The Thicket at State Legislatures

Chafee's Switch Leaves Only Two States with Veto-Proof Legislature and Divided Government

By Karen Shanton

Three states emerged from the 2012 elections with both a veto-proof legislature and divided government (government in which the governorship and upper and lower legislative chambers aren’t all held by the same party). On Thursday, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee cut that number to two. By officially switching allegiances to the Democratic Party, the former Republican-turned-independent joined his state’s General Assembly on the left side of the fence. That leaves just Arkansas and Missouri–which both have Democratic governors and Republican veto-proof legislatures–in the club.

Chafee’s realignment, and the attendant drop in the number of states with veto-proof legislatures and divided government, drew our attention to some recent trends in partisanship in the states. For most of the past decade, the total number of states with veto-proof legislatures hovered around 12-14 and five to seven of these 12-14 had divided government. Following the 2010 elections, however, the total number of states with veto-proof legislatures shot up. Twenty-three states emerged from the 2010 elections with veto-proof legislatures and 25 had veto-proof legislatures after last year’s contests. The number of states with both veto-proof legislatures and divided government, on the other hand, dropped well off. In both 2011 and 2013 (post-Chafee realignment), just two states fit both descriptions.

There was also a noticeable change in the partisan make-up of these state governments. Prior to 2010, states with Republican governors and Democratic veto-proof legislatures outnumbered states with Democratic governors and Republican veto-proof legislatures in every biennium, by an average of five and a half to one. Since 2010, the number of states with Republican governors and Democratic veto-proof legislatures has dropped to (and held steady at) zero.

Student documentary 'Rubber and Glass Diplomacy' recounts the birth of Nebraska’s Unicameral legislature

By Katie Ziegler

Nebraska students Justin Myers and William Scheopner produced a lively 10-minute documentary about U. S. Senator George Norris’s efforts to create the nation’s only unicameral legislature.

Norris campaigned back and forth across the state to rally support for the 1934 ballot measure that abolished one chamber of the legislature and made the body nonpartisan. He felt that the two-house system was inefficient, expensive, and unresponsive to voters. Norris wrote, “there is no logical argument in favor of a two-house legislature. Through the conference committee, the politicians have the checks, and special interests have the balances.” Though he served in the Congress for 40 years, Norris’s goal in Nebraska was “to put the politicians out of business.”

from Capitol.org

It was an uphill battle. Only a small minority of the current state senators and representatives favored adopting the unicameral system, and just two of the state’s more than 400 newspapers editorialized in favor of the change. But Norris and his campaign partner, political science professor John Senning, emerged victorious at the polls.

Though Norris and Senning advised other states on their own pushes for unicameral legislatures, Nebraska remains unique among the 50 states today.

Kudos to Myers and Scheopner for their interest in state legislative history and for their excellent work on this documentary! 

Longtime Florida House Sergeant at Arms Earnie Sumner Receives Emotional Farewell Upon His Retirement

By Morgan Cullen

 

Earnie Sumner, right, with Deputy House Sergeant at Arms Marty McDonald in the House chamber on Earnie’s last day of session.

Longtime Florida House Sergeant at Arms and NCSL Officer, Earnest “Earnie” Sumner will be retiring next month after 42 years of legislative service.  Earnie began his distinguished career with the Florida Legislature in 1971 as an OPS (part time) employee and was named House Sergeant at Arms by Speaker Daniel Webster in 1998.  Over the course of his career, Earnie served the Florida House of Representatives for 138 legislative sessions in a variety of capacities.

Maintaining chamber security and decorum, keeping up capitol properties and facilities, coordinating office moves and travel logistics, overseeing emergency planning and meeting the daily needs of the chamber’s 120 members are just some of the responsibilities that Earnie consistently managed on a daily basis.  Last week, the House honored Earnie’s career with an official House resolution and no fewer than four standing ovations from the members he has served for so many years.  Speaker Will Weatherford also announced that a House Meeting Room would be named “Sumner Hall” in Earnie’s honor.    

In addition to his storied career in the Florida House, Earnie was also very active at NCSL for many years.  In 1978, Earnie became a member of the National Legislative Services and Security Association (NLSSA), one of NCSL’s 10 staff sections committed to the professional development of security and services personnel throughout the country.  Over his 34 years with NLSSA, Earnie served on the organization’s executive board in a number of capacities, including two terms as NLSSA president (2006-2008).    

