The Thicket at State Legislatures

"Under the Hammer" in Maine (and Moose, too)

By Karl Kurtz

A visit to the Maine State House on Monday this week to conduct a training program for committee chairs added another item to my collection of legislative localisms--colorful language, like "chubbing" in Texas or "hoghousing" in South Dakota, that is specific to the legislative process in only one state (or at most a few). Similar to the way other states expedite legislation by using consent calendars or approve motions "without objection," Maine legislators say that a bill is "under the hammer." Everyone uses the term and knows what it means. "Maine's Path of Legislation," a publication produced by the clerk of the House and the secretary of the Senate, describes the term as follows:

At any point, a legislator or the presiding officer may call for a vote on the current motion on the bill. When debate on a motion is over, a vote on the motion is in order. The vote may be a voice vote, or a vote "under the hammer," where approval is presumed unless an objection is raised before the presiding officer bangs the gavel.

No one seemed to know how and when the phrase first came into use.

As a postscript, when I visited the Wyoming Legislature last month, I wrote about the taxidermied bison that sits majestically in a hallway of the State Capitol. To which Maine Rep. Sharon Treat responded in a comment, "Bison are nice, but the Maine Capitol sports a moose." Well, two actually, as I can testify after taking a tour of the State House in Augusta and finding a bull and cow moose in one of four dioramas (behind glass) depicting animal life in Maine:

The dioramas were designed by Maine artist Klir Beck, who is described in a delightful 1948 article in the Lewiston Evening Journal as "the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century" because of his work in multiple media.

What Constitutes a Supermajority?

By Karen Shanton

Illustration from The Michigan Broadcaster

Following major gains by Democrats in California and Illinois and Republicans throughout the South and Midwest, many post-election headlines trumpeted the arrival of new legislative supermajorities. One thing that has been obscured in some of this coverage is that 'supermajority' is a nuanced concept. Despite the name, figuring out where Republicans and Democrats hold supermajorities isn't nearly as simple as counting where they're in the majority.

'Majority' always means 'more than half.' 'Supermajority,' on the other hand, can mean any number of things – from 'three-fifths' to 'two-thirds' to 'three-fourths.' To a Nebraska legislator looking to refer a constitutional amendment to the ballot, a supermajority is three-fifths. An Arkansan who wants to appropriate money for something other than education, highways or debt reduction needs a three-fourths supermajority. A legislature is 'veto-proof' (one party controls enough votes to override a gubernatorial veto) when a single party controls three-fifths of the vote in Illinois or two-thirds in Georgia; a simple majority will do the trick in Kentucky. Arizona legislatures can overturn most vetoes with a two-thirds supermajority but tax bill vetoes require three-fourths of the vote.

To make things even more complicated, supermajorities aren't always calculated from the same pool of votes. Vermont legislators can overturn a gubernatorial veto as long as two-thirds of the members present agree to the override. Legislators in North Dakota have to muster the votes of two-thirds of members elected while Michiganders need two-thirds of members elected and serving.

And, unlike majorities, supermajorities are context-dependent. You can tell me whether Florida Republicans hold a majority even if you don't know why I want to know. The same isn't true of supermajorities. If we're talking about referring a constitutional amendment to the ballot, Republicans hold a supermajority in Florida. If we're talking about overriding a veto, they don't. So, the answer to the question, "Do Republicans have a supermajority in Florida?" could be either yes or no, depending on the context.

What this suggests is that it doesn't really make sense to ask, "Does one party hold a supermajority in that state?" or "How many state legislatures have supermajorities?" Instead, we should focus on something more specific, such as "Does one party have the power to refer a constitutional amendment to the ballot in that state?" or "How many state legislatures are veto-proof?" This distinction might be worth keeping in mind when the next article about new legislative supermajorities pops up in your RSS reader.

Legislative Staff Tools in 1934

by Karl Kurtz

While visitng the State Capitol in Olympia, Washington today, I was interested in this rare display about the history of legislative staffing set up in the lieutenant governor's office:

Acronym Acrobatics

by Caitlin Rossiter

I drove to NCSL this beautiful AM and listened to an NPR analysis of the SCOTUS oral arguments on the ACA. The story discussed the rulings of the AIA applicability and noted that the IRS ruled it applicable. The ESQ who represented states discussed the unconstitutionality of the individual mandates and the ESQ who represented the USDHHS, discussed ERISA and HIPPA, federal regulations that address economic and confidentiality concerns in healthcare.

As the debates continued, my DNA started to boil from confusion. Traffic grew heavy from construction, no doubt funded by ARRA dollars. I needed GPS or ESP to navigate this world of acronyms—and a detour! I switched stations ASAP and listened to ABBA’s rendition of SOS.

