The Thicket at State Legislatures

Not Even a Record for a Deliberative Body Since Wisconsin in the Age of Eisenhower

by Karl Kurtz

I enjoy reading Gail Collins in The New York Times as much as I do any columnist, not because I always agree with her but because of her clever and engaging prose.  Here's a recent example in a column last weekend, "Putting the Fond in Farewell."

Nowhere is the need for the graceful exit more apparent than in our politics. This week Senator Robert Byrd turned 92. He has been in office for more than 50 years. That’s an all-time record for Congress. In fact, it is probably a record for every deliberative body since Athens in the Age of Pericles.

That's a marvelous turn of phrase, but unfortunately, Ms. Collins, it's not even a record for a deliberative body since Wisconsin in the age of Eisenhower.  Sen. Byrd was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958, two years after Sen. Fred Risser (photo) was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly.  A Democrat from Madison, Risser fought the tide of the landslide reelection of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. Risser was elected to the Wisconsin Senate in 1962 and has been serving there ever since.

A nit-picker could say that Byrd is the longest-serving in the same chamber of a "deliberative body" (compared to Risser who has served in two different chambers in the same state legislature), but we would suggest caution in making that claim.  NCSL has pretty good knowledge of records for length of service by state legislators since the 20th century, but we can't track earlier periods in American history. 

And for an international perspective, check out "Longest Serving Legislator in the World? Not" about Chaudharry Prem Singh, who was elected to the Delhi Legislative Assembly in the same year that Sen. Byrd was elected to the U.S. Senate.  We don't know what month Chaudharry was elected, but the odds are that it was earlier than Byrd's November 2008 election and that he talk office before Byrd on Jan. 3, 1959.

A Complementarity of Powers

by Karl Kurtz

At a workshop for Algerian parliamentarians last week, our faculty team was emphasizing the separation of powers in the American system of government.  An attorney for the Algerian Council of Nations (Senate) spoke up and said, "In Algeria, we have a complementarity of powers instead of a separation of powers."  In saying this, she was recognizing the strong authority of the executive branch in Algerian government but suggesting that the parliament supplements the work of the executive and makes it more effective.

Her comment was clearly aimed at the Algerian system of government.  But the more I reflected on the "complementarity of powers", the more I liked how the phrase captures much of the reality of the relationship between branches of government in our American separation of powers system. The legislative, executive and judicial branches of government often complement each other, perhaps more than they compete.

Two small examples of ways in which the legislative and executive branches of government collaborate came up in our workshop with the Algerians.  Minnesota Senate counsel Peter Wattson answered a question about the effective date of new laws by saying that Minnesota has a default effective date of August 1 but that executive agencies, bill authors, committees and staff often communicate about the most appropriate effective date and negotiate a change.  Gary Vanlandingham, director of Florida's OPPAGA, pointed out that legislative program reviews of executive agencies are not designed to embarrass the agencies but rather to help them strengthen their programs.

Conjugating "to vote"

by Karl Kurtz

Sunday was election day for municipal offices in Kosovo, where I am spending the week with my NCSL colleague, Bruce Feustel, scoping out plans for a project to strengthen the Kosovo Assembly in partnership with NDI.

Spray-painted on walls all over the capital, Pristina, are signs like this one:

Translation:

I vote
You vote
He/she votes

We vote
You vote
They profit

At a fundamental level, it's a reflection of the cynicism of some Kosovars toward democracy and the elections.  It's also part of a grafitti campaign to promote a Kosovo Albanian right of self-determination, led by Albin Kurti, in protest against the international administration of the country.  In fact, though, the election process has been praised by international observers, and turnout was reasonably good.

Would you Let the KKK into your Town Hall Meeting?

by Karl Kurtz

Lee Hamilton has another excellent Commentary on Congress, "Whatever their Tone, We Need Town Hall Meetings."  It begins:

Years ago, when I was still in Congress, I pulled up one day to address a public meeting in a remote and very rural part of Indiana. The sheriff, a friend of mine, met me outside the small volunteer fire house where I was to speak. "The Ku Klux Klan is here in full regalia," he told me. "If you'd like, I'll keep them out of your meeting."

