Challenges of a New Century.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Wrenching changes are on the horizon for legislators as they adjust to a constituency of greater ethnic diversity and growing technological sophistication.

It once must have seemed easy to forecast tomorrow. A hundred years ago, when most state lawmakers got to their mostly part-time jobs by rail or horse, the emerging issues in the then--46 states were clear: whether or not to expand trade, push the country's borders farther west, and find a new way to mint silver.

If challenges truly do reflect the times they exist in, then consider this: The country that state lawmakers today attempt to govern is not only abundantly more diverse than 1900, when both legislatures and voters were overwhelmingly white, male and propertied, it is also a place of emerging generations with contrasting priorities who are a central force in the economy and demand to be heard.

Bottom line: Lawmakers, in order to be effective, have to learn to speak and listen to each group as they never have before. "The things that divide the generations are so powerful that they will demand attention," says Claire Raines author of Generations at Work and an expert on generational attitudes. And the lawmakers who fail to appreciate that will not only be less effective, but could risk their own political futures."

And how are we to predict the problems and opportunities of the massive new technology that is swallowing America whole? "Every thing--every single thing--about our culture and economy and politics in, the new century is going to be geared around the new technology," predicts James Canton a futurist with the Institute for Global Economics in San Francisco. Canton has emerged as one of the nation's most visible cheerleaders in favor of state governments creating alliances with the private sector to promote both technological learning and commerce.

REVOLUTION IS HERE

"The revolution is not coming, it is, already here," says Canton, who thinks every legislature should, at the very least have a technology task force to tackle emerging and current issues. "Any state that has not yet recognized this is going to be completely cutout of the new century."

The pressures of the new technology require learning every nuance and byte that now comes down the pike at a furious and fast pace. It also means worrying about the economic implications of it all how, for example, sales over the Internet make up the fastest-growing retail market in the country, yet remain an untapped source of revenue for states.

And that, according to Marcia Howard, director of Federal Funds Information for States in Washington, D.C., will require; as never before, cooperation and cohesion among the legislatures of all 50 states. "If they don't put together comprehensive tax policies on Internet trade, then they're going to end up with 50 different policies and laws, making an already complex world for most of us all the more so."

IT'S NEVER BEEN BETTER

Does anyone care to make predictions about the economy? As 2000 dawns, it's never been better. At the start of the last century the country was just emerging from a severe recession and a new Wall Street boom seemed a promise of a better tomorrow. "The prosperity was comparative," historian W. A. Swanberg has written of 1900, meaning "subsistence instead of want" for most citizens.

Compare that with today, as declining state welfare rolls suggest a new century without the dole. "Just think of it," remarks David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poor's/DRI in Lexington, Mass., "this has been the longest expansion ever without price and wage pressures, and we have had, at 4.1 percent, the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s. That's going to be a pretty hard act to follow."

For Wyss, the economic challenge facing state lawmakers is not just a matter of trying to keep that train called prosperity running, it is fundamentally a matter of doing the right thing today. "There is always a tendency when times are good to load up on the regulations, load up on the entitlements, and lawmakers everywhere are under pressure from various groups to do just that largely because, for now, the states can afford it. That is going to be an awfully powerful pressure to resist."

LEGISLATORS IN FAVOR

Fortunately...