The Thicket at State Legislatures

Banging Gavels Simultaneously

by Karl Kurtz

I love the rituals of legislatures.  Here's a nice one from an AP story about adjournment of the South Dakota Legislature on Monday this week:

The two chambers officially received reports on the bills signed by the governor. The doors in the back of each chamber were then opened so House Speaker Tim Rave of Baltic and Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who presides in the Senate, could see each other. They then rapped their gavels to adjourn both chambers at the same time.

Does any other legislature have this same tradition of banging gavels simultaneously in the house and senate?  In our conversations about this around the office, we can't think of many capitols where the presiding officers of the house and senate can easily see each other, even with doors open, either because of a lack of line of sight or distance.  What about Montana, whose capitol has a very similar floor plan to that of South Dakota?

4/1 update: Be sure to see Dan Vock's comment below, which contains a link to a great story from 2008, "When sessions end, gavels and hankies fall," from Stateline.org about end of session rituals.  I had seen the story at the time (in fact, Meagan Dorsch wrote about it in The Thicket) but had forgotten about it.

South Dakota dome photo credit: Eric Oxendorf

No Minimum Wage for Legislators

From a newsletter by Kansas Rep. Jill Quigley on House action on a bill to increase the minimum wage:

Former Speaker of the House, Melvin Neufeld, carried an amendment that would exclude legislators from collecting minimum wage maintaining that legislator’s $88 a day salary might not meet the minimum wage requirement during some lengthy sessions.  That passed with a good chuckle from legislators. 

The March Madness/Legislative Junkie Connection

by Karl Kurtz

If you're a legislative junkie, and, like me, you're also bemoaning the condition of your NCAA basketball tournament brackets, perhaps you'll take solace in this small factoid uncovered by NCSL's resident North Carolina (not Duke!) fan, Tim Storey: Oklahoma basketball coach Jeff Capel is married to Kanika Blue, daughter of former North Carolina Speaker and NCSL President (and current House member) Daniel Blue, Jr. and his wife, Edna.  Jeff and Kanika were students together at Duke and married while he was coaching at Virginia Commonwealth University and she was practicing law in Washington, D.C. 

Any doubts as to who Dan (right), a loyal Duke Law School graduate, was rooting for in yesterday's Oklahoma-North Carolina game?

Current North Carolina Speaker and NCSL President Joe Hackney, a University of North Carolina alumnus whose district includes the UNC campus, also got in on the basketball tournament connection at NCSL's meeting of legislative leaders with President Obama a couple of weeks ago.  According to The News and Observer:

Hackney also thanked Obama for predicting that UNC would win the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Obama, in turn, noted Hackney's Carolina blue tie.

Algerian and American Similarities Dwarf our Differences

by Bruce Feustel

I was recently in Algeria with my NCSL colleague, Christy Delafield, to work on an ongoing NCSL project with the Algerian National Parliament, funded by the U.S. State Department. We have been providing a series of workshops for legislators and staff on subjects like media training, constituent service and bill drafting. Our purpose in this visit was to meet with key stakeholders and participants to make plans for the next stage of programs.

In our several meetings with the thoughtful and kind Dr. Tatah, who heads up the training and research efforts for the Algerian National Assembly, I was struck by how similar legislative work is all over the world. He presented us with a long list of requests for workshops, study tours and placements that was well beyond the resources of our project. His approach was polite yet forceful. He took care to touch his political bases by making sure his proposals were in concert with the wishes of the secretary general and the speaker of the Parliament.

What fascinated me was that if you took away the French language (luckily for me, Christy is fluent in that language), everything about his persistent case for funding, his attention to politics, and the appearance of his office with piles of legislative reports was typical of what occurs in our state capitols. His mannerisms, polite formality, loyalty to the legislature, and habit of giving a sad shake of the head when he disagreed with you reminded me a lot of my first boss with the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, Rupert Theobald. It was a reminder that legislators and staff around the world share many traits, concerns, skills and behaviors. We have a lot to learn from each other and our similarities dwarf our differences.

Algeria was just a few weeks away from the scheduled April 2 presidential elections when we were there. We had the opportunity to visit the campaign headquarters of President Bouteflicka, who is heavily favored to win reelection (see photo of campaign poster). Algerians delighted in comparing their short two-month long campaign for president to the nearly two-year campaign that we recently experienced in the United States. Their next parliamentary elections are in 2009.

Women Serving in State Legislatures

by Meagan Dorsch

Do you know how many women serve in state legislatures? The number continues to rise.

March is Women's History Month and we sat down with Katie Ziegler, policy specialist with the Women's Legislative Network at the National Conference of State Legislatures, to talk about the number of women who serve in state legislatures across the country.  

In this edition of The Buzz, Katie talks about the ratio of women to men in state legislatures, the difference in the number of Democrat vs. Republican women serving and what states have the highest and lowest number of women in office.

Listen to our podcast (6:42) and find why women in office is good for state legislatures.

A Challenge to Arab Parliaments for Gender Parity

by Karl Kurtz

The best speech at the meeting of the Arab Inter-parliamentary Union that my colleague Christy Delafield and I attended in Oman a couple of weeks ago was delivered by the president of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the speaker of the Namibian National Assembly, Dr. Theo-Ben Gurirab. Dr. Gurirab is a long-time leader of the independence movement in Namibia and previously served as that country's representative to the United Nations, which included a term as president of the U.N. General Assembly.

