The Thicket at State Legislatures

The Well of the House

by Karl Kurtz

The information request of the day at NCSL is, What is the origin of "the well of the house?"  Legislative junkies know that the "well" is a term that many legislatures use for the area in front of the speaker's rostrum from which members address the chamber, as shown in this photo of the U.S. House of Representatives.  (Some senates also refer to the well but less often than houses, because the smaller size of senates means that members often speak from their own desks.)  But where does the term come from?

I began researching this issue by looking in dictionaries. Interestingly, none of the unabridged dictionaries that I checked give a definition of "well" that relates to a legislative chamber.  Googling "the well of the house" generates lots of references to the term, including a nice description and photo from Arkansas and this musical note from Pennsylvania: "Leopold Stokowski once conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra from the well of the House."  But Google doesn't produce an online dictionary definition of "well" that mentions legislative chambers, much less any clues as to its derivation.

The closest thing to a dictionary definition of "well" that relates to legislatures comes from the Oxford English Dictionary (the full version that I have at home and have to read with a magnifying glass, not the online compact version), which provides one meaning of the word as "The space on the floor of a law court (between the judge's bench and the last row of seats occupied by counsel) where the solicitors sit."  That's pretty close to the legislative version of "well."

I consulted with John Phelps, former clerk of the Florida House, and Alfred (Butch) Speer, clerk of the Louisiana House, about this question.  Together we have some ideas but no definitive answer to the question.  John said that he had once asked the U.S. Architect of the Capitol this question and was told that they had nothing in their files on the origin of the term.  So here is our speculation.

Making Legislators' Votes Available Online

by Karl Kurtz

Why do five of the fifty state legislatures (New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Vermont, and Washington) make comprehensive floor roll call votes on bills available online by legislator, while most states only provide online access to roll call votes by bill?  That was a question that we received from a researcher at the Kennedy School of Government who is doing a study of legislative information systems in Congress, the fifty states, and the 25 largest U.S. cities.  He adds that neither Congress nor the 25 city councils provide roll call voting information by legislator, making the five state legislatures that do even more unusual.

The researcher had some hypotheses in mind (district population and legislative salaries) that might explain why some states provide this information and others don't, but he wanted to know if we had other ideas.  Going on instinct alone and unburdened by any research or data, here was my response:

I'm not sure I have an answer for you.  A standard first question that political scientists would ask about this would be to check it against legislative professionalization.  Using the standard three levels of professionalization, among the five cases that you mention, two (NH and VT) are classic part-time citizen legislatures, one (NJ) is a professionalized ("full-time") legislature and two (NC and WA) are hybrid or in-between.  Nothing apparent there.  The professionalization measure is highly correlated with state population, and as you point out yourself, the NJ case belies a district population explanation.  The professionalization measure also includes compensation of legislators, which you suggest you want to test as an independent variable.  I would suggest using professionalization instead of compensation by itself, but I don't think either one will yield a useful result.

There's also no apparent regional or socio-economic factor among the five states.

The other thing that I would suggest is that roll call voting by legislator is highly political information, subject to misinterpretation and campaign demagoguery.  That's the main reason why most legislatures don't make the information easy to obtain.  It's inherently anti-incumbent information, and since incumbents run the system, they don't make a practice of releasing it.  With the exception of NJ, most of the legislatures that provide this information are somewhat less partisan than most, although there are plenty of others that are equally low in partisanship that don't make the info available.

With only five cases to go on, I think that idiosyncratic explanations will prevail.  For different reasons in each of these states, there is probably a tradition, a provision in the rules or constitution. or a whim of a leader that made roll call votes by legislator available online.  I know that's not a very satisfying explanation to a social scientist, but sometimes randomness does prevail!

Anybody have any better explanations?  If you're in one of the states that provide the roll call information by legislator, how was the decision made to make it available?  If you're in one that does not, have you considered this option?  You can add a comment below or, if you would rather not comment publicly, send me a message by clicking on "Contact us" in the right column.  I will summarize your response and make it anonymous and non-state-specific.

