The Thicket at State Legislatures

Poll Results: Committee Powers

by Karl Kurtz

Our online poll in The Thicket relating to a posting about the powers of legislative committees, "Should legislative committees have the power to kill bills on their own, or should they be required to report all actions to the chamber?" drew 130 responses.  79 respondents (61%) said that committees should be able to kill bills on their own, while 39 (39%) said that committees should have to report their actions to the chamber as a whole. 

Without having any way of knowing, my best guess would be that the great majority who support the ability of committees to make decisions without approval of the body as a whole were legislative insiders--legislators and staff who see lots of bad legislation and want the system to be efficient as possible.   Readers outside the legislature are more likely to favor a more accountable and democratic legislature in which a small group cannot act on behalf of the entire chamber.

How Autonomous are Your Legislative Committees?

by Karl Kurtz

The most interesting thing to me about Nancy Martorano's prize-winning article on legislative committee systems was something that was not in the published version of the article: the actual autonomy scores for each state's committee systems.  I thought that these scores might be of interest to legislative junkies, so I contacted Nancy about it. She provided me with committee system autonomy scores for both legislative chambers in all 50 states for 2001-02 and gave me permission to publish them here.

These scores are based on the formal procedures--constitutions, statutes and rules--that affect the ability of committees to function as autonomous actors in the legislative process.  The scores are a measure of the freedom of committee action on 11 different legislative procedures.  On each of these 11 procedures Martorano gave a score ranging from -1 to 1 to all 99 legislative chambers.  For example, she judged that legislative committees that can kill bills (+1) are more autonomous than ones that are required to report all bills to the floor (-1).  Or, committees that can offer substitute bills in lieu of those referred to them (+1) are less constrained than ones in which the rules prohibit them from substituting bills (-1).  No mention of these subjects in the rules of procedure scored 0.  For a complete list of the procedures, read below the jump.

Before presenting the scores, let me hasten to say that committee autonomy does not necessarily mean committee strength.  The autonomy measure deals only with formal procedures.  But it's the informal procedures--the norms and customs--of a chamber, combined with the formal rules, that determine the strength of committees.  For example, rules of procedure may make it easy for the chamber to remove a bill from committee or to amend its recommendations on the floor, but in practice the chamber may never take such actions and may routinely follow committee recommendations.  Unfortunately, the customs and practices that are critical to determining the strength of committee systems are very difficult to measure across states.   

Nonetheless, the autonomy scores are interesting.  Theoretically, the autonomy scores can range from -11 to 11.  In practice, in houses of representatives in 2001-02 the range of scores was from .5 (Kansas) to 10 (Tennessee), and in senates it was from -1 (New Hampshire) to 11 (Illinois and Michigan).  The following maps present the approximate scores for each chamber (senates on the left, houses on the right--click to enlarge).

There is no apparent explanation for the variation of these scores from state to state or even from chamber to chamber.  Neither region nor level of professionalization of the legislature appears to explain them. Senate scores are generally higher than house scores: the average senate score is 6.0, while for houses it is 5.1.  In one way this seems odd because normally I would expect that the larger, more unruly bodies would have more need for the gatekeeping roles of committees.  On the other hand, the smaller senates are traditionally more collegial, so perhaps they trust their committees more.

Rosenthal Prize Awarded for Article on Legislative Committees

by Karl Kurtz

Nancy Martorano of the University of Dayton received the 2007 Rosenthal Prize for her article, "Balancing Power: Committee System Autonomy and Legislative Organization," May 2006, Legislative Studies Quarterly.  The Rosenthal Prize is given annually by the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association for the best book or article that is of potential value to practitioners.  NCSL and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation fund the award.

Martorano's article tests three different theories about the role of committees in Congress against data from state legislatures.  The first (distributive) theory says that the role of committees is to help members get reelected by obtaining benefits for their districts.  According to the second (informational) theory, the committees serve as a source of specialized knowledge for the chamber as a whole.  The partisan theory suggests that committees serve as a tool for the majority party to exert its will.

To test these theories, Martorano has coded the rules of procedure relating to legislative committees for 24 states for every session 1955-1995 and developed a measure of "committee autonomy."  Through analysis of this measure, she finds that the only theory that finds support in the state legislative context is the informational theory--that committees aid the parent body through members who specialize and screen and recommend legislation.  The distributive theory is specifically contradicted by her data, and there is no evidence to support the partisan theory.

This is useful political science, although I don't think the findings will surprise more impressionistic observers of state legislatures.  Without seeing Martorano's data, most students of legislatures would say that the distributive theory plays a role in only a very few states, that the partisan theory may occasionally apply in a few settings and that the informational theory best describes the roles that committees play.

In an email message, Nancy Martorano said that she was particularly pleased to have won an award named after Rutgers University Professor Alan Rosenthal, because her work was based in part on an article that Rosenthal had written about legislative committees more than 30 years.