Acronyms inundate our everyday speech, especially in the world of government. They are abbreviations of words or phrases, formed by the initial components or letters and are pronounced in different stylistic manners depending on the speaker or content. For example, people may individuate the letters of A, A, R, P, whereas others may say AARP—if you’re from Massachusetts, like my family, omit the R.

FYI: Some acronyms are capitalized, some are mixed with numbers (K9), and some are even regularly used words like laser, radar, and scuba.

Death Valley of "No" Votes

by Karl Kurtz

Earlier this week, the Sacramento Bee reported that two members of the California Assembly majority Democratic party voted "yes" on all 1,450 roll call votes during the just-completed 2011 legislative session. Fourteen other members, including the top leaders in both the Assembly and Senate, cast "no" votes five or fewer times.

It's no secret that Democrats rarely vote "no" on the floor. They control the Legislature and its committees, they control what comes up for a vote, and they usually let only the bills that they like come to a vote.

Plus, many votes pass judgment on measures that would draw little objection – resolutions honoring fallen officers, bills renaming bridges and the like.

Most Democrats do occasionally break with their party to vote "no" on the floor, but for some of them, you were more likely to see rain in Death Valley.

Wondering how common this might be in other states, I checked around with informants in selected states and found that there are a few chambers in which virtually every bill that comes to the floor passes, and majority party members generally vote yes. But most said that it was rare for members not to cast any no votes.

Although the article does not say it, these votes in the California Assembly are almost certainly on final passage only. The Ohio House has similar practices to California, but House clerk Laura Clemens notes, "A member might cast several 'no' votes on certain motions, i.e. motion to re-refer to committee, motion to lay on the table, etc., but vote with the majority 100% of the time....  We have quite a few of these."

And then there's the Illinois House. With strong leadership control, most bills that make it to the floor pass in that chamber. But not all of them. In fact, there is a special Century Club reserved for members whose bills obtain at least 100 (out of 118) "no" votes. When the vote tally board nears 100 nays, the chamber turns raucous with members urging their colleagues to change their vote from green to red in order to induct another member into the Century Club. A celebration, which includes passing a trophy from the previous inductee into the club, ensues, as shown in this video captured by Illinois Statehouse News earlier this year.

Unique State Capitol Signage

by Karl Kurtz

What state capitol was I entering today when I saw this sign?

You guessed it: Olympia, Washington.

I'm willing to bet that it's the only state capitol where one would find a sign like this. Washingtonians pride themselves on their "live with it" approach to rain: "We don't use umbrellas," say the locals. "We just buy rain jackets with a hood. An umbrella is a sign of a tourist."

Twenty-some years ago when the Washington Legislature hosted an NCSL annual meeting in Seattle, their gift to meeting-goers was an umbrella that celebrated the state's damp-but-undaunted climate. It was a clever, wry statement about themselves and their visitors. I still see those distinctive umbrellas occasionally as I travel around the country.

On my one-day visit to Olympia, speaking to the "Legislative Scholars Program" for civics teachers sponsored by the Washington Legislature, it was 67 degrees and a sun-dappled day like the one in this photo. Eat your hearts out, those of you in the heat wave on the east coast.

Do you have equally interesting local signage in and around your capitol? If so, send us a photo, and we will run it in The Thicket.

A Box of Pandoras and Other Political Malapropisms

by Karl Kurtz

The late William Passannante, a long-time member of the New York Assembly and a former president of NCSL, once said, "Let's grab that bull by the horns and milk it for all it's worth!"

Politicians are probably no more likely to misuse the English language in amusing ways than any of the rest of us. It's just that so many of their words are recorded and that wordsmiths are listening to them and reporting on their oral missteps.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King, whom "New Mexican" reporter Steve Terrell calls the "Yogi Berra of New Mexico politics," once said of a legislative proposal, "That will open a whole box of pandoras."  Once this image gets in your head, you'll never think of Pandora's box in the same way (or a box of cigars, for that matter).

"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas children," is often attributed to Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, governor of Texas, 1925-27 and 1933-35. But Benjamin Zimmer, writing for Language Log, has researched this phrase, finding that its origins go back to the 1880s and that there is no documentation that she said it:

...I highly doubt Ma Ferguson ever said it — or if she did, she probably would have said it in self-effacing jest. My guess is that this was a free-floating bit of preacher humor that unfairly got attached to Ma Ferguson, much as Winston  Churchill attracts various apocryphal witticisms.

Boondoggle: An Innocent Humble Craft

by Karl Kurtz

In "One Person's Boondoggle, Another's Necessity," the New York Times' Michael Cooper explains the derivation of a term that now connotes wasteful governmental projects:

Before it became a bad word, “boondoggle” was an innocent, humble craft. It was the Boy Scouts of America who claimed credit for coining the word, to refer to the plaited leather lanyards that they made and wore around their necks.