For just a second, I'll confess, I weighed his offer. But I was not in the business of trying to keep constituents out of public gatherings — even if they were in the KKK. No, I told my friend, the Klansmen could come in, as long as they removed their hoods. There's no place for anonymity in a public meeting, I said.

And so about twenty-five of them — hoodless — marched down the aisle made by the rickety folding chairs set up in the tiny firehouse and took their places in the front. Was this or was this not a Christian nation, they demanded. And what did I think about Jewish influence in Hollywood and on the media? I responded calmly, but their persistent overtones of anti-Semitism wore out the audience's patience. Eventually they left, and the meeting continued.

And concludes:

Over my years in Congress, I conducted hundreds, if not thousands, of town-hall meetings. Almost every time I came away with the feeling that this was precisely what I was meant to be doing — engaging with my constituents in a small part of the dialogue of democracy. Just as often, these meetings reinforced my confidence in the fairness, decency and judgment of the American people.

I've been in Algeria for the last week with a team of legislators and staff, leading a couple of workshops for Algerian legislators.  One of our topics was citizen engagement and  constituent communication. We emphasized the importance of town hall meetings and talked about how to set them up.  We have a great team here, consisting of North Dakota Rep. Rae Ann Kelsch, New Jersey Assemblymember Upendra Chivikula, Minnesota Senate legislative counsel Peter Wattson, Florida policy research director Gary Vanlandingham, and NCSL's Christy Delafield.  They did a great job of carrying Lee Hamilton's point, but after reading his commentary, I wished that he had been here with us to tell this story.

See our previous postings in The Thicket about town hall meetings starting with "Town Hall Meetings: Building Trust Online."

The Mace as a Symbol of Authority

by Karl Kurtz

On a visit to Virginia's marvelously historic and beautifully restored state capitol last week, I saw a mace on display in a glass case in the old House chamber.  Sitting next to it was a stack of bookmarks, available for the curious visitor, entitled "The Symbol of Authority."  Here are excerpts from that bookmark, one of a series of clever informational handouts produced by Clerk of the House Bruce Jamerson:

During the Middle Ages, the mace was introduced as a weapon of war.  Medieval bodyguards, known as sergeants-at-arms, carried maces to protect kings and high officials in processions among the people.  Gradually, more useful weapons replaced the mace.  In the fourteenth century, the mace had become an ornament of beauty made of precious metals and decorated with jewels.  Thus, the mace evolved into an object that was symbolic of royal authority and power.  The British House of Commons was the first body to use the mace in this manner.

The current mace of the House of Delegates is a symbolic successor to the silver ceremonial mace that was presented to the Virginia House of Burgesses by the royal governor in 1700.  The silver mace was sold after the Revolution as the legislators felt that it too strongly represented links to the royal past.  The House met without a mace for nearly 180 years.

In 1974, the current mace was purchased in England by the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation and presented to the House of Delegates....

During current legislative sessions, the sergeant-at-arms carries the ten-pound mace into the chamber and places it into a cradle in front of the Speaker’s desk....

I knew that the U. S. House of Representatives displays a mace on a pedestal next to the speaker, but I didn't know about state legislative use of this symbol.  I asked Bruce Jamerson about it and he said that the only other legislature with a mace that he knew about was the South Carolina House of Representatives, which, unlike Virginia, still has its original symbol.  Sure enough, the South Carolina House website says that its mace, purchased in England in 1756 by the "'Commons House of Assembly of the Province of South Carolina' for 90 guineas," is the oldest one in legislative use in the United States.

When I returned to the office I asked the same question that I had put to Bruce and was not surprised to find that my colleague, Kae Warnock, knower of all things state capitol, had the answer. Three other legislative chambers besides the U.S., Virginia and South Carolina houses use the mace as a symbol of authority: the Pennsylvania House and Senate and the Maryland House of Delegates.

To Shrink or Grow the Size of the Legislature

by Karl Kurtz

In Pennsylvania they say shrink the Legislature.  In Canada they say grow the Parliament.  I've written before in The Thicket about the dilemma of "What's the Right Size for the Legislature?".  Two news items in the last week highlight the differing values underlying some of the arguments on either side of the issue.