Only an abstract of the article is available on the Legislative Studies Quarterly web site, so if you're not a subscriber and want to read it, check with your library.

New Study of the Effects of Term Limits Published

by Karl Kurtz

Department of shameless self-congratulation and -promotion: The 23 academic political scientists and staffers for NCSL, the Council of State Governments and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation who participated in the four-year Joint Project on Term Limits are pleased that our book, Institutional Change in American Politics: The Case of Term Limits, reporting the results of our research has now been published by University of Michigan Press.  The book was edited by Bruce Cain of University of California, Berkeley, Richard G. Niemi of University of Rochester and myself.

You can find a summary and table of contents for the book here and nice blurbs about it here (we especially liked the one by Bernard Grofman). And if you prefer, you can read Coping with Term Limits: A Practical Guide, a 30-pp. condensed version of the book (which is 230 pp.) aimed at practitioners rather than academics.  We blogged about the release of Coping with Term Limits a year ago.

Institutional Change in American Politics is #436,005 on Amazon.com's best-seller list.  Don't look for an authors' tour at a bookstore near you anytime soon.

New Documentary: Legislative Process Works

by Bill Wyatt

A new documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has piqued the interest of many 'legislative junkies.'  One of them, Dr. Alan Rosenthal, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, chimes in on the movie on NCSL's State Legislatures Magazine Online.

In a review of the three hour 37 minute documentary, Rosenthal says that the video shows that "representative democracy may not be entertaining but it works."  Rosenthal is struck by the diversity of issues that legislators must deal with and the attention that lawmakers give to their constituents.  At the same time, he wishes that Wiseman had shown more of the processes of negotiation and compromise that are necessary to resolve conflicting points of view on proposed legislation.

Read more at State Legislatures or come hear filmmaker Frederick Wiseman discuss his new endeavor at NCSL's 2007 Legislative Summit in Boston.

Polling Results: Term Limits for Committee Chairs

Of the 25 readers who responded to our poll, do you favor term limits?, 60 percent said yes and 40 percent said no.  Apparently, the majority was not persuaded by the argument that natural turnover and leadership and partisan change take care of the problem of committee chairs who become too entrenched, and they aren't worried that they would lose the talents of expert and skilled committee chairs.

How Things Get Done in a Legislature

by Karl Kurtz

Knowing that during graduate school in St. Louis I had worked on Tom Eagleton's first campaign for the U.S. Senate, our NCSL Washington office recently sent me a clipping from Roll Call with a personal reminiscence about Eagleton (who died in March of this year) by Ira Shapiro, who had worked for him in the Senate.  I particularly liked it because it captured Eagleton's personal charm and humor that I remember well.

The article also contained a marvelous story about how things get done in a legislature that I want to share here.  Unfortunately, though, Roll Call doesn't allow online access to its archives to non-subscribers, so I'll summarize the anecdote rather than linking to a story.

The story takes place in 1979 when Eagleton was chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on governmental efficiency and the District of Columbia.  The issue before the subcommittee was providing $1.7 billion for the completion of Washington D.C.'s Metrorail.  Eagleton believed that it was important for the nation's capital to have a viable mass transit system, but for political reasons having to do with his re-election campaign back home in Missouri he decided that "he could not back a 'gold-plated' subway system for Washington, D.C."  As the subcommittee's chair, his position was crucial to the success or failure of the bill.

Ira Shapiro in Roll Call, May 21, 2007:

Tom arranged to meet with Sen. Charles Mathias (R-Md.), the subcommittee's ranking member.  "Mac," he said, "I've got to oppose the Metro."

"Then it's dead," Mathias intoned, in his sonorous voice.

"No, Mac," Tom explained, "I'll oppose it, but I won't block it.  You and [then-Sen.] Paul Sarbanes [also from Maryland] can move it if you get a committee Democrat to help."

Tom suggested then-freshman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) as someone who would be supportive of mass transit and "would probably like to floor manage a bill."  Tom said he would be confining himself to stinging dissenting views.

Eagleton's plan went off without a hitch.  The legislation rolled through the Senate by a vote of 66-23.  The legislation provided $1.7 billion in federal funds to go with $400 million from the localities, and the completion of the 101-mile Metro system was never again in doubt.

A cynic would say about this story that Eagleton was being dishonest, advocating one thing publicly and doing another privately.  But a more realistic view is that legislators are sometimes confronted with choices between what their constituents want and what they believe to be the right course of action.  In this case Eagleton's judgment was that the voters in Missouri opposed the D.C. Metro, and he faithfully represented their views in the Congress. At the same time he crafted a solution to the problem that squared with his personal beliefs on the issue.

In practice, Edmund Burke's classic choice, in his famous "Speech to the Electors of Bristol", between legislating as a delegate (of one's constituents) or a trustee (of one's "mature judgment") is seldom black or white.  Usually it is more shades of gray, or, in Eagleton's case, it is both black and white at the same time.