As a member of NLSSA, Earnie maintained a strong commitment to the legislative institution and was dedicated to the professional development of new staff members both in Florida and around the country.  Earnie understood the importance of developing new talent and viewed NCSL as an opportunity to pass on the professional expertise he had acquired over his career.  It was through this commitment that Earnie was awarded all three of the organization’s service awards, the Legislative Staff Achievement Award (2002), The John Everhardt “Trooper” Award (2003) and the Tony Beard Memorial Award (2008). 

 

Earnie Sumner

Earnie also served NCSL on the Legislative Staff Coordinating Committee (LSCC) and the Executive Committee where he made the continued development of legislative staff a top priority.  NCSL Executive Director, Bill Pound was sad to hear that NCSL would be losing such a valued asset.  “Earnie Sumner’s well deserved retirement is a loss not only to the Florida House, but to NLSSA and NCSL. Earnie has been a leader of NLSSA for many years and represented the staff section and Florida well on the NCSL Executive Committee. It is gratifying to see the recognition accorded him by the Florida House on his retirement.”

 

Oklahoma Senators Look Great in Pink

All the members of the Oklahoma Senate wore pink last Tuesday in honor of breast cancer awareness day, as shown in this great photo.

A rose from The Thicket to Caroline Dennis.

Slicing and Dicing Long Voter Lines

By Wendy Underhill

Election day voter lines in Prince Georges County, Va. Photo credit: DaleCityPatch

We've read a lot about long lines for voting since November's presidential election. (In fact, we've written a lot about them: see The Canvass, NCSL's elections-related newsletter, and State Legislatures, NCSL's flagship publication.)

Recently, we came across an analysis of voter lines that is more about seeing than reading. It is a humongous set of slides that slice and dice polling place data from Prince William County, Va., slides that "show" more than they "tell."

Some voters in Prince William County waited until after 10 pm to vote last November. Not surprisingly, a post mortem was ordered, and the job was handed to a bipartisan team, with poll worker Kim Brace as one of the team. (Brace is better known as the president of Election Data Services, Inc., a political consulting firm specializing in data relating to redistricting and election administration, but here he was acting in his civic role.)

The slides are worth reviewing for two key reasons. First, his data and maps show what factors correlated with long lines in Prince William county:

• More registered voters per precinct
• A greater proportion of new voters
• More voters who needed attention from a chief election judge (to confirm addresses, vote a provisional ballot or to deal with other special circumstances).

Brace makes no claim that we can extrapolate from Prince William's experience to other regions or jurisdictions. Each viewer can decide if these factors are worth considering on our own turf.

Second, the presentation gives us an idea of what data can do to help election administrators plan ahead. Brace's stuff is a Cadillac production that would be hard for most people to match, but others can at least roll out a Chevy version of election data analysis. It begins with gathering data, much of which is probably already on hand. What time do voters arrive? How much experience do the poll workers have? Which precincts have the highest number of newly registered voters? Then those data can be presented in various ways to see what conclusions jump out. Tables and bar charts are standard; to move up to mapping, administrators may need to tap GIS specialists, whether they work for other departments or are volunteers like Brace.

Lawmakers can help in at least two ways. They can permit jurisdictions to use electronic poll books, which are essentially laptops that speed voter check-in and automatically gather data; and they can set reporting requirements or standards for data collection.

From Campaigning to Legislating: Tips from the Trenches

By Wendy Underhill

Legislative careers start with campaigns—but the skills and attitudes that help during election season don't necessarily translate to actually legislating. At least, that was the perspective of participants in "Campaigning to Legislating," a legislative effectiveness session at NCSL's Spring Forum last week.

"Especially the first time, for the first six months you keep thinking you're still on the campaign trail," said Rep. Angel Matos of Puerto Rico.

Speaker Terie Norelli

"When I come into the legislature after a tough campaign, it's hard not to hold a grudge," said Terie Norelli, president of NCSL and speaker of the House in New Hampshire. She noted that campaigns have gotten tougher, more personal and sometimes even ugly in the last decade.

How to cross the divide between campaigning and serving? Building and developing relationships is the only route to success, she says. In her state, where party control shifted in 2006, 2010 and again in 2012, she has operating with a commitment that "we're going to work in a bipartisan manner." Her specific efforts include:

• A weekly meeting with caucus leaders from both parties.
• Occasional gatherings of small groups from her 400-member chamber, such as fifteen people from the 160-member freshman class, or a dinner with all female leaders.
• Providing committee chair training from NCSL, and including ranking members as well.