District Offices for Legislators

by Brian Weberg and Karl Kurtz

District offices, on the model of Congressional district offices that handle constituent casework and other district matters, are rare in state legislatures. When legislators are in their districts, most of them conduct their legislative work from home or from their business. 

However, in legislatures like California, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, district office operations rival their Congressional counterparts in terms of scope of operation, staffing and outreach.  In Texas, for example, state senators may operate several district offices in their geographically large election districts with an average population of nearly 700,000.  There are nine states, mostly the largest population states, that provide district offices for all members (see map--click to expand).

In another 13 states funding is provided to legislators to support their work in the district and they can decide whether to spend it on this purpose or some other.  For example, Tennessee state law says, "Each member of the general assembly shall be paid a monthly expense allowance of $1,000 to provide for expenses necessitated in connection with the member's official duties when away from the seat of government including, but not limited to, telecommunications, office, secretarial and other assistance incidental expenses." (Tennessee Code Annotated 3-1-106(f))  A few Tennessee legislators use these funds for formal district offices, but most work out of their homes or places of business.

The remaining 28 states do not provide district offices to legislators.   For analysis of why some states provide districts and others don't, read below the jump.

Update on Expulsions from State Legislatures

by Karl Kurtz

Earlier this month we reported on the expulsion of a North Carolina lawmaker from that state's legislature.  In that post we said that seven other legislators had been expelled from different legislatures since 1970.  That number should have been 15, as indicated by this more up to date list--Download expulsion_2.DOC--compiled by Brenda Erickson.  Brenda's list includes 19 other expulsions before 1970, going back as far as 1757. 

See also an ongoing story about an expulsion procedure under way in Arkansas in which the loser of a 2006 Senate race is claiming fraud in the election process and demanding that the winner be expelled from the Senate.

Unusual Eviction of Member from North Carolina Legislature

by Karl Kurtz

Meeting in special session today, the North Carolina General Assembly took the unusual measure of evicting Rep. Thomas Wright from office.  Here is an excerpt from the AP story in the News & Record:

The state House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to remove Rep. Thomas Wright from office, the first such expulsion of a lawmaker from North Carolina's General Assembly in 128 years.

The House voted 109-5 in favor of booting the Wilmington Democrat, who is accused of mishandling or hiding about $340,000 in loans and campaign and charitable contributions. At least 80 votes were needed to kick him out of office....

Only about a dozen lawmakers have been booted from office in state history, the most recent being Rep. Josiah Turner in 1880. The last to face such a potential fate, former House Speaker Jim Black, chose instead to resign in 2007 as prosecutors closed in during a corruption investigation that ultimately sent him to federal prison.

Wright remains defiant, insisting he has done nothing illegal. He is scheduled to stand trial later this month in Wake County on charges almost identical to those considered by the ethics panel.

GOP Rep. Paul Stam, the ethic committee's vice chairman, was blunt in his assessment of the evidence presented at the hearing last month.

"This is really bad behavior. This is stealing. Technically what it is, is embezzlement," Stam said Thursday before he voted to expel Wright. "This kind of behavior is not acceptable, to me, to you, to anyone ... it is unbecoming to a member of this body."

A 2006 NCSL survey of the states showed that expulsions are also rare in other states.  Since the 1970s we found only seven cases of members being expelled from state legislatures.

You can find much of the documentation of the case on Gerry Cohen's blog, Drafting Musings.

A Senator who can Vote Twice?

by Karl Kurtz

New York's musical chairs situation in which Lt. Governor David Paterson will become governor and Senate Majority Leader and President Pro Tempore Joe Bruno will become acting lieutenant governor raises a curious question reported on by The New York Times blog, City Beat: "In a Senate Tie, Could Bruno Vote Twice?" 

