The Thicket at State Legislatures

A Week For Public Servants

by Meagan Dorsch

Next week, May 3 - 9, is Public Service Recognition Week, dedicated to honoring public servants and connecting citizens with their government. Did you know that this week has been celebrated for more than two decades?

Since 1985, Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW) has been honoring the men and women who serve our nation as federal, state, county and local government employees and make our government function effectively. Over 40,000 people across the country work as legislative staff and over 7,382 serve as elected state legislators. The staff of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) are  also dedicated to running a bipartisan organization that improves the quality and effectiveness of state legislatures, promotes policy innovation and communication among state legislatures, and ensures state legislatures a strong, cohesive voice in the federal system.

Several NCSL employees are members of GovLoop, an on-line social network community and resource for government employees at the federal, state and local levels. GovLoop has come up with a fun way to promote the PSR week. They have teamed up with the Partnership for Public Service and over the next 10 days, will highlight ten government mascots. You may already be familiar with Smokey the Bear, but how about Lady Liberty? Right now, you can meet Franklin the Fair Housing Fox and the Energy Ant.

Unless you are a child in elementary school, you may not be familiar with NCSL's mascot, Citizen Brain (video: 15:55). This cartoon character is part of our Trust for Representative Democracy program. 

The video featuring Citizen Brain is used by state legislators who participate in NCSL's Back to School Program, to help teach young kids about American democracy. The video shows Citizen Brain traveling the country and eating "brain food"--facts about civics and government. 

Whether it's through mascots or their own words, public servants will use next week to educate citizens about the work they do and why they have chosen public service careers. I look forward to meeting the mascots and hearing the stories!

One of the Most Vexing Issues Facing Lawmakers

by Meagan Dorsch

In the last seven years, both the judiciary and state legislatures have played key roles in the fight over the legal status of same sex marriage. Massachusetts and Connecticut began performing same sex marriages as the result of judicial decisions in 2003 and 2008, respectively.

And just last year, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that ruled denying same sex couples the right to marry was a violation of the equal protection clause in the state constitution.

In this edition of the Buzz, Christine Nelson at The National Conference of State Legislatures brings us up to date on action in the states related to same sex marriage laws. This issue has re-emerged as one of the most vexing social issues facing lawmakers. Some legislators are wondering if the political costs are too high to deal with this issue, while others wonder if there is a financial benefit to make same sex marriages legal. Watch the video with Christine below (5:32) or read her article in NCSL's State Legislatures Magazine.

 

 

NCSL has other resources on state legislation regarding same sex marriages and civil unions and domestic partnerships on our website.

Student Inspiration

by Jan Goehring

Sometimes young people can be the ones to inspire us. Watch students from Arvin, California as they explain their enthusiasm for the U.S. Constitution and how they are learning to be better citizens. They participated in the We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution program developed and directed by the Center for Civic Education. The curriculum includes a rigorous study of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Students participate in simulated hearings to demonstrate their knowledge and compete against teams from other schools.

The students from Arvin High School have reached the California state finals multiple times, competing against much larger schools. Consider their success in light of the fact that the majority of adults in Arvin never finished middle school. Every student on the 2009 Arvin We the People team was accepted to a four-year college.

The video is just under five minutes and worth a look.

New Poll Shows Americans Negative about Government

by Jan Goehring

A new poll released by the Pew Research Center shows that Americans are increasingly negative about their government. According to Pew, the "survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."

The poll was conducted in March and included 2,505 participants. Similar surveys conducted in 1997 and 1998 on the same topics provided points of comparison. Only 22 percent say they can trust the government in Washington all or most of the time. Opinions of Congress are at the lowest rate in 25 years. Twenty-five percent expressed a favorable opinion of Congress. Federal agencies are viewed more positively than Congress, but less favorably than in prior polls. Since 1997, frustration with government has been evident, but now more anger exists.

The survey showed an increase in the percentage of people who feel the federal government has a negative impact on their day-to-day lives. Currently, 43 percent see the impact as negative compared to 31 percent in 1997. State government fared better with 42 percent saying it has a positive impact on their lives. This number has declined since 1997, however.

The poll report provides in-depth analysis and a look at how these attitudes may affect the midterm elections.

NCSL has been working to address public cynicism and distrust of government through the Trust for Representative Democracy. The Trust promotes civic engagement and educates young people about our system of government.

More on States that Never Were

Michael J. Trinklein, the author of a book about failed proposals for new American states that generated our previous post, "States that Never Were," has an interesting and amusing new article, "Altered States," on the same subject in the Wall Street Journal today.  Here's how it begins:

Long Island's latest quest to split from New York and become its own state had a promising start last year. Legislators in Suffolk county, upset over a new payroll tax to fund New York City's subways, voted 12-6 in favor of a secession plan. It seemed viable: In terms of square miles, Long Island is bigger than Rhode Island; its gross state product would be larger than that of 20 states. Some optimists even proposed a state bird: the duck.