In an opinion column, "Bloated Legislature bungles budget," a title that is as ill-tempered as it is alliterative, Brian Wilson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes: 

As I write late Friday afternoon, there still is no state budget. This is the seventh consecutive year that America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature has been unable to perform its principal task on time. It's more than three months overdue.

If nothing else, that is yet another argument to shrink the statehouse. Surely, it could not do its job with 201 members as easily as it can't do it with 253, and we'd save a fortune. Cutting the size of the Legislature by 20 percent -- or its cost by 20 percent -- could save as much as $60 million to $70 million a year.

In Canada the issue is not the cost of the Parliament but rather equal representation.  In an interesting article (complete with a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates a witticism that I read recently, "Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."), John Ibbotson of The Globe and Mail lays out how "Ottawa moves to reshape the House."  Like the U.S., Canada has a decennial census, but in our neighbor to the North no Supreme Court has ruled that there is a constitutional guarantee of one-person-one-vote that evens out legislative representation every 10 years.  But there are bills before the Parliament to remedy the problem.

Rankings of African Nations

by Karl Kurtz

An article in today's New York Times, "Contention over rankings of African nations", comparing African countries on a variety of measurements of governmental performance, generated a lot of discussion among our NCSL staff who have worked in African countries on legislative strengthening projects in recent years.  Here is a sampling of today's e-mail traffic among our staff:

Other than two measures of the fairness of legislative elections, there's nothing about parliaments in this index.

I've been thinking about what I would have included in my own measurement of African governments.

Check out the nifty interactive chart in the Ibrahim report.... One of the coolest things on the Ibrahim website is the graphical interface table that allows you to plot different variables. It's way cool.

Interesting that Algeria makes the top 10 on one of the indexes.  It scores well on safety and security and human development and not so well on sustainable economic opportunity and participation and human rights.

Good to see Ghana up there in the rankings.  Nigeria...not so good.

From the Rotberg report: "Nigeria, despite its vast oil wealth, suffers as in previous years by weak scores for safety and security, participation, rule of law, and human development."

Egypt ranks high in the overall rankings but toward the bottom in human rights and participation. One factor in that score is an expert analysis of whether elections are fair and whether elected officials have actual governing authority, so their rubber stamp parliament surely pulls them down. They get pulled to the top in overall score by the measure of health and education.

Legislator-Constituent Relations in Algeria and the United States

by Karl Kurtz

Most of the differences between the Algerian National Parliament and American legislatures are structural and result in somewhat weaker connections between legislators and their constituents in Algeria compared to the United States.  But the manner in which parliamentarians from both countries communicate with their public is remarkably similar. 

This was the conclusion of a team of 5 American legislators and staff and 2 NCSL staff that conducted a workshop for Algerian parliamentarians in Algiers earlier this summer.  Here are the key structural differences between the two countries' legislative systems:

• The overwhelming majority of American lawmakers are elected from single member districts, but Algerian parliamentarians are elected at large from party lists in multi-member districts in each of 26 regions of the country.  Both multi-member districts and party lists tend to weaken connections between legislators and constituents because elections depend more on the fortunes of the party than on the performance of individual legislators.  The one-to-one relationship of legislator to district in a single member district system encourages effective constituent communication.
• American parties are relatively weak and lacking in cohesion compared to stronger, more cohesive parties in Algeria.  In a weak party system, there is likely to be more of a personal vote for legislators and more incentive to work hard at constituent service as a result.
• In the United States, legislatures are designed to be independent and coequal branches of government, able to balance the power of executives.  In Algeria, the executive branch dominates the legislative branch, so the public is more likely to turn to the executive to solve problems than to the parliament.  Algerian parliamentarians still play an important role as ombudsmen for the public but not to the same extent as in the United States.
• Americans--and American legislators--have far more access to the Internet and other electronic resources than do Algerians.  80 percent of Algerians have cell phones, but very few of them have easy access to computers and the Internet.  The factors that have facilitated increased electronic communication between legislators and constituents in the United States are largely absent in Algeria.
• In America we have a 272 year history of independence and a stable constitution; Algeria has 40 years of history as an independent country.