In other words, could Senator Bruno vote once as a senator and then again, in the event of a tie, as the lieutenant governor who by constitution has a tie-breaking vote?  The issue is of considerable interest in New York because of the narrow 32-30 margin for the Republicans in the Senate.  This situation of the temporary Senate president also serving as lieutenant governor will persist through the elections of 2008, in which all New York senators are up for election, until the next gubernatorial election in 2010.  If the Senate were to be tied after the 2008 elections, this question would become critical and could determine which party holds the majority.

Not surprisingly, this issue is a matter of some dispute in New York.  According to the Times posting, Republicans say that the pro tem would have two votes, while the Democrats say no, he would not.  The experts are uncertain.

This has led inevitably to a question from New York to NCSL: What is the practice in other states on this matter?  The short answer is that Pennsylvania appears to be the only other state where it might be possible for a senator/acting lieutenant governor to vote twice.  For the long answer, read below the jump.

Clemens, Congress and the Media

by Gene Rose

Is the use of steroids by major league baseball players an important national issue or one that simply allows members of Congress to grandstand for the television cameras? The public relations battle between pitcher Roger Clemens and his trainer is taking center stage in Congress and there appears to be a lot of hand-wringing on whether the issue deserves to be a Capitol Hill headliner.

Poynter's Al Tompkins has a good column on the debate today with some thoughtful commentary on both sides of the issue. Washington Post's Tony Kornheiser, who hosts one of the few programs I insist on watching daily ("Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN), has said on the show recently on more than one occasion that Congress has more important things to worry about, such as the war in Iraq.

I always cringe when I hear statments like that. While I like and respect Tony -- and agree with him and others that there are more important things in the world to worry about -- comments like this ignore a critical fact of life: the media has decided it's news.

The definition of news has changed dramatically in recent years and, quite frankly, the media has decided this story has legs and, like covering Britney Spears, will run on this story as long as there is a perceived high level of public interest. Will the media be covering today's U.S. Senate hearings on the foreclosures of elderly homeowners or the President's proposed budget for Veteran's affairs with the same breathless intensity? Try to find it in your morning newspaper or the evening news tonight.

While I am the last person to say that there aren't people on Capitol Hill who are hoping to use this story for political gain, the fact is that without the media, there would be no story. Rather than criticizing Congress for holding hearings on this issue, I think a fairer question to debate is whether the media has more important news to cover.

Obama Candidacy Brings State Legislatures into Presidential Spotlight

by Karl Kurtz

It's not often that arcane matters of state legislative organization and procedure enter the realm of presidential politics, but thanks to Sen. Barack Obama's relatively recent service in the Illinois Senate, it has happened twice in recent weeks.

Over on Governing's 13th Floor, Josh Goodman writes in "Now That's Harsh" about Sen. Hillary Clinton scoffing last week that Sen. Obama had been "a part-time legislator" in Illinois.  After commenting on the oddity of this charge for a legislator from a state that we normally count as "full-time" (it's a relative term--see "What Happened to the 'Citizen' in the 'Citizen Legislature?'"), Josh concludes:

It seems slightly surreal to me that part-time state legislatures are a presidential campaign issue, even a minor one. If Obama responds by praising the tradition of part-time citizen lawmakers and Clinton fires back that full-time professional legislatures are essential given the complexity of contemporary state policy and the need to check the power of other branches of government, I'll know I'm dreaming.

I couldn't agree with Josh more.  But I am also tempted to add this thought: Isn't any member of Congress who spends several years running for President being a part-time legislator?

And then in Monday night's Democratic debate in South Carolina, John Edwards asked Obama to explain why he had voted "present" 100 times while serving in the Illinois Senate.  The public may have started yawning at this point in the debate, but in The Thicket, the land of legislative junkies, we got excited.  Obama responded (like a legislative junkie) that these votes were tactical moves expressing concern about the contents of a bill without actually voting against it:

This evening NPR ran a good piece quoting our friends Rich Miller at thecapitolfaxblog and Chris Mooney of the University of Illinois at Springfield about how voting "present" is used in Illinois. For the most part they supported Obama's version of the story.  [January 25 update: Daniel Vock in Stateline.org also talked to Illinois legislators of both parties about this topic who also backed Obama's statements.]

