The Thicket at State Legislatures

New Hampshire Gives Young People a Voice

by Jan Goehring

Can young people really have a say in government? They will in New Hampshire through a new law that took effect this month. The law creates the Legislative Youth Advisory Council to examine issues of concern to youth. The 21-member council will consist of one member of the House of Representatives and one member from the Senate and 19 youth aged 15 - 22 years old.

Issues to be considered include education, strategies to increase youth participation in government, substance abuse, poverty, homelessness and youth access to state and local services. The council will advise the legislature on these issues and submit a yearly report with recommendations for future legislation.

The council is modeled after the Maine Legislative Youth Advisory Council (LYAC) created in 2002. In its first year, LYAC focused on substance abuse. It then expanded its scope to take a look at education, employment and foster care issues. The council also reaches out to young people in the state by holding school-based forums on issues that are important to youth. Legislators from the area participate in the forums.

Washington also established a Legislative Youth Advisory Council last year. Its mission is to "strive to be a voice for youth, examine issues of importance to Washington youth and vocalize concerns to legislators."

Coping with Term Limits

by Karl Kurtz

The release of our study on the effects of term limits, Coping with Term Limits, two weeks ago has drawn considerable press, including an editorial in today's USA Today, Let Voters Decide.  Most of the coverage has been straightforward and fair, largely based on our press release and occasionally including an opposing point of view or a comment by a term limits expert in the state where the story appeared.

Two of the reports on the study--the opposing point of view in USA Today by Paul Farago, spokesman for Restoring Oregon's Term Limits, and by Tennessee blogger billhobbs.com--though, have accused NCSL of being "a trade association for incumbents" (Farago) and therefore unreliable on this subject and of overstating our case that term limits have not resulted in greater representation for minorities and women.  I want to clarify the record on both of these points.

Our purpose in conducting the study was not to argue for or against term limits but rather to assess their impact on legislatures more than a decade after they first appeared on the scene.  Our bias, shared by our partner organizations on the Joint Project on Term Limits--the Council of State Governments and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation--is in favor of strong legislatures and an effective system of representative democracy.  If we had found that term limits strengthened legislatures or made them more effective, we would have reported such facts.  Moreover, an unbiased group of a dozen academic political scientists helped us design and conduct the project.

On the subject of the representation of women and minorities it is important to note that  Coping with Term Limits is a 33-page summary of a much longer book, Institutional Change in American Politics: The Case of Term Limits, to be published in 2007 by the University of Michigan Press, and our press release was a 2-page summary of the summary.  As we condensed this information, it was sometimes difficult to impart the subtlety, nuance and appropriate qualifications of our findings that are contained in the full-length manuscript.

The original chapter on the composition of legislatures covering the subject of women and minorities was written by political scientists Gary Moncrief of Boise State University, Lynda Powell of the University of Rochester, and Tim Storey of NCSL.  In an effort to clarify our findings and to provide other source material that readers can go to, excerpts from their chapter, "Composition of Legislatures," in the full-length book are included below the jump.

It may not be Rocket Science, but it's Still Hard Work

by Karl Kurtz

I loved this description of the complexity of legislative work in an editorial in the Kennebec Journal about the value of legislators attending  NCSL's annual meeting:

This is what lawmakers do when they get to the State Legislature:

They sponsor, write and deliberate over bills that are written in language that only lawyers understand. They consider matters of enormous importance, with which many of them are unfamiliar: health insurance; federal educational mandates; workmen's compensation; takings law; the appropriate way for the criminal justice system to handle sexual predators; the chemistry of clean water; how much oxygen fish need to thrive; the effect of global competition on Maine's remaining natural resource industries; how tall windmills should be to avoid killing birds; what training chiropractors should have if they want to call themselves acupuncturists.

Maine's part-time, non-professional legislators deal with a mind-boggling array of complex issues, for which many of them have little training. From considering obscure issues of criminal law to mastering -- or not -- the byzantine complexity of the state's budget, they work hard, get paid little for their efforts and, because of term limits, a new crop of them is always being forced to learn the issues and parliamentary maneuvers necessary to be an effective legislator.

"Maine's oldest newspaper" gets it!

Online Constituent Communication Boosts Approval Ratings

by Karl Kurtz

The Congressional Management Foundation reports that approval ratings for Members of Congress who have participated in online focus groups with their constituents on immigration policy issues have increased dramatically as a result of this communication.  Experimenting with 35-minute real-time sessions between members and small groups (15-35) of constituents, the foundation has documented not only higher approval scores and likelihood of voters to support the member for reelection but also that the member was able to convince 30 percent of the constituents who participated to change their minds.  "Most constituents are enthusiastic about the opportunity to have their voices heard and to better understand their Member’s position," says the foundation.

To be sure, a legislator would have to gather a lot of 15-35 person groups in order to make much of a dent in the public's belief that lawmakers don't care about what the average person thinks, but, like many such efforts at building public trust, that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

Minimum Wage for Ex-Legislators?

by Karl Kurtz

In an AP story appearing in the Contra Costa Times, Bipartisan Fever Grips Legislature, on how California Democratic legislative leaders have reached a  deal with Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to raise the minimum wage to $8 an hour, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata says, "The cynics have wondered why we were doing this in an election year, and I remind people that [Speaker] Fabian [Nunez] and I are termed out in two years, and $8 an hour sounds pretty damned good to us."