Democracy Building Lessons

by Karl Kurtz

"I'm a neoconservative who has been mugged by reality."  So says John Agresto, one of the most interesting characters in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, about the misadventures of the American occupation of Iraq in the first year after the war.  Agresto is a former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe who was charged with the responsibility of rebuilding Iraq's higher education system.

Agresto wrote to a friend about his frustrations with democracy-building in Iraq (as quoted in Chandrasekaran's book):

The problem with democracy-building is that I think we think democracy is easy--get rid of the bad guys, call for elections, encourage “power-sharing,” and see to it somebody writes a bill of rights.  The truth is exactly the opposite--government by the few, or government by one person is what’s easy to build; even putting together good autocratic rule doesn’t seem to be that hard.  It’s good, stable and free democracies that are really the hardest thing.

America’s been so successful at being a free and permanent democracy that we think democracy is the natural way to rule--just let people go and there you have it: Democracy.  But all the ingredients that make it good and free--limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, calendared elections, staggered elections, plurality selection, differing terms of office, federalism but with national supremacy, the development of a civic spirit and civic responsibility, and, above all, the breaking and moderation of factions--all this we forget about.  We act as if the aim is “democracy” simply and not a mild and moderate democracy.  Therefore…we seek out the loudest and most virulent factions and empower them….

We, as a country, don’t have a clue as to what has made our own country work, and so we spread the gospel of democracy-at-all-costs abroad.  Until this country can find a Madison, it would be far better off with just a good ruler.

As someone who has dabbled in parliamentary strengthening in emerging democracies around the world (although obviously nothing on the scale of the problem of Iraq), I particularly like this reflection for two reasons. 

Unusual News Day for Legislative Junkies

by Karl Kurtz

It's unusual when I find more than one or two stories, excluding ones on Congress, in a newspaper in one day that I mentally file in the legislative junkie category--i.e., potential fodder for The Thicket.  The New York Times, which often has trouble covering its own state legislature in Albany, has five stories of interest today on legislatures in other states or countries, only one of which made it into our NCSL daily clipping service, Grasscatcher:

• A front page story on reactions to California voters' rejection of ballot proposals to implement the Legislature's budget deal and the resulting challenges facing the governor and legislative leaders.  There have been lots of stories on this subject, which is why we haven't covered it in The Thicket.  The angle that interested me in this story was the growing momentum for a constitutional convention in California.  It would be the first in that state since 1878-79.  Many seem to feel that a convention would be the best way to repair both the state's budget process and the mess of amendments that have been placed in the constitution by ballot initiatives.  See also today's Los Angeles Times editorial, "California needs a constitutional convention."
• A story, "Bill to Ease Rules on Development Divides Floridians," about the Florida Legislature's action, now awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist's signature, that would make residential development easier for builders.  Environmental groups that oppose the bill are urging the governor to veto it.
• "Setback to Gay Marriage in New Hampshire," which describes the Granite State House's action to reject amendments to a previously approved gay marriage bill designed to obtain Gov. John Lynch's approval.  The bill will now go back to a conference committee for further efforts to reconcile differences.  This is another story that has received a lot of national attention.
• A news note in the international section about two members of the British House of Lords (true junkies are hooked on legislatures wherever they may be) who were suspended for taking cash to amend bills.  The story notes that "the last recorded suspension of a peer was Viscount Savile [photo], who was barred by Parliament in 1642 for siding with King Charles I at the time of the English civil war."  How many American legislatures can say that the last member ousted from the body was in the 19th century, much less the 17th?
• And finally, an unusual editorial, "Poor, Poor Parliament," about the sorry scandal in the British House of Commons over members' misuse of expense reimbursements.  The editorial concludes with:

Members do have a legitimate compliant [sic] that they are paid too little: less than $100,000 a year, compared with about $170,000 for a member of the United States Congress. Britain’s taxpayers want changes. They want to make Parliament’s doings more open, which is a good thing. They also want to cut out these fat and far too easily abused expense accounts. That’s good too. But they will also have to find a way to pay their representatives a better wage. [Emphasis added]