The charge has also generated a number of media calls to NCSL about other states besides Illinois that allow the practice of voting present.  My colleague, Natalie O'Donnell, has been researching this question.  So far she has come up with half a dozen legislative chambers that allow voting "present".  Curiously, the Illinois Senate is not one of them, because the practice is not in the written rules of that body.  It's a matter of custom and practice, say the legislative staffers she has talked to about this.

The chambers that allow voting "present" (other than for reasons of a conflict of interest) include the Colorado Senate (rule 17), the Delaware House (rule 26) and Senate (rule 11), the Massachusetts House (rule 52), Missouri House (rule 23) and the Texas Senate (rule 6.16).  We're still checking and will update this list if we discover more.

By the way, with the withdrawal of the Toms--Tancredo, Thompson (Tommy) and Vilsack--from the presidential race, we're down to only three candidates for President who previously served in state legislatures.  If you can't name them, check out our quiz on this subject a year ago.

REAL ID Without Real Debate

by Matt Sundeen

On January 11, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released the long-awaited final regulations for implementing new federal standards for state-issued driver's licenses found in the infamous REAL ID Act of 2005.  Many of the negative reactions to REAL ID, both before and after the event, focused on the enormous cost burden for states and the perceived erosion of privacy caused by the new provisions.   Many people were also concerned about the lack of process when Congress adopted the bill in the first place.  And now, the rule-making process may exacerbate this process problem by not giving state legislatures enough time to deliberate on the issue.

Last summer, I spoke about the federal REAL ID Act before the New Mexico Legislature's interim transportation study committee.  After my 20 minute presentation, the next speaker, Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, began his remarks to the legislators by saying, "Congratulations.  You have now spent more time debating REAL ID than Congress did."

Jim wasn't joking, and he was right on point.  The REAL ID Act is a big deal.  It replaced 99 years worth of state driver's license work with new federal standards.  Such a major piece of legislation should have been carefully vetted through a legislative process that included public hearings, public debate and negotiation among members of Congress. 

Instead, REAL ID was attached as an amendment to a must-pass war spending and tsunami relief bill in 2005 and moved through Congress after no hearings and no public deliberation.  It terminated a federal "negotiated rulemaking" process, passed by Congress in 2004, that had brought together numerous state and federal stakeholders to develop the best strategy for securing driver's licenses.  REAL ID also effectively ended many state driver's license security improvement efforts as state legislators and motor vehicle administrators waited for final REAL ID regulations.

[Read about how the federal regs affect state legislative deliberation after the jump.]

Duck a Vote, Lose Your Pay

by Jan Goehring

If legislators miss a vote in Arizona they will lose pay as proposed in House Bill 2157 introduced by Representative Jerry Weiers. Unless excused, a member who fails to vote on even one bill will forfeit the equivalent of one day's legislative pay.

"We're elected to represent our constituents," Representative Weiers said. "In my opinion, the only representation that truly makes a difference is our vote," as reported by the Arizona Daily Star. The article goes on to say that some members are skeptical of the idea. There  are reasons that legislators are not on the floor sometimes.

NCSL is not aware of any similar legislation in other states.   

In What Month is the Most Legislation Passed?

by Karl Kurtz

The number of bills enacted by state legislatures varies widely from state to state.  In 2007 legislative sessions, for example, Wisconsin, Alaska and Ohio passed less than 80 bills each, while Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas enacted more than 1,600 laws apiece.

I have often looked at this variation in enactments from state to state and year to year to see what explains it.   It turns out that this statistic is highly idiosyncratic to each state depending on constitutions, rules and traditions.  It depends on such things as whether a state has bill carryover from year to year (Wisconsin, which enacted only 44 bills in 2007 will probably pass more than 400 in the second year of the biennium in 2008), the strictness of rules regarding single subjects in bills, how resolutions (as opposed to bills) are treated, or whether the state is required to pass laws for individual local governments.

