Louisiana lawmakers get out of the House.

• Position: Louisiana's Legislative Outreach Initiative

Louisiana Speaker Hunt Downer can't wait for the start of the regular session next month. He's anxious to see the results of his experiment that took legislative committees to 42 communities around the state during the interim.

As policy is developed this session, Downer expects lawmakers to be more in tune to state needs. "Legislators know their own districts," he says, "but what the Legislature acts upon, affects not just our own districts but other districts and the whole state." Taking the Legislature on the road, touring state facilities and private enterprises and holding committee meetings on the road, gave lawmakers a firsthand look at problems they will be dealing with this year.

It also gave the public a firsthand look at lawmakers in action; for some, their first such experience. "Some citizens," Downer says, "never had a chance to participate in their government before except at the polls. This let them actually see a committee in action. It also gave private citizens a chance to vent their frustrations."

And, says the speaker, the successful outreach program was an image-builder for the Legislature and the state. "Citizens saw that legislators aren't the people they've heard about who meet in smoke-filled back rooms. They saw that lawmakers are down-to-earth people, just like themselves, with the same concerns."

Media coverage was positive and prolific, Downer says. Reporters who work for hometown weekly papers that can't afford to send them to the Capitol turned out for the public forums and committee hearings, asked questions and interviewed legislators. "One thing I found," he says, "is that there is a common thread - everyone wants good government."

Taking the legislature to the people by holding committee meetings outside the capital city was one of the recommendations of NCSL's Legislative Institution Task Force. "The more information the public has, the more likely it is that people will participate in and understand the work of the legislature," says its report, Strengthening State Legislatures. Minnesota, Washington and West Virginia are among states that hold interim committee meetings outside the capital. Missouri takes new legislators on a "budget" tour that includes state parks, prisons and universities.

Downer says the idea for Louisiana's outreach program came when he started traveling the state and visiting legislative districts in his...