Maryland's General Assembly begins a four-month session Wednesday, and the biggest issue facing the lawmakers is how to dispose of an unprecedented $1 billion budget surplus. But there are other items on the agenda as well, including gun control, land use and growth, and managed healthcare reform. For more on this, click on more

The congressionally-created Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce ended two days of meetings in San Francisco Wednesday with a glimmer of agreement on keeping the Internet free of international tariffs and banning access taxes. But the panel continued to disagree sharply about collecting sales taxes on cyber-transactions. more

Money from the $206 billion tobacco settlement will start flowing to the states by the middle of December, but the payout over the next 25 years may ultimately be smaller than many officials anticipated. The reason: a legal Catch 22. If states accomplish their public health goal of curbing smoking, they'll get less tobacco money -- the fine print of the settlement stipulates that payments can be cut by up to 10 percent if there's a slump in cigarette sales. more

Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson signed the 1999-2001 state budget today, but a power struggle over the Badger State budget is not yet over. Thompson has some firm ideas about how he wants the budget's tax cut features to work, and he's used his line-item power to get what he wants. The four-term governor has cast thousands of vetoes, and has yet to suffer an override. So he's likely to prevail in the fiscal test of wills. more

Lawmakers in Ohio spent the week grappling with issues ranging from state agency mergers to education vouchers, while New Hampshire legislators confronted a funding crisis after the state's highest court deemed a new method of funding public schools unconstitutional. more