But never before have I looked at enactments month by month.  Thanks to some data recently acquired from State Net, we can now answer the trivia question, In what month is the most legislation enacted?  Without looking at the data, I would have guessed that that month would be April or May, since more states adjourn in those two months (10 each) than in any other month.

Looking at the chart to the left (click to expand) April does turn out to be the month with the largest number of enactments in 2006--the second year of a biennium, but in 2007 June, a month in which only four states adjourned, had the highest number of enactments.  Drilling down to individual state data in Download enactments_2007.xls, Texas and Oregon, two states that usually meet every other year and adjourn in June, account for a large portion of the June flood of legislation.  Texas passed 1,269 bills in June 2007, and Oregon approved 525.  Tennessee, Nevada and Maine also enacted large amounts of legislation that month.

Similarly detailed data for 2006 are available in Download enactments_2006.xls.  In the second year of a biennium (the even-numbered year), there are usually six fewer states (barring special sessions) in session, and many states have somewhat shorter sessions than in the odd-numbered years.  This results in fewer total enactments across the country (18,740 in 2006 compared to 24,240 in 2007), with April being the highwater mark, followed by June and May.

Texas Ruling Prevents House from Removing its Speaker

by Karl Kurtz

Last Friday evening, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an interesting opinion saying that the speaker of the house is a "state officer" with a fixed term of two years and cannot be removed from the chair by the members of the legislature.  By Texas Constitution and statute, state officers can be removed from office only by a vote of impeachment in the house and trial and conviction in the senate.  Like any other member of the house, though, the attorney general said that the speaker can be expelled from the body by a vote of two-thirds of the membership.

The attorney general issued the opinion in response to a request from Representatives Jim Keffer and Bryan Cook who had attempted to oust their fellow Republican Tom Craddick from the speakership last May.  Speaker Craddick had blocked this move by ruling them out of order for the reasons that were ultimately supported by Attorney General Abbott.

The attorney general qualified his finding by saying that the Constitution does not specify that the speaker is a state officer, nor that the speaker's term of office is fixed, but that in his opinion, based on court precedents from the 19th and 20th centuries, the Texas Supreme Court was "likely" to rule in this fashion.  The attorney general refused to rule on another question that was posed as to whether the speaker has the right to deny recognition of members for motions, saying that he did not want to rule on matters of internal house rules.

Speaker Craddick hailed the decision, while his opponents decried it, as described in The Dallas Morning News story on the subject.

This opinion, which seems unusual in the context of what we know of other states' procedures, appears to be peculiar to Texas law.  Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure, the most commonly used authority on legislative procedure in the states, specifically states:

Sec. 581. Removal of Presiding Officer

1. A presiding officer who has been elected by the house may be removed by the house upon a majoirty vote of all the members elected, and a new presiding officer pro tempore elected and qualified.
2. When there is no fixed term of office, an officer holds office at the pleasure of the body or until a successor is elected and qualified.

Mason's Manual, however, is subordinate to any state's constitution, statutes and internal legislative rules of procedure.  The attorney general's opinion doesn't mention Mason's.

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.

Under Review: The Role of the Legislature

by Gene Rose

Candidates often say they run for the state legislature so they can make a difference. After being elected though, they quickly find out that events shape agendas for them and they must take positions on issues they never contemplated.

Take, for example, the headline "NFL takes cable fight to Texas lawmakers" in the Houston Chronicle today. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones headed up a star-studded panel testifying to the Texas House Committee on Regulated Industries because of a spat between cable companies and the football league's NFL Network.

House Chairman Phil King says its a brand new issue for the Texas legislature, but it's one that has played out in other cities where the NFL has been broadcasting Thursday night games on its own network. (The debate loomed large in Green Bay recently.) The league has a vested interest in getting the games in as many households as possible and the cable networks want to be able to charge a premium.

