Strong Staff, Strong Legislatures: A New Prescription for Staff Innovation

by Karl Kurtz

At the Senior Leadership Management Seminar, a group of 21 staff leaders from 20 states was challenged to develop a new model for legislative strengthening in the 21st century in a session entitled, Strong Staff, Strong Legislatures: A New Prescription for Staff Innovation. 

The session began with the premise that the old prescriptions for legislative staff, first framed in the landmark 1971 report, The Sometime Governments: A Critical Study of the 50 American State Legislatures, are outdated and irrelevant.  That report emphasized building the capacity of legislatures by adding staff—in research, legal and fiscal agencies, in leadership offices and for individual members.  The group agreed that most of those reforms have either been accomplished or, in the case of providing staff to individual members, about half the states have made deliberate decisions that they’re not going to take that step, in effect that they’re happy with the citizen legislature model and that this staffing pattern doesn’t fit their model.  Since that 1971 study, we have achieved a new equilibrium in legislative staffing.

If the Sometimes Government model is no longer relevant, they were asked, what are the new prescriptions for strong staff/strong legislature?  What should be the title of a new 21st century book on strengthening legislatures?  The seminar participants divided into three groups and developed their own answers to these questions.  Reports on each group’s discussions appear in subsequent postings from this seminar.

To set the stage for developing prescriptions, the group brainstormed “the key driving forces in today’s environment or on the horizon that staff must respond to in order to maintain and foster a strong staff/strong legislature relationship for the next 20 years.”  They agreed on the following five driving forces:

1. Demographic change—The first wave of staff hired in the 70s in response to the capacity-building recommendations are now eligible for retirement.  There is an impending generational change of staff. There are significant differences in generational values and styles of those who will succeed them.  The younger generations today, many of whom are more drawn to partisan than nonpartisan staffing positions, seem less likely to devote their careers to the legislature.
2. Technology—As a result of the information explosion, members have many more sources of information other than staff.  How does staff stay relevant?  With greater access to work products, how does staff maintain confidentiality?  Real-time, interactive communication among the public, lobbyists, members and staff has implications for the institution.
3. Increasing partisanship—The greater intensity of conflict within the legislature along partisan lines has implications for the roles and responsibilities of partisan and nonpartisan staff.  Nonpartisan staff especially find it more difficult to work and maintain their relevance in an intense partisan atmosphere.
4. Public cynicism--Distrust toward government and the legislature makes it a difficult place to work effectively.  This atmosphere leads to increased use of the initiative (in the states that have it) and a weakening of the legislature.
5. Short-term focus of the legislature--Election campaigns never end.  Members’ time horizons are the next election, not the long-term impact of policy decisions.  Term limits exacerbate the problem, particularly with legislative leaders who are likely to serve in top positions only two years.

Based on this assessment of driving forces, each of the three groups developed their own sets of prescriptions, which are reported in subsequent posts.

Comments

[Tim Rice]

Our working group indentified demographic change as the major driving force in addressing legislative staffing. I realize that you are summarizing in your description, so I'd like to flesh that issue out a bit per our deliberations (and invite other teammates to chime in):

- A significant number of current legislative staff (particularly non-partisan staff) are rapidly approaching retirement age. That will leave a huge whole in numbers and in institutional knowledge.

- The boomer generation can be defined as a selfish one, and we considered that this quality has contributed to the increased partisanship in American politics, as each one has been interested in what the legislator or the government or whatever can do for them, jettisoning more and more the possibility of compromise.

- There are far fewer members of the post-boomer generations available to fill their jobs as they leave, meaning there will be far more competition for those workers.

- There are significant differences in values (many of which are positive) between generations which make business-as-usual in legislative staffing very difficult.

- America is becoming more and more diverse ethnically, which has introduced more differences in values and characteristics (again, many of which are positive).

I'm sure I've left out some perspectives, but that should paint the picture. America and its workforce are changing, and any business, including the legislature, must adapt to that reality.