Speaker Pro Tem Eric Turner

The Indiana House has changed partisan control more often than any other chamber in the country over the last thirty years, and "that means every race counts and campaigns can be expensive and mean," said Representative Eric Turner, speaker pro tem of the House.

And yet once in the statehouse, "you can always find something to agree on," he says. One approach he has used to get beyond partisanship is to offer to work on bills that members of the opposite party are sponsoring—even if 80 percent of issues would have him on the opposite side from the other lawmaker. He has even offered to be the lead sponsor when a bill would have a better success when it comes from his caucus.

Like Norelli, Turner sees relationships as vital: "It's okay to speak from the floor and disagree, and then have dinner together that night."

Fiscal Forecast: Some Good News, Some Bad News and Lots of Uncertainty

By Ed Smith

One puzzling aspect of the federal budget cuts known as sequestration is that for all the arguing in Washington, D.C., about how they will affect the economy, most Americans have seen little change in their day-to-day lives.

A session at NCSL's Spring Forum on Friday afternoon, however, made clear state lawmakers know the effects are significant and mounting.

During a briefing on how sequestration is affecting states from NCSL's Michael Bird, legislator after legislator brought up concerns they are hearing from their constituents. The list runs the gamut, from Head Start to military spending, from food programs for the elderly to general aviation, from loss of federal jobs to the cancellation of military flyovers at summer festivals.

"The only thing that can stop this is if the Republicans and Democrats, and the White House and Congress, come to some sort of agreement," Bird said, to laughter from the audience. "And you have a huge stake in this."

The downbeat news on how the sequester will affect states followed relatively positive reports on the overall state of the economy and specifically on the state of state budgets.

Alison Felix, an economist with the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, noted the housing market is rebounding across the country, the labor market is expanding and consumer spending is continuing to hold up,

"We did see growth as we first emerged from the recession from the federal government," she said. "As government generally has pulled back, private industry has filled some of the gap."

But, she warned, that private growth is "facing headwinds from the cutback in federal spending."

At the state level, the outlook has the same blend of positive signs, uncertainty over the strength of the recovery and concern about how federal action will affect states.

Corina Eckl, NCSL's director of State Services, pointed to NCSL's latest "State Budget Update," which found "states continue to move along the same path of slow and steady growth that has gradually brought them out of the economic nadir. The general outlook of state officials is one of stability, with a dose of uncertainty."

Even with revenue projections meeting or exceeding expectations in most states, Eckl said, there was plenty of concern about the future.

Lawmakers in the room pointed to several areas of worry aside from the possible effects of the sequester. They included revenues from oil and gas production, which cut both ways depending on your state. In Oklahoma, severance taxes helped the state exceed its revenue projections, while Alaska reported its revenues dropping along with production. Others said that while personal income taxes collections were up in FY 2013, it could be a sign of trouble ahead since many people decided to take capital gains before the end of 2012 because of uncertainty over tax policy.

Another issue "is the 13 states that are failing to meet their sales tax forecast," Eckl said, pointing to that as one of the key concerns in the "State Budget Update."

Lawmakers do have some ways of pushing back against the federal cutbacks, Bird said, mainly by urging their their congressional delegations to back some key measures, such as the Marketplace Fairness Act, which the Senate will vote on Monday. That legislation would offer states some help by collecting up to $23 billion a year in collected revenue on online and other remote sales.

It won't solve all the fiscal woes states face, Bird said, but it's a start.

Fracking at the Spring Forum: Panelists drill down for answers

By Mark Wolf

Hydraulic fracturing, the practice of extracting natural gas by using pressurized liquid to fracture rocks and commonly known as “fracking,”  presents great opportunities if done well­—and significant problems if not. Such was the framework the participants sketched during “The Natural Gas Bonanza,” a general session at NCSL’s Spring Forum.

“The controversy goes back to the advent of hydraulic fracturing,” said former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, now director of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.

"We’ve had modernization of the rules but they haven’t kept up with the technology,” said Ritter, who acknowledged his administration “made some mistakes” in dealing with the issue.

Ritter said his message to states, the industry and environmentalists was that “We’re not going to see a cessation of this activity in America. It is important from an environmental and economic perspective,” and that questions have to be answered about whether it can be done in an environmentally friendly way.

Scott Moore, vice president of marketing for Anadarko Petroleum Company, said fracturing, “is a highly-engineered, safe and proven technology that takes place miles underground.”

Dan Grossman, regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund's Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Boulder, Colo., who served 10 years in the Colrado General Assembly, said natural gas has the potential for creating less air pollution than coal but was fraught with risk, including ground- and surface-water contamination if not done correctly.