King wonders if it is even an issue the legislature should get involved with. He is quoted in the article, "Assuming we do, and I'm not sure that we do, from a policy perspective should the state intervene in programming issues?"

Jones summed up why he thought the legislature should be involved. "This thing does have the interest of hundreds of thousands of your constituents."

More on Bloggers' Press Credentials

by Karl Kurtz

Jill Miller Zimon has written "Beyond the wonks: access to Ohio's legislature" in her blog, Writes Like She Talks (a clever name, except that her writing belies the title--either that or she talks well), about how the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association controls media credentials for the Ohio General Assembly.  Thus far, no bloggers have been credentialed in the Ohio legislature. 

In her post (which also appears in a Cleveland Plain Dealer blog) she has included the language of the Ohio Senate rules that gives that control to the incumbent reporters.  These rules say in part:

...[T]he Ohio Legislative Correspondents’ Association...shall see that the privileges of the floor be granted to representatives of the press association serving newspapers of general circulation, bona fide correspondents of reputable standing in their profession who represent newspapers of general circulation or magazines, or representatives of daily legislative information services of known standing and integrity, or their affiliates; organized for that one purpose and not controlled by or connected with an association, firm, corporation, or individual representing any trade, profession, or other commercial enterprise, and which have been in continuous and bona fide operation for such a period of years immediately prior to the date of making application for floor privileges as will have made possible the establishment of a reputation for honesty and integrity....

Whew, that's quite a mouthful--and quite a mountain for bloggers to climb, if they want to obtain press credentials!  Jill says that she plans to challenge the rule by seeking credentials for herself in the future.

Allowing the correspondents' association to manage press credentials is a classic approach to occupational licensing--let the incumbents control entry to the profession.  I've never paid much attention to the subject of press credentials in legislatures. When I looked this subject up in Inside the Legislative Process, I found that it's a fairly common practice: press associations determine accreditation of reporters in 27 of the 99 state legislative chambers. 

As the saga of bloggers' press credentials unfolds, it will be interesting to see if bloggers are less likely to get press credentials in chambers where the press associations are responsible for accreditation than from others (presiding officers, rules committees or appropriate staff offices) who perform this task.

We have written about the topic of bloggers' press credentials before in The Thicket in "Bloggers Get Press Credentials" and "A Victory for Bloggers."  In a poll that we posted on this subject, three-quarters of the respondents said that they believed that bloggers should be given press credentials, if they meet certain specified criteria.

Do any legislative junkies have recent updates to offer to these stories?

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.

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.

Poll Results: Confidentiality of Bill Drafts

Our poll, "Do you think that legislators should have the right to share bill drafts (before they are introduced) with some members of the public but not with others?", which was inspired by Bruce Feustel's post, "A Separation of Powers Victory in Wisconsin," drew 36 responses.  In a vote that was closer than we would have expected in a blog whose readers are presumably favorably disposed to the legislative branch, 21 (58%) responded yes and 15 (42%) said no.

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.

A Separation of Powers Victory in Wisconsin

by Bruce Feustel

The Wisconsin Attorney General recently challenged the state legislature’s bill drafting procedure. Citing the state’s public records law, the Attorney General sued two legislators, attempting to require them to provide copies of their unintroduced bill drafts that they had allegedly shared with special interest groups but not the general public. Wisconsin is similar to most states in that legislators are free to share bill drafts, prior to introduction, with whomever they want to in order to get feedback on the bill from a political, legal or practical standpoint.

On June 27, a Wisconsin Circuit Judge ruled for the defendant legislators, saying the bill drafts clearly fell within an exception to the public records law. Further, the bill drafting procedure was viewed “to be at the very core of the legislature’s essential role in government and appears to be beyond the proper jurisdiction of this court.”