That all changed on April 3, 1935, at a hearing in New York City on how New Deal relief money was being spent. A Brooklyn crafts teacher reluctantly testified that he was paid to show the jobless how to make “boon doggles.” The outcry was swift. “$3,187,000 Relief is Spent to Teach Jobless to Play,” trumpeted a front-page headline the next day in The New York Times. “ ‘Boon Doggles’ Made.”

A new, more sinister meaning was born, and the word came to signify government make-work, later referring to wasteful government projects in general. Critics used it to criticize scores of projects, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a longer view. “If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this Depression,” Roosevelt said, “that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.”

William Safire's Political Dictionary says that H.L. Mencken is the one who tracked this term back to the Boy Scouts.  But Safire also offers an alternative derivation that was first reported to the New York Times in 1935 by a man who had told the city's Board of Aldermen that "he was paid for teaching 'boondoggles.'  Boon doggles is simply a terrm applied back in the pioneer days to what we call gadgets today...no, it is not named for Daniel Boone...it is spelled differently."

Whatever the origin of the phrase, Cooper's article nicely explains that government projects that are often derided from a distance--like current controversies over federal economic stimulus projects for an airport on an island in Alaska, a skateboard park in Rhode Island and tunnel for turtles in Florida--are viewed as popular and valuable in their local communities.  He delves into the history of some Depression-era WPA projects that were derided at the time but have had long and useful lives.

The article concludes:

Robert D. Leighninger Jr., a sociologist who wrote “Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal” (South Carolina University Press, 2007), recounted the story of a Works Progress Administration official in Arizona who went off in search of boondoggles, and discovered that the towns he visited seemed to like their own projects but questioned those of their neighbors.

“I’ve been hunting all over the state for one, but everywhere I go I’m told it’s in the next county,” the official was quoted as saying in a 1936 newspaper article. “So far I haven’t been able to catch up with a real, live one.”

“Chubbing”: Gone Fishing in the Texas House

by Karl Kurtz

During the last few weeks of Texas' legislative session, minority Democrats in the House of Representatives engaged in a practice known in Austin as "chubbing"—a delay tactic, similar to a filibuster, in which legislators talk at length on every item on the calendar in order to prevent action on a later bill on the calendar. The tactic was aimed at killing a voter i.d. bill that had passed the Senate. This practice caught the attention of The New York Times in "The Talk, and the Talk, and the Talk, of Austin," which focuses on the substance and politics of the issue.

But I'm more interested in adding "chubbing" to my inventory of legislative lingo and finding out the derivation of the term. The Times story doesn't help me with that.

Texas Rep. Aaron Peña has written about "The Art and Etymology of Chubbing" in his prolific blog. He speculates variously that the term comes from the chub fish, which is known for its large mouth, prodigious eating habits, and fattiness, all characteristics that Rep. Peña relates to the "excessive talking that occurs in legislative chubbing."

He goes on, though, to suggest that chubbing may more generally relate to "going fishing," which is "a slow, methodical and patient art" that mirrors "the slow methodical pacing of the lazy passage of time while filibustering." Yet another Peña hypothesis is that "since 1558 the term chub was used metaphorically to describe a "lazy person". This act of legislative chubbing can be described as "taking a lazy or slow approach to asking questions."

In short, while all of Peña's ideas seem plausible, nobody really seems to know where the term comes from. As Gritsforbreakfast concludes in a comment on Peña's blog posting, "It's a phrase propagated for an obscure parliamentary act by one of the most rarified [sic] and exclusive subcultures on the planet - the Texas House of Representatives."

Photo credit: Fishing 4 Fun

Anniversary of the Gerrymander

by Karl Kurtz

This message arrived today on NCSL's redistricting listserv from Kim Brace at Election Data Services, Inc.:

Happy Anniversary to all those involved in redistricting:

On this date in 1812 - Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signs a redistricting law that favors his party — giving rise to the term "gerrymandering."

The shape of the legislative district that Gov. Gerry supported resembled a salamander.  Here is Wikipedia's etymology of the word:

Printed in 1812, this political cartoon illustrates the electoral districts drawn by the Massachusetts legislature to favor the incumbent Democratic-Republican party candidates of Governor Elbridge Gerry over the Federalists, from which the term gerrymander is derived. The cartoon depicts the bizarre shape of a district in Essex County, Massachusetts as a dragon. The painter, Gilbert Stuart, likened it to a salamander, and the editor, Benjamin Russel, advised "Better say a Gerrymander." The name stuck.