energy plans on BLM lands have been approved. There is a backlog of 200 solar energy applications, 25 wind project applications and there are even more locations that applicants would like to begin testing for future wind projects.

Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, approved of Heinrich’s legislation.

“Streamlining the bureaucracy will allow the U.S. to develop our vast solar resources and create tens of thousands of jobs in the American Southwest,” Resch said.

Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), said the AWEA was “grateful to Congressman Heinrich for his leadership on promoting the deployment of renewable energy on public lands.”

“This legislation meshes perfectly with [Interior] Secretary [Ken] Salazar’s establishment of Renewable Energy Coordination Offices. These efforts will help ensure that our nation’s vast renewable energy potential on public lands is developed responsibly with resulting benefits to our economic, national, and environmental security.”

Heinrich’s bill is H.R. 2662.