A Commitment to Service, Bipartisanship.

• Author: Griffin, Kelley
• Position: NCSL WELCOMES OFFICERS FOR 2022 - National Conference of State Legislatures' Scott Saiki and J.J. Gentry

As the only organization that represents state legislators and legislative staff, NCSL membership selects a new president and staff chair each year following NCSL's annual Legislative Summit. Here are profiles of this year's leaders.

NCSL President Scott Saiki

When NCSL President Scott Saiki says he wants to further the conference's bipartisan work on difficult issues, he speaks from experience. He started his work as a state representative as part of the "dissident" wing of the Democratic Party, outside the mainstream.

"So I think I understand what it is like to be in the minority," Saiki says.

Through the years, he found his stride working with legislators who hold different views, eventually becoming majority leader, then speaker in 2017. All but four Hawaii House members are Democrats, but Saiki notes divisions can be strong within the party, so he has dealt with extreme philosophical differences and managed to lead consensus votes on the budget in recent years.

Saiki would like to see NCSL bring its strength in bipartisan research to the issues of housing and homelessness, which affect so much of the country.

"It's easier said than done at a policy-making level to try to fix an area like home-lessness, and we have to try," he says.

Saiki also anticipates a focus on energy, particularly renewable energy. "It has grown in significance," he says. "We have to see how we can do this in a bipartisan way to find mutually agreeable approaches."

Saiki has served in the House since 1994 and has been involved with NCSL for years.

He takes to heart the oft-cited notion that states are the laboratories of democracy. "That's the same thing at NCSL," he says. "We can take the best of what's happening in the states and then deploy that."

Staff Chair J.J. Gentry

J.J. Gentry, NCSL's new staff chair, started his legislative career as a page in the South Carolina House of Representatives and loved every minute of it.

He always volunteered to stay late when debates went into the evening--not unexpected from someone who shares a birthday with George Washington and worked on his first political campaign in fifth...