The Sometime Governments Revisited

by Karl Kurtz

In an article in the July issue of State Legislatures magazine, "What Legislatures Need Now," Brian Weberg and I address the institutional challenges facing state legislatures today. In the article we compare the contemporary problems of legislatures to the prescriptions for change offered 40 years ago by an influential book, "The Sometime Governments," published by the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures. The book is long out of print and has no online presence. Here's what we say about it in the article:

The Citizens Conference on State Legislatures was a private nonprofit organization formed in 1964 to improve state legislatures. With a major grant from the Ford Foundation, it launched a 50-state study of legislatures in 1969 and published “The Sometime Governments: An Evaluation of the 50 American Legislatures” in 1971.

Based on criteria for “functional, accountable, informed, independent and representative” legislatures, the book evaluated state legislatures and ranked them from one to 50. The rankings caused a considerable stir among state lawmakers, and were an effective call to action: No state wanted to remain ranked in the bottom half of the list or to be below its neighbors or rivals.

The book contained both general recommendations for all states and specific recommendations for each legislature. The recommendations focused on such things as the length of the session, number of members, committee organization, facilities and staffing. They were highly prescriptive and specific.

Unfortunately, there wasn't room in the magazine article for excerpts from the book's 73 general recommendations to the states. Here are nine samples, using the numbering from the book:

1. Reduce the overall size of the legislature…. Although size reduction in a legislative body is extremely difficult to achieve, it has been done in some states … and needs to be accomplished in others …. There should be 100 or fewer members in the lower House. The combined size of both houses should be between 100 and 150.

2. Remove constitutional restrictions on session and interim time. The legislature should have authority to function throughout a two-year term; ideally, this authority should provide a flexible biennial session pattern that permits the legislature to convene, recess, and reconvene as it deems desirable….

8. Reduce the number of committees. Ideally, there should be from 10 to 15 committees in each house, parallel in jurisdiction….

14. Act on all bills. Committees should be required to report on all bills assigned to them, recommending for passage by the parent body those bills which enjoy the support of a majority of the members of the committee and killing all others.

27. Increase legislative compensation. No legislative salaries in the United States should be below the $10,000-a-year level. Compensation of legislators in the larger states should range from $20,000 to $30,000 a year.

43. Strengthen minority party role. Internal accountability as well as the capacity of all legislators to represent their constituents effectively depends upon the opportunity of minority party members to have an effective part in internal legislative affairs.

54. Strengthen staff support. Legislative research, fiscal, legal, and planning agencies should be adequately staffed to full utility and at suitable salary levels for professional qualification. Professional staffing should be at a level to enable the legislature to conduct continuous, year-round examination of state resources and expenditures as well as program review and evaluation of state agencies. This staff should also prepare fiscal notes accompanying all appropriation bills, evaluating their fiscal impact over the short and long term. Staff agencies should be upgraded to the level at which competent and timely service can be provided to every member of the legislature.

60. Individual offices. Provide private, individual offices for every member of the legislature, with nearby space for their assistants. The quality and amount of office space should not differ substantially between majority and minority party members.

73. Establish citizens commission on the legislature. As a means of cultivating generalized support for the legislature as an institution, a citizens commission should be created, by joint resolution of the legislature, to study its operations, facilities and needs and to recommend improvements….

Some of these recommendations of "The Sometime Governments" seem old hat today because so many legislatures acted on them. Many recommendations regarding staffing, transparency and committee procedures, for example, have been widely adopted and are taken for granted today. 

Other standards in "The Sometime Governments" seem quaint:

• What’s so magical (and who cares) about the prescription to have “10 to 15 committees in each house?” Sure, there's still such a thing as having too many committees, and few people would advocate going back to the 1930s when 17 state houses of representatives had 40 or more committees. But "10 to 15" seems way too narrow and prescriptive.
• In an age when population growth has caused the ratio between citizens and legislators to soar—and therefore place pressure on the ability of legislators to serve such large constituencies—"The Sometime Governments" recommendation to reduce the number of members in the legislature to improve efficiency seems questionable at best. As many people are talking about growing the size of legislatures today as shrinking them.
• The legislative salary recommendations of "$20,000 to $30,000 a year" in larger states computes to $112,000-$169,000 in today’s dollars. No state provides a salary of more than $100,000 a year to their legislators. Those levels of salary are out of reach under the prevailing attitudes of cynicism and distrust toward politics.

