A leading perspective.

• Position: Conversations - Interview

State Legislatures gathered a group of legislative leaders to talk about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the 2004 session. Recognizing that almost all states are struggling with weak economies, health care, education and myriad other issues, we asked the leaders how these challenges are affecting their states and legislatures. Are they seeing fundamental changes? Here's what they had to say.

CONSTITUENT REACTIONS

SL: Does the public understand the difficult budget choices you confront?

Vermont Speaker Walter Freed: Every year, regardless of the nature of your budget, there's always tradeoffs. The beauty of a recession is that even though your constituents don't always appreciate the tough decisions, their expectations are lowered. They recognize that times are tough, and they can't have all that they want. Sometimes the down cycle gives you an opportunity to reassess without the political pain of the public rising up against you.

Maryland Delegate John Hurson: I think there is a sense of anxiety. People are waiting to see if the tough decisions have already been made. A lot of them think that it's time to ratchet back. They're not sure how it can be done, but they expect us to do it and to live with it.

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader John Hottinger: I'm not convinced that the public, at least in our state, understood the complexity and the outcomes that flowed from budget decisions we made last June. Now they're hearing about it, and they're recognizing how it affects the community, how it impacts them, and we're getting a different reaction. I expect we'll have a much better engaged public debate about where we make our decisions in terms of allocating resources and whether or not we get enough resources.

Utah Speaker Marty Stephens: We're seeing the public's hesitancy to pay more taxes. And we're seeing a change in people's recognition that they can't have everything that they're asking for and still have a reasonable tax burden. And that's helpful to state legislators.

FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES

SL: Have the current fiscal conditions forced you to make fundamental and structural changes to your programs? Has partisanship played a role in your ability to implement change?

Connecticut Speaker Moira Lyons: This past session was one of the most contentious sessions we have ever had. And it was contentious with interest groups and within the caucuses because we made fundamental changes. We made changes in the delivery of our health care system; we reduced benefits; we changed the whole delivery structure for Medicaid and TANF recipients. We initiated copays all across the board on everybody. It was almost impossible to get a vote on them, because we were minimizing programs that worked.

Stephens: That's one of the things that's been the most surprising to me. There has been very little differentiation between the parties on fiscal issues, nationally. The majority party, whether Republican or Democrat, has to govern. I think as you look around the country, state legislatures have done what's necessary--we have balanced the budgets and made things work.

Kansas Senate President Dave Kerr: Budgets have been progressively tightened the past three years, but when the real crunch hit, most states knew where we could pull some rabbits out of the hat for at least a year or two. We've done that. To some extent, we appear to have delayed the onset of the needed fundamental change that is a lot harder to pass. Politically, it's much more difficult.

Hurson: In Maryland, we have a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. The bipartisan way we've dealt with the budget over the years is slowly eroding away. We've done the gimmicks to try to fix the budget. We've had two years of cutting, but it's been all the things that really aren't going to hurt. Now we're at the...