[Story update]: Advocates of legislative independence and the separation of powers can celebrate this victory, but an AP story (or is it an editorial?) by Ryan J. Foley has a different take on it, leading with these two paragraphs:

Wisconsin lawmakers are winning a legal battle to limit your knowledge about what they're working on - and they're making you pay $400,000 for it.

Lawmakers have racked up $398,000 in legal fees so far to defend their ability to keep drafts of bills hidden from the public, officials said Thursday. The mounting bills are being paid by taxpayers.

The story goes on to quote legislators who point out that it was the Attorney General who brought the suit in the first place and caused the Legislature to have to defend itself.

[Bruce Feustel is a senior fellow in NCSL's Legislative Management program.]

Electronic Cosponsorship System a Hit in N.C.; Turcotte Moves North

by Karl Kurtz

Gerry Cohen reports in his blog, NC Bill Drafting, that a new online system for legislators to sign on as cosponsors on bills was a great success in the North Carolina House of Representatives.  The system was used over 4,000 times to record cosponsors.  Gerry and House clerk Denise Weeks admit that they're not the first state to do this and that they borrowed some ideas from Florida as they developed their own system.

We were also pleased to note in another posting in Gerry's blog that well-known former NCSL staff chair John Turcotte, who previously headed up legislative program evaluation shops in Mississippi and Florida, has recently been named to direct a new Legislative Program Evaluation Division in North Carolina.

Changes in the Louisiana Legislature

by Karl Kurtz

The Louisiana Legislature, especially the House of Representatives, is undergoing rapid change in at least two areas. First, 12-year term limits in each chamber, enacted in 1995, are taking full effect for the first time in the elections of 2007.   Of the 105 members of the Louisiana House, only 52 are running for reelection, so at least 53 members will be freshmen after the 2007 elections.

Second, Republicans, long a small minority in the legislature, have been making significant gains in the last decade and expect to make more in the 2007 elections, turning a traditionally one-party legislature into a competitive two-party system.  The current party lineup in the House is 61 Democrats, 43 Republicans and one independent.  Since passage of many bills (changes to expenditure limits, taxes, general obligation bonds) require a two-thirds majority (70 votes), Republicans now have the power to block action and are using it.

The Louisiana Legislature has Long (pun intended) been dominated by one of the most powerful governors in the country.  They have operated under what is called "the cult of the governor."  Among other things, this means that governors have historically "anointed" the speaker and the senate president, even when the governor was of the opposite party of the majority in the legislature, and then consulted with the presiding officers on the appointment of committee chairs.

Now, at least some Louisiana legislators believe that these changes may offer the opportunity for the legislature to assert itself and to balance the power of the executive more effectively.

In anticipation of these challenges, the Louisiana House set up a Special Committee on Preparing for Term Limits.  At the request of this committee, NCSL this past weekend put together a workshop for a bipartisan group of six potential legislative leaders to discuss how the House can most effectively adapt its procedures and traditions.  We brought in a group of current and former legislators from other states to brainstorm and consult with the Louisiana team.

Given the off the record nature of this workshop, I can't report in detail on the discussions that were held.  However, I think I can safely share a few nuggets of legislative lore and procedure that came out of the discussion:

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.

What Can Be Said When Heads Are Bowed?

by Gene Rose

Are there limits on what can be said when legislators are asked to bow their heads in prayer? An article today in the Columbus Dispatch raises this question. Jim Siegel reports about an incident that prompted Ohio House Clerk Laura Clemens to issue a memo to all members reminding them of guidelines and, "more specifically the increasing tendency of our guest invocators to use language referring to a particular deity," she wrote.

Prayers, and the Pledge of Allegiance, are traditional ceremonies legislatures use to start their sessions daily, but it's a rare day when the execution of these ceremonies are questioned. The article points out a concern, not only with "referring to a particular deity," but also having ministers comment, in the prayer, about legislation before the legislature.

You can watch a video of the prayer that prompted this discourse in Columbus. The