Even proud locals in this city of rolling hills on the Mahoning River have to admit that Youngstown has seen better days. But it has also seen worse. In fact, for the first time in years, this symbol of the Rust Belt is seeing some shiny glimmers of hope.

The better days in Youngstown were in the first half of the 20th century, when as many as 170,000 called the city home, and it was the third-largest steel producer in the nation. It all abruptly came to an end on Sept. 19, 1977—the date still known here as Black Monday—when Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced massive layoffs and began shutting down. Youngstown has never recovered, and it is still one of America’s fastest shrinking cities, with a population of around 65,000. Over the last seven years, the city has demolished thousands of vacant homes in abandoned neighborhoods as a result of its decline.

But now some of the same advantages that made Youngstown a steel powerhouse in the 1930s are fueling the early stages of a rebirth. The city still sits in an area rich with resources, strategically located almost exactly midway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. It is also adjacent to two giant oil and natural gas deposits—the Utica and Marcellus Shales, which cover much of Eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania. Extracting all that energy, through the process known as fracking, requires lots of steel. Now, you’re talking Youngstown’s language.

Benefits for Americans, chiefly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, dominate the federal spending that gets transferred to states through grants, contracts and other programs.

But among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, there are stark differences in how the billions spent on these and other initiatives are distributed, according to new data compiled by the Pew Charitable Trusts (which also funds Stateline). To view the analysis state by state, see Stateline’s data visualization.

A Stateline analysis of the data shows that some states that receive a relatively small share of federal spending in a given category rely on it heavily.

Just one day after Governor Pat Quinn’s campaign chief gets a two-year, big money state contract, another long-time Quinn ally says a similar deal for him is wrong.

He’s agreed to step down from his 11th hour, year-long appointment if incoming Governor Bruce Rauner wants someone else there.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports it’s about conscience of two men who’ve both known the governor for more than 30 years, deciding that they couldn’t accept the year-long re-nomination which would have saddled Bruce Rauner with still another Quinn ally he didn’t want.

As Pat Quinn heads for the exit, just weeks away from stepping down as governor, it should give nobody pleasure to find fault with him now.

He is a principled man and has been an honorable governor.

But he must have known he’d catch grief for this one, and deservedly so.

The bagman in a $2 million bribery scandal over Chicago’s red light camera program admitted Wednesday he paid kickbacks to a former top city transportation official who allegedly steered the lucrative contract to the company he represented.

Martin O’Malley, 73, the former Chicago-based consultant for Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to bribe a public official. He faces up to five years in prison, but his sentence could be far less because of his cooperation with law enforcement and his poor health.

In a soft but firm voice, O’Malley told U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall that he’s diabetic, has a pacemaker and takes 16 daily medications for various ailments. When the judge asked him if he felt well enough to proceed, O’Malley shrugged, spread his hands and said, “As good as can be.”