Objections from the rest of New York effectively killed the idea, but attempts to make Long Island a state will almost certainly return. The proposal was just the most recent in a series of statehood crusades, usually arising from complaints of unfair taxation. During a campaign in the 1890s, one proponent—Long Island sugar magnate Adolph Mollenhauer—said, "We're tired of bosses and bossism." His quote could be the rallying cry of any number of secessionist movements.

High Education Levels among State Legislators throughout United States

by Morgan Cullen
I recently stumbled upon information gathered on education levels of state legislators by Professor Adam Brown at Brigham Young University.  Brown collected the data from Project Vote Smart (a nonpartisan organization that collects biographical information on elected officials) and shared the data with NCSL.  

It turns out that 71 percent of state legislators nationwide have at least a bachelor's degree and 40 percent have an advanced degree on top of that.  Given that 12 percent of the education data among state legislators is “unknown” it is impossible to know which state has the most educated legislature in the country. 

However, it appears Virginia and California have the highest percentage of legislators with at least a bachelor's degree at 89 percent and 87 percent respectively.

Full-time legislatures have the largest percentage of legislators with at least a bachelor's degree at 79 percent, followed by hybrid legislatures at 73 percent and part-time legislatures at 66 percent. To learn more about these classifications you can check NCSL’s full-time/part-time web page here.

Regionally there is not a big difference in education levels among our nation’s legislators.  The Southeast has the highest level of legislators with at least a four-year degree with 73 percent, followed by the Northeast and Midwest at 71 percent and the West and Southwest at 70 percent. 

To help put these numbers into broader context, I found that while our state legislators have less formal education than our elected members of Congress (95 percent of the U.S. House and Senate have at least a four-year degree) they are much more educated than the total U.S. population.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau: 2007 data, 1 in 4 (27 percent) of U.S. adults aged 25 or over reported a bachelor’s degree or higher.  It turns out that Americans demand their representatives achieve a high-level of formal education before getting elected.

Here are some other interesting trivia from the data:

• The Ohio Legislature had the highest percentage of lawyers in the country with 32 percent of its legislators having acquired a Juris Doctorate. 
• Oregon legislators have attained the largest number of master's degrees at 33 percent.
• The Nebraska Legislature has the largest number of legislators with a doctorate degree at 12 percent.  

For more information on legislator education levels and other legislator demographic information please visit NCSL’s updated interactive map on our website.

Tough Legislative Issues Discussed On NPR

By Meagan Dorsch

Some of these issues on the agenda of NCSL's Spring Forum last week caught the eye of National Public Radio, who put together a story for its Weekend Edition on some of the more challenging issues that states are facing. Representative Sharon Schwartz from Kansas and Speaker Terri Norelli from New Hampshire were asked by National Public Radio to speak on budget and health care issues impacting their states.

The National Conference of State Legislatures Spring Forum allows lawmakers and legislative staff to work with fellow colleagues to examine how federal issues affect the states and develop states' advocacy positions before Congress and the administration.

Former speaker of the U.S. House of Representative, Newt Gingrich, spoke to legislators and staff about civility in politics. U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, stressed that green energy will be the new industrial revolution for states and our nation.

State leaders discussed and shared possible solutions to issues like redistricting, four-day work weeks, budgets, health care reform, education reform initiatives, credit card reform and high-speed rail proposals. Last weeks meeting provided an forum for state legislators and staff to meet with colleagues who are leading reform efforts in their respective states.

NPR's interview (6:32) gives a snapshot of the tough issues that not only Kansas and New Hampshire are facing, but what state legislatures are grappling with across the country.

Many of these tough issues will be discussed NCSL's Legislative Summit in Kentucky this summer. The summit will host over 150 policy sessions for legislators and staff that give information, ideas and solutions to the critical problems facing state legislatures today. 

States that Never Were

by Karl Kurtz 

Some people have fanciful notions about renaming the states to suit their own desires.  Others report the interesting history of past efforts to create new American states. 

Virginia Senate Clerk Susan Schaar responded to my previous post--about a novel in which the protagonist seeks to rename the 50 states--by calling attention to an NPR story about a new book, Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It by Michael J. Trinklein.  States that were proposed at some point in American history and are covered in the NPR interview include Texlahoma (northern Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle), Sylvania (Thomas Jefferson's name for an area encompassing Michigan's Upper Peninsula and parts of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota), Transylvania (Daniel Boone's name for most of what is today Kentucky), Acadia (northern Maine), and Forgotonia (six counties in the western bulge of Illinois that feel politically ignored).

An excerpt from the book on the NPR website reports on proposals for the states of Deseret (Brigham Young's idea for a super-sized state that would have covered all of Utah, most of Nevada and Arizona, and parts of California, New Mexico and Idaho), Long Island (which is bigger than Rhode Island), and Lost Dakota (the author's name for a small piece of Dakota Territory that was left out when the states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho were carved out).

A rose from The Thicket to Susan.

Update 4/19/10: See "More on States that Never Were."