Term Limits for Committee Chairs?

by Karl Kurtz

Earlier this week I testified before the Pennsylvania House Speaker's Commission on Legislative Reform on the subject of term limits.  The commission, which is made up of 12 members from each party, was established by Rep. Dennis O'Brien, the Republican who was elected speaker after House Democrats, who hold a 101-100 margin over the Republicans, were unable to elect their own speaker.  The commission recommended approximately 32 changes in House rules at the beginning of the session and saw 31 of them enacted by the body.  Now it is taking a more in-depth look at four issues: open records, the size of the legislature, campaign finance and term limits.

Term limits are on the agenda in part because Gov. Ed Rendell has mentioned that he thinks that they would be a good idea for the legislature, although he has not pushed a specific proposal.  After hearing testimony and holding a committee discussion (but no votes), the co-chairs of the commission, Rep. David Steil and Rep. Joshua Shapiro, said that their sense of the committee was that there is not strong support for term limits for legislators (which would require a constitutional amendment approved in two separate sessions of the legislature and a vote of the people).

However, it was apparent in the commission meeting that there is considerable interest in the possibility of term limits for committee chairs.  One of the reasons for this is that  the Pennsylvania House has one of the stronger seniority systems in the country because the rules require that the chairs of 23 of the 24 standing committees must come from among the most senior members of the majority party, excluding the seven top leaders.  The only exception to this rule is the appropriations committee.  Seniority does not govern which committee the veteran members get to chair, as the speaker and majority leader can make those decisions.  As one member of the commission put it, "Seniority guarantees you a committee chairmanship but not necessarily a good one."  The practical result of this system, combined with historically low rates of turnover in the Pennsylvania legislature, is that members typically serve more than a dozen years before they become a committee chair.

Knowing in advance that I would be asked about practices in other legislatures regarding committee chairmanships, I boned up on the subject by talking with Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution, Alan Rosenthal of Rutgers University and our own NCSL resident rules and procedure expert, Brenda Erickson.  Here is a summary of what I learned.

Nine Legislative Sessions Convene Today

by Karl Kurtz

With nine state legislatures convening today, this is the third most popular day for state legislatures to begin their legislative sessions as shown in this calendar.  Tied for first are Monday, January 9 and Tuesday, January 10, when 10 legislatures convene on each of those days.  Eight legislatures met for the first time in the new biennium yesterday, and Montana convened on New Year's Day. 

California and Maine jumped the more traditional January starting gun and convened in December.  In both cases these were primarily organizational sessions, and real work doesn't begin in those two states until this month. 

Several other states, notably Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada and Oklahoma, meet in either December or January to swear in new members and organize their chambers, but legislative sessions don't begin until February (NV and OK), March (AL and FL) or April (LA).  This recess period allows leaders to get organized, committees to meet and begin work and new governors to draft budgets for submission to the legislature.

Why do so many legislatures convene in January?  With our prevailing pattern of November elections in the even-numbered years, January makes sense.  It allows a transition period after the elections and starts off a new year.  Traditionally, in what was once a much more rural America, legislative sessions were scheduled in the winter so that legislator-farmers wouldn't miss planting-growing-harvesting seasons.  For answers to lots of other legislative trivia questions, such as which state will be the first to adjourn or which six states have biennial sessions, see the web pages listed under Legislative Sessions and Session Dates here.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr.]

 

Examining the Structure of Legislative Committees

by Karl Kurtz

At the American Political Science Association meeting in Philadelphia last week, Nancy Martorano (University of Dayton), Ron Hedlund (Northeastern University) and Keith Hamm (Rice University) presented a paper, "Legislative Committee Jurisdiction and Administrative Oversight: Patterns in the American States."  [If this link doesn't work, go to the APSA meeting page, click on "APSA Annual Meeting papers in the left column and enter "legislative committee jurisdiction" in the search box.] The paper examines the extent to which committee jurisdictions in the states are clear and delineated in the rules, consistent between house and senate and organized in parallel to state executive agencies. 

Their interest in the question of parallel jurisdictions between legislative committees and the executive branch is fueled by international comparative research that suggests that the more parallel the jurisdictions the more likely that parliamentary committees are to engage in oversight of  executive agencies.

I'm not sure that I buy off on the argument in the American state legislative context that parallel committee structures lead to more legislative oversight of the executive.  It seems to me that lots of other factors are at least as relevant to the conduct of oversight including, among other things, the culture and politics of the state, the commitment of leadership/committee chairs to oversight, the presence and scope of legislative audit or program review offices and the nature of the appropriations process.

Nonetheless, Martorano, Hedlund and Hamm's paper produces some interesting data on the organization and structure of state legislative committees based on data from all 50 states for the 2005-06 legislative sessions that I summarize below the jump.