He said the industry must be held to zero tolerance standards regarding the emission of methane.

Tisha Conoly Schuller, president and chief executive officer of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, advised legislators “to educate yourself, which is yeoman’s work. Be cognizant of the noisiness. What’s the experience of places that have had this activity?”

'The Silver Tsunami' offers challenges, opportunities

James Johnson Jr. discusses the "Silver Tsunami" during the opening general session of NCSL's Spring Forum

 

 

By Mark Wolf

Everyone knows America is getting older: hip one day, hip replacement the next. Baby boomers are becoming seniors at a dizzying rate and birth rates are down. We may not be far from centenarians standing on their front porches and yelling at octogenarians, “You kids get off my grass.”

James Johnson Jr. captivated the opening general session of NCSL’s Spring Forum with a mix of statistics (the 65-plus demographic grew 12.8 percent in the 2010 census while the 25-44 group lost 2.2 percent), anecdotes (“CVS dropped the height of their shelves to accommodate the aging population”) and projections for the impact on society that spanned from dire to optimistic.

Eschewing the podium and wading into the crowd of attendees as if he was engaging an eager classroom, the professor at the Kenan Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, touched on a wide variety of social and economic impacts of “The Silver Tsunami.”

“We are in the midst of a profound demographic transition,” said Johnson, adding that every region and every state is part of the process.

Calling the South the “cat’s meow” of demographic revival, Johnson noted that it had recorded slightly more than half (51.4 percent) of the nation’s growth from 2000 to 2009. ‘And somebody loses in that equation,” he said.

A rapid increase in “marrying out” (couples marrying across racial and ethnic lines) is contributing to what he called “the browning of America” and will lead to a dramatic transformation in families.

“Children (of these families) who walk in school doors will be radically different,” he said.

Healthier living habits and the promise of regenerative medicine are expected to make the aging population even older, which, combined with a lower birth rate producing fewer young workers,  presents tremendous challenges including the sustainability of Social Security.

“We need every young person we can get and we need to educate them to the best of our abilities,” he said.

Eldercare, he said, is going to require dramatic transformations in society. “Childcare is routineized. You drop them off at 8, pick them up at 5. Eldercare is 24/7 365 days.  Today, work organizes our lives. In the future, life will organize work. We are going to have to be agile and flexible organizations to accommodate.”

Still, Johnson stressed, the “silver tsunami” can offer huge opportunities for innovation and job creation, especially in fields designed to help seniors stay in their homes and to prevent falls: “The longer we can keep people in their homes, the better off they’re going to be and we’re going to be.”

Trying to transform mental health treatment

By Ed Smith

"I'm here representing the largest mental health institutions in the United States--local jails and state prisons."

That was how Sheriff Grayson Robinson, of Arapahoe County in Colorado, opened his remarks Thursday at NCSL's Spring Forum session "Revisiting Mental Health Needs and Services."

"There's one sadder comment," Robinson added. "We are ill-prepared to do that service that is expected of us."

The remarks were poignant in a state that has experienced its share of tragedies, from the Columbine High School attack in 1999 to last summer's mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, that later were shown to have links to mental illness. The session also came as the Colorado legislature is considering a package of mental health bills in the wake of the movie theater shooting.

Robinson said he was hopeful that the legislation now under consideration--the $19 million package includes an expansion of crisis response, community treatment and treatment in jails--would reduce recidivism.

"If you look at the recidivism rate, it has to do with addiction and mental health. That should be a signal to all of us that we're not doing something right," Robinson said. "If we gave them more treatment in the jail, when they leave maybe there will be less chance of them coming back."

Lisa Clements, director of Colorado's Office of Behavioral Health, said Governor John Hickenlooper's commitment will make a difference.

 "Now we're looking at how to get crisis response out to every Coloradan" regardless of where that person lives, their income or other circumstances.

Don Mares, CEO and president of Mental Health America of Colorado, said he believed those backing the mental health legislation in the state were committed to long term pursuit of the issue. And appropriately so, he added, since mental health issues affect one-quarter of people in the country.

"I think that it impacts us all," said Mares, a former state legislator. "It's part of being a human being. It's part of who we are."

Despite the challenge today in passing legislation addressing behavioral health issues, Mares said it's a transformation from 20 years ago when he was promoting a mental health-related legislation.

Two decades ago, for many people such legislation was "a complete waste of money." Now, he added,  we're at point where "people think it's real."