Liberty Bells in State Capitols

by Karl Kurtz

When visiting state capitols I have occasionally noticed the presence of a replica of the liberty bell somewhere in the building or on the capitol grounds.  I have never taken particular note of them nor wondered where they came from.  Now, through postings on a listserv for capitol tour guides (yes, there is such a thing and they do have interesting exchanges!) maintained by NCSL, I have learned an interesting bit of state capital trivia.

Christal Benevides from New Mexico Legislative Information and Tours calls our attention to a Web site for the Liberty Bell Museum that explains that in 1950 the U.S. Treasury Department cast 55 replicas of the bell and sent them to each of the states and territories.  It was part of a savings bond drive called "Save Your Independence."  The Web site sports a table that shows the location of the bell in each of the states.

In response to Christal's posting, Kerry Chartkoff at the Michigan State Capitol tells the following story of the history of the Liberty Bell in Lansing:

Annual Meeting Odds and Ends

by Karl Kurtz

Notes from our NCSL Annual Meeting in Nashville last week...

We may have been too busy to post to The Thicket from Nashville, but for the first time that we know of, other bloggers covered our Annual Meeting.  One of them, Music City Oracle, pointed out, quite rightly in most instances, that the bloggers did a better job of reporting on the meeting than the local paper, The Tennessean.  Bill Hobbs.com live-blogged from a session on E-Legislatures: Technology and the Policymaking Process, and had a lot to say about our term limits report (more on that in another post).  Josh Goodman was there from Governing magazine and reported in the 13th Floor.

For a rundown on NCSL policy positions enacted by legislators at the meeting see State Lawmakers Take Stand Against Federal Preemption.

One of the biggest hits as a speaker at the meeting was University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers basketball coach, Pat Summitt, the winningest coach ever in college basketball.  Her messages about the tricks of building a championship team in the gym seemed remarkably applicable to the work of legislative staff in building high performing teams in state capitols.  She concluded her remarks by reading a poem, Love Me, by Dan Baker.  After the session a number of people asked for a copy of the poem.  Here it is, after the jump.

Alaska Upheaval

by Tim Storey

Alaska political insiders knew incumbent governor Frank Murkowski was in electoral trouble, and Republican primary voters proved them right on Tuesday by tossing him out in a big way.  The incumbent received only 19% of the GOP vote placing third in the race for the Republican nomination won by former Wasilla mayor Sarah Palin.  Palin will face Democratic nominee Tony Knowles in November who won his primary by a wide margin.  Voter anger over the ongoing debate about a proposed gas pipeline from Alaska's north slope did Murkowski in.

It appears from the preliminary returns that a few Republican legislative incumbents also lost primaries including the Chair of the Alaska Legislative Council and former House Speaker, Pete Kott, who was seeking re-election to Alaska House district 17.  In House district 1, the co-chair of the Alaska House Transportation Committee, Representative Jim Elkins lost his bid for re-nomination.  And under the proverbial heading of "every vote counts," preliminary results show incumbent House member Kurt Olson losing his district 33 seat by a mere 2 votes.  Can you say "recount?" 

Only one incumbent Democrat trails in Alaska primary voting, but that is in a race where only 45% of precincts have reported--incumbent Carl Moses in district 37.

Tuesday was also primary day in Wyoming, but it does not appear any incumbents lost, and there were no real surprises in legislative races. 

Oklahoma held runoffs on Tuesday with the key race being the battle for Lieutenant Governor.  House Speaker Todd Hiett won the GOP nomination and House Democratic Leader Jari Askins won the Democratic nod.  If the Oklahoma Senate were to wind up tied 24-24 after the election (not a far-fetched scenario), the Lt. Governor would be the tie-breaking vote and determine which party controls the Senate. 

We're Back...With Bad News for Incumbents

by Karl Kurtz

We're back from NCSL's highly successful Annual Meeting in Nashville last week.  There were some 6,200 state legislators, legislative staff, lobbyists, media, executive branch officials, families and interested others present at the event, which was jam-packed with interesting sessions on almost any subject that comes before state legislatures.

From the standpoint of politics, the most interesting session was a plenary that featured Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster/consultant Frank Luntz.  I was struck by a recent finding from a Hart/McInturff NBC/Wall Street Journal poll on a question relating to the upcoming congressional elections.  Here was the question (p. 14): "In this year's election for U.S. Congress, do you feel that your representative deserves to be reelected, or do you think that it is time to give a new person a chance?"

Poll of the Week: August 11, 2006

by Gene Rose

If the movement to get more Americans, especially young people, engaged in government is going to succeed, then creating attractive online content has to be part of the strategy. There's a lot of competition to entertain, but not necessarily educate, students.

Parents, according to a new PTA poll, believe they have a fundamental obligation to help their children learn how to use new media technologies. Failing to do so, they say, will result in their child falling behind in school. This fear crosses all economic classes, but lower-income families are more worried about finding ways to help their child keep up with classmates.

Nearly 93% agreed that media allows a child to learn new and fascinating things, and over half agreed that their child’s media use is just as beneficial as an extracurricular activity. In addition, four out of five worry about overscheduling their children, with more than half confident of their own abilities to handle the pressure. Two out of three parents are happy with the amount of time they are spending with their kids.