The state of the union may be fraught. But away from the long-winded speeches and staged spectacles in Washington DC, the states of the union are incubating real-world solutions that lower costs, protect consumers and forge pathways to broad ownership and shared prosperity.
From Utah (home ownership) to Illinois (employee ownership) to, yes, Texas (solar + storage), US states, as always, are the laboratories of innovation as well as of democracy.
Take utility-scale solar energy, now the cheapest source of new electricity generation, ever. Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict and obstruct large-scale renewable energy projects, a record 43 gigawatts of utility-scale solar is expected to be installed in the US this year (versus only 6 gigawatts of new natural gas-fired capacity), according to the US government’s own estimates.
Leading the pack: Texas, which represents 40% of all utility-scale solar projects planned for this year, and 53% of the additional storage capacity under development.
Utah Dream Fund
With five children, Rodney Reeves and his wife have long dreamed of owning a home big enough for them to run and play. On his mail carrier salary, he says, “It was almost impossible to find that in today’s market.”
The Reeves this month moved into a four-bedroom house, with a large back yard and a swing set, in Tremonton, north of Salt Lake City, Roodgally Senatus reports on ImpactAlpha.
The Reeves are among the first families to benefit from the public-private Utah Dream Fund, which provided a portion of the down payment to become a co-investor in their home. New York-based Homium provided the “fair shared appreciation” note, a kind of second mortgage that lowers the upfront costs of homeownership without adding to monthly payments. The financing is interest-free, and is repaid upon sale or refinancing.
The Utah Dream Fund has raised $5 million towards its $20 million goal, from Utah’s Department of Workforce Services and the Mark and Kathie Miller, Garbett Family and Sorenson Impact foundations.
“By leveraging private capital and structuring the program as a fair-share appreciation mortgage, Homium can recycle funds and attract substantially more capital over time – not just grant dollars, but investment capital that grows alongside families,” said Jim Sorenson of Sorenson Impact Group, which led Homium’s $10 million Series A financing in 2024.
Says Reeves, “Homeownership feels like freedom, pride and possibility all wrapped into one set of keys.” Keep reading.
Illinois’ blueprint
Earlier this month, Fran Seegull of the US Impact Investing Alliance spotlighted the WISER Act, Illinois’ first-in-the-nation legislation to require large companies conducting business in the state to disclose key workforce investment data, like compensation and benefits and recruitment and retention strategies.
Now comes Illinois state Rep. Will Guzzardi’s Employee Ownership Development Act, which could create the country’s largest dedicated public investment vehicle for employee ownership. The legislation would authorize the state’s treasurer to deploy a portion of the state’s non-pension investment portfolio into employee ownership investment funds.
“Because the fund is carved out of the state investment pool, it doesn’t require a single dollar of appropriations from the legislature,” Julien Rosenbloom of the Lafayette Square Institute writes in a guest post on ImpactAlpha.
The structure is modeled on state investments in private markets and infrastructure. State Treasurer Michael Frerichs would invest indirectly in private credit and equity funds that would invest a multiple of the state’s commitment in employee ownership transactions.
Public investment officers, Rosenbloom says, “have the tools and resources at their disposal to provide that catalytic, market-rate investment to enable the employee ownership market to scale.” His full post.
AI transparency
In artificial intelligence, state and local officials are stepping into the breach of federal government inaction around mounting job losses and the concentration of power by a few large tech moguls.
In the shadow of Mar-a-Lago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing an “AI Bill of Rights” to enshrine consumer protections such as data privacy, parental control, disclosure for AI-based mental health services, and limits on how insurance companies can use AI to determine healthcare coverage. It would also prohibit utilities from passing data center-driven energy and water costs to consumers and ban tax subsidies to Big Tech.
California’s AI transparency law mandates disclosure of standards and safety protocols and a framework for a “public computing cluster” (for background see, “Shaping the algorithm: Investing across the tech stack to orchestrate ‘good AI’”).
Trump has threatened to sue states that enact “burdensome” AI laws, via a new AI litigation task force at the Department of Justice. A proposed 10-year ban on new state AI regulations, included in an early version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was rejected by the Senate.
Republicans in Oklahoma, Maryland and Michigan are joining Democrats such as Sen. Bernie Sanders in calling for moratoriums on new data centers. “We are confronting serious unknowns about how these large facilities affect our communities, our utilities, and our natural resources,” Oklahoma State Sen. Kendal Sacchieri, a Republican, said last month. “There are real, serious concerns around what these data centers will bring to our state negatively.”
More than 300 bills seeking oversight of data centers have been filed this year in at least 30 states.