States of Different Colors and Names

by Karl Kurtz

As a 50-state legislative junkie, I love state comparisons in whatever form they appear. I just finished reading an amusing and insightful novel, The English Major by Jim Harrison, in which a 60-year old former English teacher—devastated by a recent divorce, the death of his dog and the sale of his farm in Upper Michigan—sets off on a road trip intent on traveling through all 50 states.

As a youth he (Cliff) had been fascinated with a 50-state jigsaw puzzle that listed the state bird, flower and motto for each state. As he travels, he reports these factoids for each state and fantasizes about a project to rename the states more appropriately (e.g., he thinks about renaming California, "Pacifica") and their state birds "because birds simply don't deserve the banal names we have given them." The states he visits are the headings for each chapter of the book. As he leaves one state and enters another, he makes a ritual of tossing the jigsaw puzzle piece from the state he is exiting out his car window.

Traveling west from his home in Michigan, he enters Wisconsin and reflects:

I was hankering to see some of the central Wisconsin farmland and the northern Wisconsin forestlands were all too similar to Michigan's. This thought reminded me of when I taught school and one September a duller student of which there were many told me that when he was on a summer vacation drive with his parents he noted that many of the states looked the same. I said that the land was there before it was divided into states. He said, "I guess maybe you're right." I asked him if he owned a United States jigsaw puzzle as a child and he grinned and said as if a thirty-watt bulb had sparkled in his head, "That's the problem, by golly. In the puzzle the states next to each other are a different color."

Well, from my standpoint, steeped in the politics of the 50 states, I think the different colored puzzle pieces are more descriptive of the states than the dimwitted student's notion that they all look alike. Plopped down in the middle of lots of states without any information, I wouldn't be any better at telling where I was by the physical landscape, but give me a few minutes to talk to people about their attitudes and politics, and I'm quite sure that I would know quickly whether I was in Michigan or Wisconsin, Maryland or Virginia, Massachusetts or Rhode Island, Alabama or Mississippi, or Colorado or Utah.

Later on in the book Cliff refutes the notion that the states are alike:

Nothing on my trip thus far was as I expected which shows you that rather than simply read about the United States you have to log the journey. I mean the look and feel of it. I've read that television has made us all the same but I haven't seen the evidence for that point of view.

In the novel, our "hero" never quite makes it to all 50 states (in fact, he visits only 10 or so in the West and Midwest), as his wanderlust gives way to longing for home. But he does complete his project of renaming the 50 states, choosing to name each one after an Indian tribe that had previously lived on the land. Thus, in Cliff's scheme my home state of Ohio becomes "Wyandot" and my adopted state of Colorado is renamed "Ute." California is not "Pacifica" but rather "Chumash."

Do American Legislatures Meet International Standards for Democratic Legislatures?

by Karl Kurtz

In the United States we take it for granted that our 51 legislatures--Congress and the 50 states--are highly developed and that they can serve as models for consideration by other countries seeking to strengthen their parliaments.  But if we look at international standards for democratic legislatures that a number of organizations have developed in recent years, our American legislatures don't meet a few of their benchmarks. 

Does that mean that our legislatures could be improved by paying attention to international practice, or that some of the standards are flawed and don't adequately take into account American legislative practice?  The answer may be a little bit of both.

The three principle international standards are the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's "Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures," the Inter-Parliamentary Union's "Evaluating Parliament: A self-assessment toolkit for parliaments," and the National Democratic Institute's "Toward the Development of International Standards for Democratic Legislatures."

I have recently learned a lot about these standards as a result of attending an international conference to assess how they have been used to promote legislative strengthening and discuss the possibility of developing a single set of benchmarks. This experience has led me to conclude that American legislatures can benefit from looking at the international standards and may have something to contribute to their development.

The three standards are very similar to each other but differ somewhat in presentation and content. The IPU's self-assessment toolkit is probably the most user-friendly and accessible for a quick review by a U.S. audience.  It includes a questionnaire on which you can assess your legislature's performance against 62 standards using a five-point scale from low to high.  Its table of contents provides good categories for the benchmarks:

1. The representativeness of parliament
2. Parliamentary oversight over the executive
3. Parliament’s legislative capacity
4. The transparency and accessibility of parliament
5. The accountability of parliament
6. Parliament’s involvement in international policy

The CPA's benchmarks focus on Westminster-style parliaments (as they should given the predominance of the British parliamentary model among Commonwealth countries) and are less relevant to state legislatures.

NDI's "discussion document" on international standards, primarily written by former Wisconsin legislative staffer Scott Hubli, is the most thoroughly explicated of the three and contains rich examples of legislative practices around the world.  I will focus on this publication for an assessment of how well state legislatures meet the standards.

NDI includes 42 standards in 11 different categories.  Each standard is stated in a short sentence followed by a few paragraphs of explanation.  American state legislatures generally meet the great majority of the standards, but there are half a dozen on which they fall short.  In the excerpts that follow I will discuss each of these exceptions.