BIRMINGHAM September 8, 2026 — The Governmental Research Association presented its 2026 national awards to five independent, nonpartisan state and local policy research organizations. This year’s award winners demonstrate how to engage, inform, and elevate the public’s understanding of pressing issues. Two of the honored projects have already produced changes in law: one prompted new statewide budget disclosure requirements for hundreds of millions of dollars in legislative earmarks in Michigan, and another saw a city council adopt recommended safeguards directly into an ordinance governing more than $100 million in public funds.

The awards were announced at GRA’s annual conference, held July 19–22 in Chicago.

Established in 1914, the GRA is the national association of organizations and individuals professionally engaged in public policy, governmental, and civic research. Its awards are judged by committees of peers drawn from member organizations, and no committee chair this year evaluated a submission from their own organization.

Two themes ran through the winning entries: how state and local governments raise and spend money under fiscal stress, and how criminal justice systems consume public resources and fall unevenly on residents.

Most Distinguished Research

Judged on the difficulty of the subject matter, how groundbreaking the study is, innovation in research methods, usefulness to other states and municipalities, and whether the subject is one of critical national, regional, or local concern.

Award — Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (Birmingham, AL) Findings from the Jefferson County Equitable Fines and Fees Project and Findings on the Association of Local Criminal Fee Increases with Jail Detention in Alabama

PARCA’s paired body of work examined what Alabama’s reliance on court fines and fees actually produces. The Jefferson County study drew on five years of case-level
administrative court data covering roughly 8,700 people and nearly 12,000 criminal cases, supplemented by interviews and focus groups, and found that court debt in the county is substantial, frequently uncollected, and concentrated in the most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The companion statewide analysis reviewed all 67

Alabama counties from 2011 to 2025 and found that each additional $100 a county assessed in cumulative criminal court fees was associated with 34 more people incarcerated per 100,000 residents. The authors were careful to describe the relationship as correlation rather than cause, but the finding raises the possibility that fee-based revenue carries a jail cost to the county collecting it.

Certificate of Merit — Wisconsin Policy Forum (Milwaukee and Madison, WI) Cross Examination: A comprehensive review of Wisconsin’s criminal justice system

A 104-page baseline assessment of Wisconsin’s adult justice system — arrests, courts, incarceration, community supervision, reentry, staffing, and financing — assembled from state agency data and shaped by an advisory committee of more than 20 people, including government agencies, public safety associations, academics, community organizations, and formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites. Among its findings: the state ranked 23rd nationally in its imprisonment rate as of the end of 2022, but 12th in corrections spending, higher than every other Midwestern state except Nebraska. County jail populations averaged about 20 percent lower in 2023 than in 2003, while the prison population grew older.

Most Effective Education

Recognizes research, communication, and educational activity that expands public awareness of an important government issue and contributes to more informed discourse, without necessarily recommending change.

Award — Wisconsin Policy Forum Cleared for Construction: Development approval and permitting in metro Milwaukee

An examination of 240 commercial development projects valued at $5 million or more across Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, Waukesha, West Allis, Oak Creek, and Brookfield between 2017 and mid-2025 — together representing more than $4.2 billion in investment and over 8,000 housing units. The Forum tracked median timelines from
plan submission to building permit and interviewed developers, brokers, and architects. Communities that let conforming projects move through streamlined staff review approved them faster than those requiring plan commission and council votes; the city of Milwaukee had the shortest median timeline at 145 days. The report declined to name a single best model, instead laying out the trade-offs among speed, oversight, and community input — and noted that a meaningful share of the elapsed time is spent by developers finalizing financing and design after zoning approval, not by municipalities.

Outstanding Policy Achievement

Recognizes tangible improvements in public policy, management, service delivery or cost savings resulting from a member’s research and recommendations.

Award — Citizens Research Council of Michigan Promoting Budget Reform: Legislative Earmarks

The Research Council documented that roughly two-thirds of General Fund earmarks in Michigan’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget — part of more than $1.3 billion in legislatively directed spending — were inserted into the final budget bill, receiving no public airing before the vote. It pressed for front-end disclosure and argued that reform should be written into statute rather than left to chamber rules. The Michigan House adopted a transparency resolution unanimously in January 2025, and in November 2025, the governor signed legislation establishing disclosure requirements and a 45-day public review period for earmark proposals.

Certificate of Merit — Bureau of Governmental Research (New Orleans, LA) Playing Our Cards Right: Pushing for Safeguards and Stronger Policies in the City of New Orleans’ Fiscal Recovery

As New Orleans moved to sell roughly nine years of future Caesars casino lease payments to a private equity firm for about $103 million in immediate cash, BGR called the transaction a creative response to a severe fiscal crisis while warning that, without guardrails, the city risked repeating the decisions that created the crisis. The City
Council adopted BGR’s recommended safeguards as conditions of the amended ordinance, restricting the proceeds to emergency reserves and requiring monthly public reporting.

Communications

Digital communication is judged on both aesthetics and functionality across formats, including infographics, interactive maps, dashboards, podcasts, and video. Short form writing covers pieces of no more than 2,000 words, judged on form, style, and content.

Best Digital Communication, Local Government Issue — Wisconsin Policy Forum Metro Milwaukee Innovation DataTool

An interactive tool, first launched in 2019 and updated since, tracking the four-county Milwaukee metro area across 17 indicators of talent, idea development, capital
formation, startup activity, and economic performance, with side-by-side comparison against a set of peer and aspirational metros. The most recent update showed record venture capital investment in the region alongside persistent lags in income and productivity growth.

Best Digital Communication, State Government Issue — The Sycamore Institute (Nashville, TN) Instagram Reels

Sycamore’s short-form vertical video series translates Tennessee state budget and policy analysis into a format built for how people actually encounter information now — reaching audiences that will never open a research PDF, without diluting the underlying analysis.

Best Short-Form Writing — Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama Houston County: Building A System for Success

The latest installment in PARCA’s Keys to Success series, which profiles Alabama schools and systems that outperform expectations and looks for transferable lessons. In Houston County, PARCA found that student proficiency varied only narrowly across six elementary schools whose socioeconomic composition varies widely — the school with the highest share of economically disadvantaged students scored nearly as well on the state’s ACAP assessment as the school with the lowest.

Quotes

“Every one of these projects started with someone deciding to go get the data rather than argue about what it might show,” said Ryan Hankins, president of the
Governmental Research Association. “That kind of work is slow and, some would say, old-fashioned. But it changes minds, and in two cases, this year, it changed the law.”

ABOUT THE GOVERNMENTAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

Established in 1914, GRA is the national group of organizations and individuals professionally engaged in public policy, governmental, and civic research. Its purpose is
to encourage individuals and organizations to engage in governmental research in the general interest, meaning the collection, analysis, and distribution of factual information on governmental activities to citizens and officials, for the improvement of government. To learn more, visit graonline.org/about-the-gra.