Karl Kurtz: NCSL pillar and states' champion retires.

• Position: TRIBUTE

Karl Kurtz, a leading voice for state legislatures and NCSL, even before there was an NCSL, has retired. He was the longest-serving employee of the conference, and had worked for the Council of State Governments when three competing groups formed NCSL in 1975. He helped write the bylaws for the new organization, wrote its first budget and served as a director of several NCSL programs.

Kurtz most recently was the director of NCSL's Trust for Representative Democracy, a public outreach and education program designed to promote civic engagement and counter public cynicism and distrust toward American democracy.

Kurtz has held various management positions at NCSL over the years and has advised on legislative structure, operations, process and procedure in many states and developing nations. "His knowledge of legislatures and their history and development is unsurpassed," said William Pound, NCSL executive director.

Kurtz will continue to bring his talents and experience to bear on a new major project.

"About three years ago, Brian Weberg, director of NCSL's Legislative Management Program, and I started talking about the need for us to better understand partisanship and polarization in the legislature," Kurtz said. "Our view was that most state legislatures are in situations that are just as polarized as is Congress but most of them are able to reach settlements and negotiate differences in the way that Congress is not able to."

Funding was elusive for a study into why legislatures do what Congress can't, until the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced...