The Thicket at State Legislatures

New State House for Alabama?

By Doug Farquhar

Alabama was thinking about a new building for the legislature, now they may be forced to build one.

The Alabama State House, where the legislature meets, sits across the street from the State Capitol.  The State House building was built in 1963, originally designed for the highway department.  But when the legislature needed more space, they converted the building to house the legislature.

The building never adequately met the needs of the legislature.  The rooms were too small, the public had difficulty attending meetings and it lacked modern conveniences.  So a new building was in order, once financing, a design and a location was sorted out. 

Mother Nature sped up that process.  A flood in early May brought four feet of water into the building, forcing the legislature out.  Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is visiting, doing an inspection to see if the building suffers from sick building syndrome.  The EPA could condemn the site. 

Either way, the legislature is destined to get a new building, one that will meet the needs of the state for years.

AWOL in South Carolina and Elsewhere

In "Sanford's Bigger Sin: Going AWOL," Lou Jacobson of National Journal goes beyond the personal to explore the problem of absentee governors.  It includes similar (though not as extreme) cases and lots of quotes from other states and an NCSL table on gubernatorial succession.

Praising Institutionalists

Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, current president of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Center on Congress at Indiana University, has an excellent commentary on the role of institutionalists in Congress, which, as with most of his commentaries, can be equally applied to state legislatures.  It begins:

It takes all kinds of people to make the U.S. Congress work. The ambitious and the laid-back, loners and consensus-builders, partisans and aisle-crossers — all have their place. In these highly politicized times, though, there’s one type who is particularly valuable: the institutionalist.

This means pretty much what it sounds like: a member who puts the institution of Congress first. Who welcomes responsibility for making it work; who pushes his or her colleagues to fulfill their constitutional obligations; who respects the role and history of Congress in forging this country’s history.

And ends:

Institutionalists in Congress are often seen by their peers as slightly quirky nags, consumed with the trifles of process or precedent while the more important work of fighting against the opposition or slamming legislation through at all costs goes ahead. But of course, they’ve got it backward. It’s the institutionalists who have the nation’s best interests at heart, because they understand the role that Congress plays in sustaining a functioning democracy and making the country work.

In trying to think of current and former institutionalists, both in Congress and state legislatures, what name comes first to mind?  Lee Hamilton.

AZ Court Decides Budget Question

By Jan Goehring

The Arizona Supreme Court denied Republican Governor Jan Brewer's request that the Legislature immediately send her the budget bills, passed June 4, 2009. The Republican-controlled Legislature had held the bills while continuing negotiations with the Governor. A veto was anticipated. The court heard oral arguments yesterday and took jurisdiction of the case. The ruling described the situation as a "good faith" dispute between the two branches of government. The Legislature assured the court it would transmit the bills by June 30. The Arizona House Republicans have posted a link to the opinion.  

Same-Sex Marriage. Where do states stand?

by Meagan Dorsch

This has been a big year for the topic of same-sex marriage in state legislatures across the country.

Six states have legalized same-sex marriages, but in at least one state, the law could be challenged.

In this edition of The Buzz, we sit down with NCSL's Christine Nelson to get an update on state legislative activity, learn what the next step could be for California and what smaller steps have been taken at the federal level.

We also discuss public opinion polls on same-sex marriage and what those numbers could mean to lawmakers.

Has this issued peaked in state legislatures? Listen to our podcast (8:43) to find out.

Arizona Budget Goes to Court

By Jan Goehring

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer filed a lawsuit against the Legislature yesterday claiming the state constitution requires they send her the budget bill passed June 4, according to azcentral.com. The bill faced a likely veto. The presiding officers, Senate President Bob Burns and Speaker Kirk Adams, held the bill as negotiations with the Governor over their budget differences continued.

On Monday, in response to the threat of litigation, the leaders issued a joint press release.  "It is unfortunate the governor is seeking to involve the courts in an ongoing budget negotiation while the Legislature is still in session. It delays and obstructs the process.” 

The case is on a fast track with a response from the Legislature due Friday and a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

New York Senate Update

by Karl Kurtz

Yesterday a New York judge dismissed a case filed by Senate Democrats to overturn the Republican-led coalition's takeover of the state Senate.  The judge said that it would be an "improvident intrusion" for the courts to intervene in a legislative branch dispute.  The effect is to throw the matter back to the senators to resolve for themselves.

The Thicket can't keep up with this saga.  Plus we don't want to become all New York Senate all the time.  For those interested in blow-by-blow accounts, check in periodically with The Daily Politics or Capitol Confidential.

The Rockefeller Institute's Bob Ward has a nice commentary on the situation in the Albany Times-Union. He concludes:

A ruling from the high court would likely be the quickest route to resolution of the Senate stalemate. But in legislatures, which are intended to balance complicated and conflicting interests, the easy answer is not always the best.

Photo credit: "Acting State Supreme Court Justice Thomas McNamara, right, addresses attorneys representing Republicans and Democrats in the Senate leadership fight before dismissing the case Tuesday in Albany. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union"

The World is Listening

by Meagan Dorsch

"Tiananmen + Twitter = Tehran."

This was a comment a blogger made about the weekend elections in Iran and picked up by the Christian Science Monitor in a recent article. 

The media has been apparently cautioned about covering protests against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's declared victory and possible election fraud. Many reporters, citizen journalists and Iranians immediately turned to blogs and Twitter to spread information about events on the ground. 

Apparently, the Iranian government tried to shut down access to the internet and the Twitter site. Twitter also postponed scheduled maintenance on its site (which would have taken Twitter off-line) to keep the service available during the political events in Iran.

Still today on Twitter, the top two items people are following are #IranElection and Tehran. The world is still listening.

New Episode in New York Senate

by Karl Kurtz

In an ongoing saga, the New York Senate is now tied, 31-31, as one of the two dissident Democrats who last week went over to the Republican side and change control of the Senate has returned to the Democratic fold.  Republicans claim that Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr. was elected president pro tem last week and that he will remain in that office until there are 32 votes to remove him.  Democrats say that the Espada/Republican takeover was illegal and that Sen. Malcolm Smith remains the pro tem and majority leader.  A judge will decide.

Part of the deal that returned the dissident, Sen. Hiram Monserrate to the Democratic side was that Sen. Smith be replaced as the leader of the Democratic conference.  Sen. John Sampson (photo) has now taken over that role, but Democrats must say that Sen. Smith retains the title of president pro tem in order to have standing in the litigation over the matter.  The current situation is summarized in a story in the Buffalo News with a somewhat melodramatic lead:

New York State is in the throes of a constitutional crisis, with the State Senate having fallen into further disorder after Monday’s decision by a Queens Democrat to flip his allegiances back from last week’s GOP-led coup — creating a 31-31 tie that creates gridlock.

The historic dispute, heightened by the state’s not having a lieutenant governor to break ties, creates a muddled future for how legislation will weave through the partisan-divided Senate—a situation that could remain until the fall elections in 2010.

NCSL's report on what has happened in tied chambers in other states is getting a good deal of attention in New York, although sometimes without giving us credit.  A tied chamber with a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor makes the issue of whether the president pro tem could vote twice--once as a senator and once as acting lieutenant governor--a real one.  We provided a comparative perspective in anticipation of this scenario a year ago in "A Senator who can Vote Twice?".

Photo credit: (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

A Pretty Good Bang for the Buck, Indeed

by Karl Kurtz

An article by R. G. Ratcliffe in yesterday's Houston Chronicle begins:

When Texas lawmakers met in 1963, former state legislator Carl Parker of Beaumont had no office of his own and kept files under his desk on the chamber floor.

The cost of a legislative session in 1963: $2.9 million.

Forty-six years later, the Legislature is big business. The 81st Texas Legislature, which adjourned earlier this month, runs on a year-round support staff of more than 1,800 workers.

The cost per year: $171.5 million.

The cost of the 140-day session that ended June 1: $9.1 million.

That's an engaging lead, but missing from the article is any consideration of inflation.  That $2.9 million for a session in 1963?  It translates into $20.2 million in 2009 dollars (CPI inflation calculator). Apparently, the cost of a legislative session in Texas today is less than half of what it was in 1963 in constant dollars! 

The article didn't provide the 1963 annual cost of the legislative session, so we can't perform the same calculation for that number.  Had the reporter provided it and made the inflation calculation, it probably would have shown a substantial increase in constant dollars. The reason is that Texas session costs almost certainly have been shifted to year-round costs as the permanent staff of the Legislature is much larger than it was in 1963.

So the cost of running the Texas Legislature has almost certainly gone up in real terms, as it has in all states as legislatures have modernized and professionalized their operations.

Other statistics not mentioned in the article are that the annual cost of the Texas Legislature of $171.5 million comes out to $6.96 per capita or that it's only about 0.3 percent of the state's general expenditures.  That's also consistent with other states. The cost of state legislatures is relatively trivial: In no state does the cost of the legislature exceed one-half of one percent of state general expenditures.

Fortunately, the article ends with a comment that I couldn't agree with more:

Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of the conservative Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, said given the size of state government overall when Texas is compared to other states, he is not disturbed by how much the Legislature spends on itself.

“In a sense, you could say we’re getting a pretty good bang for the buck,” Sullivan said.