The Thicket at State Legislatures

The States and the State of the Union

By Jon Kuhl

Throughout President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, he touched on several policy areas where NCSL has played an active role in advancing the interests of the states. The president also spoke about a number of areas where states have led the way. Below are excerpts from the president’s speech followed by information on how NCSL has been active on the issue and information summarizing state action on the issue.

NCSL is pleased to note that both President Obama and Senator Marco Rubio, who gave the Republican response, are former state legislators. President Obama served in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 until 2004, and Senator Rubio served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000 to 2009. During his last two years in the Florida House, Senator Rubio served as Speaker.

Immigration

Our economy is stronger when we harness the talents and ingenuity of striving, hopeful immigrants.  And right now, leaders from the business, labor, law enforcement, and faith communities all agree that the time has come to pass comprehensive immigration reform. 

Real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my Administration has already made – putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history, and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years. 

Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship – a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally. 

And real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy.

In other words, we know what needs to be done.  As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts.  Now let’s get this done.  Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away.

As a result of the federal government’s inaction on this issue, states have been forced to pick up the tab and responsibility. In the last five years, states have considered thousands of bills related to immigration – over 2,500 in the last two years alone. States have a stake in the outcome of the immigration debate and through NCSL are asking Congress to join with them in supporting comprehensive immigration reform that includes assistance to states for the multitude of services they provide for immigrants.

On Jan. 28, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, referred to as the “gang of eight,” unveiled a four-page “framework” for comprehensive immigration reform legislation, to be introduced in late-March. Since then, NCSL’s Washington office has met with the offices of several of the eight senators and is working to ensure that states are seen as important stakeholders in the process.

High-Quality Preschool

It’s the Message that Matters Most

Telling your state legislator how you feel about a bill might be more effective than filling out a form. 

by Meagan Dorsch

Growing up, my mother used to say, “Just tell me how you feel.” This usually allowed us to explain why we were frustrated, angry, concerned or excited. She might have been onto something.

A recent story in the Florida Current shows that lawmakers and staff respond more to personal stories about how a law will affect constituents, rather than form letters or blanket emails.

Kevin Cate, a governmental public relations and campaign adviser in Florida, surveyed 52 House and Senate aides at the Florida Legislature and asked what “influences their bosses the most.” Cate noted face-to-face visits were cited by more than 99 percent of the staffers, followed by personal letters and personalized emails. It is also interesting to note that phone calls and visits by interest groups both ranked higher in Cate’s study than “visits by lobbyists.”

Four out of five staffers indicated that a personal story about how a bill would affect constituents was the most effective, followed by stories regarding the effect of legislation on a legislator's district.

NCSL has found more than 575 state legislators on Twitter, and Cate noted the power of social and new media. About two-thirds of the legislative staff surveyed in Florida noted that “comments on social media sites” were important, and that lawmakers used Facebook to gauge the public’s opinion online. They also use these sites to gather information. More than half of Florida's legislative staff rated Facebook and Twitter as either "effective" or "very effective."

Cate makes an important note in his study: The message you send is more important than the medium. But does this apply only to Florida's Legislature? The poll below contains some of the top advocacy strategies from Cate's study. Let us know what works best in your state.

What is the best way to communicate with state legislators?

In person

Individual Letter

Comment on Social Media

Email

or View Results

Create your own poll at Flisti.com

Legislators as Lab Rats?

by Karl Kurtz

Yale University political scientists Daniel Butler and David Broockman have recently published an article, "Do Politicians Racially Discriminate against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators." Their research consisted of sending a fictitious e-mail message to approximately 4,800 state legislators with a request for assistance in registering to vote. Some of the messages were sent using an apparently white name (Jake Mueller) and some under a stereotypical black name (DeShawn Jackson).

They found that 61 percent of the legislators responded to the Jake alias and 55 percent to DeShawn--"a statistically significant difference of 5.1 percentage points (p=0.04)" (p. 14). They conclude:

Overall, we find that the putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the legislator's own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias.

It's tempting to quibble with the methodology and findings of this research. For example, while the differences are "statistically significant," is the small difference of 5 percent meaningful? Would the differences have disappeared if the "Jake" and "DeShawn" messages had included home addresses in the legislators' districts? Many legislators receive hundreds of e-mails a day and perform triage on them by responding only to the ones identifiably from their own districts. Certainly the response rates would have increased if it were an identifiable constituent making the request.

But my bigger concerns are the ethical issues of political scientists performing this kind of research.

Writing in a Washington Post blog, Ezra Klein calls this research "simple and elegant." That's one point of view.

I think of it more as treating legislators as lab rats: Performing an experiment by telling them a lie and then measuring how they respond. Ring a bell and see if they salivate.

It's a little bit like the FBI creating a crime and then trying to ensnare public officials in it. Only the political scientists' deception doesn't have an FBI sting's justification of uncovering corruption. The only saving grace is that this study reports only group behavior, not individual responses, so there's no "gotcha." There is, however, a profound disrespect for the work that legislators do, the enormous demands many of them work under, and the idea of public service.

To their credit, the authors address the ethical issues of performing experiments on public officials (pp. 12-14). They defend their research design as meeting a standard for experiments on publlic officials that they ascribe to the eminent political scientist, Robert Putnam: If it's only "slightly deceptive, but innocuous and highly revealing," then it's OK to make work for public officials.

When I asked Alan Rosenthal, an equally noted political scientist, about this, he mused, "How is 'slightly deceptive' a defense for deception? What do you think political scientists or the media would say if a legislator defended his or her misbehavior as 'slightly corrupt, but harmless and profitable?' They would make a joke of an elected official who said this."