Still other recommendations, like providing members with district offices and removing all constitutional restrictions on the length of sessions, have been adopted by some states but rejected by the majority of them.

Nonetheless, the recommendations of "The Sometime Governments" make interesting reading. Used copies are available online at alibris.com and other used book sites. Most legislative libraries and large depository libraries are likely to have copies.

See also "Bad Social Science but Good Politics."

Comments

[Wendy Madsen]

Hi Karl,

Thanks for this information. I enjoyed the State Legislatures article and will reprint it for our new leadership training. I found used copies of The Sometime Goverments on the Web. Anywhere pristine copies could possibly be found? - Wendy Madsen, Wyoming Legislative Service Office

[Karl Kurtz]

I don't know of any source of new copies of "The Sometime Governments," Wendy. Online used book sellers are the best bet for finding copies of this out of print book.

[Gerry Cohen]

Back in 1971 when I was a political science graduate student at Chapel Hill, I started hanging around the NC General Assembly. I was fascinated by the Sometime Governments, a scathing attack on all 50 state legislatures through the eyes of reformers. (Of course, not everyone's definition of reform is the same, and what seemed like a reform in 1971 may seem antiquated or even counterproductive now.) The book suggested 23 specific reforms for North Carolina.

I finally got a job at the General Assembly in 1977, and eventually got around to writing my Masters Thesis in 2004, tracking the implementation of those reforms in North Carolina from 1971-2004. (11 implemented, 10 partially implemented) Here's a link to my theses:

http://ncbilldrafting.wordpress.com/files/2007/07/2004mathesis.doc

[Wendy Madsen]

Thanks, Karl. I found a used copy in good condition online and I also found one in our office! - Wendy

[Karl Kurtz]

Thanks for posting the item about your thesis, Gerry. I had meant to include that in my original posting but forgot to do so.

[Karl Kurtz]

I received the following comment from Rep. John Patton, Wyoming. Rep. Patton served in the Wyoming Senate in the 1960s but left that position to work for the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures on implementation of the recommendations in "The Sometime Governments" in the early 1970s. He returned to the Wyoming Legislature in 2009 and represents the 29th district.

"The history of events in the 60’s and ‘70’s is not difficult to understand, but to share a perspective may be helpful. A large part of the success of "The Sometime Governments” was due to the public’s attitude of tolerance, if not support, toward state government and the effort of several nationally respected individuals, organizations and academics that joined in shaping the public’s sentiments.

"The early work on “Strengthening the States” by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University provided state-specific evaluations of several legislatures in booklet form. Those efforts began in the early 60’s. During that period, the Eagleton institute also selected two legislators from each of the 50 states for “fellowships." Those selected for the fellowships were not necessarily current leaders but were thought to be potential leaders of legislative reform. The fellows attended a week long discussion on the state of the state legislatures, the possible improvements, and its relative importance. I was fortunate to be one of those chosen and I still have several of the “Strengthening the States” books that aided our efforts of change in my state legislature.

"'The Sometime Governments' built on this other work. As a national attention-getter they incorporated state specific data into a mathematically quantitative form for comparative uses. The legislative evaluation study used the premise that every state legislature should be expected to be “functional, accountable, independent, informed and representative”. However, the first five chapters, pages one through 141, explained the importance of the reasoning of the “FAIIR evaluation” for national as well as citizens expectations."

"Wow, the audacity to even think of a ranking system! But the shock worked...."

John's comment about public support for government in the 1970s touches on a key issue as we consider the possibility of rekindling a legislative strengthening movement today. Is public cynicism and distrust of government so toxic today that it is not possible to launch a legislative improvement program? Legislative reform does not occur in a vacuum. Committed legislative leaders are the most important element in legislative strengthening, but they require substantial public support to get things done. One of the successes of the Citizens Conference was the creation of state citizens commissions on the legislature (see #73 in the posting)that provided "blue ribbon" stimulus and support to legislative leaders who were willing to take on the difficult tasks of legislative reform.