He began his speech with the Palestinian issue:

I stand before you to express my outrage at the violence we continue to witness in the Middle East. I have worked most of my life to achieve the liberation from occupation of my country—Namibia—and to help lead the independent nation during its early formative years….

The continued occupation of the Palestinian territories needs to end. Without it we will never see peace in the Middle East. My experience in fighting for the freedom of my country, however, teaches me that peace can not be imposed. It can not be bought with gunpowder. It can not be won on the battlefield. Peace will only come when the guns are silenced and the parties have sat down at the negotiating table and hammered out the details of an agreement that puts an end to occupation….

He went on to describe a recent visit that he had made to Gaza "where I learnt of the human suffering of the Palestinian people, particularly the many thousands of innocent women and children who once again have found themselves in the frontline of fire." He added that he also plans to go to Israel to observe the situation there firsthand and to engage in talks with the new government.

Speaker Ben Gurirab concluded his remarks with a plea for the advancement of women in politics with a particular focus on the Arab world:

Building Relationships with Arab Parliaments

by Karl Kurtz

250 Arab parliamentarians and staff: 2 Americans representing NCSL: 1 European and 1 African representing the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU). That was the ratio of participants at a meeting in Muscat, Oman of the Arab Inter-parliamentary Union (APU) two weeks ago. My NCSL colleague, Christy Delafield, and I were the two Americans.

The photo at right shows the chairs of each of the delegations with the chair of the Omani Shura Council in the center, flanked by the speakers of the Egyptian parliament (left in western suit) and the Iraqi parliament.

We were invited to this meeting after the secretary-general of the APU and a delegation of members of Arab parliaments participated in NCSL's Legislative Summit in New Orleans last year. Our goal was to further several legislative strengthening projects that NCSL's international program has with Arab countries and to develop new relationships that might lead to other projects.

The focus of the meeting was on the Palestinian question. Each of the chairs of the 20 Arab delegations that were present made a speech. Without exception all of the speeches included variations on the following three points:

Dan Pawson Wins Jeopardy! Tourney

In follow up to our previous post on Massachusetts legislative aide Dan Pawson's Jeopardy! appearance in a tournament of previous winners, this comes from yesterday's boston.com:

Dan Pawson -- a legislative aide to state Senator Bruce Tarr -- has won $250,000 in the 2009 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. And -- after last night's show -- everyone finally knows it.
   
The 27-year-old Allston dad took the tourney back in January, but has kept his triumph mostly to himself. He planned to watch his win last night with State House and college friends at the Sports Depot. "I'm covering everyone's first drink," he joked. "I think that's generous enough."

Pawson said he was almost eliminated during his very first game, back in 2007; he also had trouble with fashion questions during the championship. "There was a category all about ... who designed what dress. That did not go well." Still, his love of politics and study of world capitals more than made up for it. The most fun has been deciding -- with his wife, of course -- how to spend his haul. Student loans, charity donations, a house down payment and European vacation have all made the list.

Those of us in western time zones, where last night's Jeopardy! was preempted by President Obama's press conference, can watch a rerun of the show tonight, knowing the outcome in advance.

Congratulations, Dan!  His wife's reports on the event appear on her blog, Peanut Butter Burrito.

“Rod Blagojevich Superstar!”

Washington, D.C. has the Capitol Steps to make fun if its politics, life and ways.  Now Illinois politics has its own satirist in the form of Second City, as reported in stltoday.com:

SPRINGFIELD — Chicago's Second City comedy troupe accomplished last weekend what Illinois politicians tried with limited success to do for years: get Gov. Rod Blagojevich to spend some time in Springfield.

The capital visitor was really an actor in the scorned ex-governor's persona, drawing laughs instead of impeachment votes.

The life and politics of the ousted official, oft-criticized during his administration for rarely traveling south of Chicago, is on stage in the 1970s rock style comedy-opera "Rod Blagojevich Superstar!"

Legislative Service is in the Blood

by Karl Kurtz and Angela Andrews

The Illinois Senate last week elected Jill Rock as the new secretary of the Senate, replacing Deb Shipley who has moved to the office of new Gov. Pat Quinn as director of legislative operations.  Jill is the niece of former Illinois Senate President Phil Rock and previously served as chief of staff to former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones.

Family ties are of course a frequent entry to political life, but we usually know about these most frequently when a son, daughter or spouse is elected to succeed a legislator.  Jill Rock illustrates an instance of a staff person getting the legislative bug from a family member. 

Long-serving Oregon Clerk of the House Ramona Kenady is also the child of a former legislator.  Her dad, Richard Eymann, served as speaker of the Oregon House in the early 1970s.

We also want to close out our list of new clerks and secretaries of legislatures in 2009 by adding the names of others who have been elected to the position of chief legislative officer since our previous posting on the subject in early January: 

• Indiana Senate: Jennifer Mertz, Principal Secretary
• Mississippi Senate: Tressa Guyne, Secretary
• New York Assembly: Laurie Kretzler, Clerk
• North Dakota Senate: Fran Gronberg, Secretary
• Puerto Rico House of Representatives: Carlos R. Fajardo Verdejo, Secretary
• Rhode Island Senate: Joseph Brady, Secretary.

The Legislative Administrator has a list of most of the new clerks and secretaries, along with a profile of new Iowa Chief Clerk Mark Bransgard by Illinois Assistant Secretary of the Senate Scott Kaiser, on p. 38.