Now that I've biased you with my rant on this subject, you can weigh in with your own opinion in this poll:

 

8/25/11 Update: Another study of legislator responsiveness to fictitious constituent requests--this one from South Africa--has drawn further attention to the ethics of experimental academic research. See "Politicians Like Constituents Like Them" in The Monkey Cage and ensuing thoughtful comments about research ethics.

Are Budget Challenges Affecting Public's Satisfaction with State Governments?

by Gene Rose

 The public's satisfaction of state governments dropped sharply from last year, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Fifty percent of the public holds a favorable opinion of state governments, while 44 find them unfavorable, according to citizens polled in July this year. This is sharp decline from the April 2008 survey, when the public held a 59 percent approval of state governments and 37 percent held an unfavorable view.

State fiscal conditions are inferred as a contributor to this sharp change. Using information from NCSL's July survey of state legislative fiscal officers, the research group noted:

"The balance of opinion regarding state governments has turned negative in states with the largest budget gaps – the size of the shortfall relative to the state’s overall budget. In the 12 states facing the largest budget gaps, 58% now have an unfavorable view of their state governments while only 38% have a favorable view. In April 2008, opinion was evenly divided in these states (48% favorable, 47% unfavorable)."

Interestingly, Americans views of the federal government appear to be shifting the other way. While half still hold an unfavorable opinion, 42 percent hold a favorable view. This is an improvement from the April 2008 numbers when only 37 percent were favorable and 58 percent were negative.

Local governments continue to have the best ratings of the three groups, with 60 percent being favorable and 32 percent unfavorable, both numbers down slightly from last year.

Vote for President

by Karl Kurtz

Who is your favorite cartoon character who has run for president? 

In the course of researching the "Pogo (or You or Anyone Else) for President in the News" posting below, I discovered a fascinating Wikipedia article, "List of Fictional Presidential Candidates," which includes more than 50 characters in movies, novels and cartoons who have run for president.  I have picked out the following cartoon characters for you to choose the cartoon character you would most like to be president.

• Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine, who has been running for president every four years since 1956.
• Bill the Cat from the comic strip Bloom County, who ran in 1984 and 1988.
• General Zod, one of the villains in Superman comics who has a campaign web site for president in 2008.
• Howard the Duck, who ran on the All Night Party ticket in 1976.
• Pogo Possum, who ran 1956-80.
• Uncle Duke of Doonesbury, who ran in 2000.

Vote early and vote often:

 

   

Poll Results: Committee Chair Pay...and the Poll Transformed

by Karl Kurtz

Regular readers of The Thicket will have noticed that the same poll regarding special pay for committee chairs has been up at the top of the right column of the page for months--since Feb. 8, to be exact, when Tim Storey posted "Should Committee Chairs Get Paid More?".  The results of that poll showed that The Thicket readers overwhelmingly think that all legislators in a state should receive the same pay.  In response to the question, "Who in the legislature should get more pay?", 304 readers (72 percent) chose "No one--all legislators should be paid the same," 85 (20 percent) said that committee chairs and leaders should receive premium pay, and 34 (8 percent) chose leaders only (not committee chairs).

We have had something of a purist notion about our polls: we want them to relate somehow to a posting.  There were only two things wrong with that concept.  First, we have had difficulty coming up with good poll questions, as witness the long run for the most recent poll (readers have come up to us at meetings and said, "Change the poll for heaven's sake!").  Second, once we post a relevant poll, because its position is static in the right column and the postings move downward as new items appear, the two are soon separated from each other.

Therefore, we have decided to ditch the poll in the right column and instead to embed it in the relevant postings.  Like this:

Poll Results: Watching Legislative Broadcasts

Our poll asking how frequently you watch broadcasts of legislative proceedings, which was based on Pam Greenberg's post, "Is Anybody Watching," was up for about two weeks and drew only 14 responses.  But those who did respond confirmed the legislative junkie nature of our readers: Half of the respondents said that they watch their state's legislative sessions daily.  Two said that they tune in about weekly, and the remaining five said either that they seldom or never watch or that no broad cast is available in their state.

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.

Can You Poll Me Now?

by Gene Rose

With the Iowa caucuses less than a month away, it seems a new poll is released every day. The media can't wait to tell us what we collectively think. It's a much easier story to do than to actually delve into the issues, but that's a topic for another day.

National interest in state legislative races is growing and, consequently, polls are being used more in those races. An interesting story in today's The New York Times, "Cellphones Challenge Poll Sampling," says 16 percent of America's households are cell phone only, up from just 3 percent in 2003.

The rules are different for calling cell phones for poll purposes, the story says, and there are some other ethical, financial and even safety questions that the practice raises.

Since certain populations are more likely to live in land-line free homes, there is some concern on how accurate polling data based on land-line-only calls are. Researchers say the scientific validity of polls are safe for now, but are aware that this could change if the number of homes with cell phones only grows.

The reason most state legislative candidates don't use polls is due to the cost. If pollsters have to start adjusting for land-line-free homes, the cost is likely to go up.

Poll Results: Quiz on Power to Declare War

The Thicket readers have shown that they know their Constitution.  Eighty-three percent of those who responded to the quiz question, Who has the power to declare war?, got it right by answering the Congress.  Fourteen percent said that the President has this power, and two percent each thought that the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of Staff can declare war.  The poll, which was based on the posting, "Can You Pass the Citizenship Test?," was up for almost two months (apologies to regular readers who got bored with it) and drew 178 responses.