The old statehouse, she ain't what she used to be.

• Author: Kurtz, Karl T.
• Position: Legislators discuss changes affecting legislatures during National Conference of State Legislatures' 1993 Annual Meeting - Includes related articles - Panel Discussion

Legislators, lobbyists and staff agree: It's tougher these days to legislate.

Editor's note: In a special session at NCSL's 1993 Annual Meeting, 10 veterans--present and former legislators and staff members who together represented 277 years of legislative experience--talked about how and why legislatures have changed. Karl T. Kurtz was moderator. Here are excerpts from his edited version of their comments.

Legislative Life

Al Abrams, New York: There's a loss of community and family in the legislature today. It isn't fun anymore. It's so competitive both within the same party and between parties that there isn't the time to do even the legislating. Most of the members' time is involved in campaigning, and the staff do a lot of the legislation and negotiation for our leaders. In the last 20-some years, the leaders rarely appear on the floor.

Patrick Flahaven, Minnesota: From a staff point of view, the greatest influence has been the growth of staff. Another great institutional change is the growing influence of women. Twenty-two years ago, women were limited in the job opportunities they had. Now women serve in virtually every staff position, partially because there are more women members and they chair committees. You also see women in the lobby corps. Lobbyists are no longer old men smoking cigars and taking people out to dinner. Instead, the thrust of lobbying is to educate members, not entertain them.

Another great influence comes from introduction of the microchip processor. Computers, voting machines, faxes--technology has changed the legislature.

Senator David Nething, North Dakota: One of the things that I miss from when I started in the mid-'60s is the kind of representation we had from the community--the automobile dealer, the lumberyard dealer, a banker. In short, a strong group of people who could offer information in debate from their own experiences. Today's legislators come from more specialized orientations--they are people who spend a great deal of time on complicated subjects and are given an opportunity to develop expertise. It's harder for these people to come into the legislature and find their niche.

In North Dakota, we still meet every two years. That keeps it fun. The increased pressures on legislators come from the length of session, the complications, the high partisanship--not necessarily a Republican-Democrat partisanship, but more an issue partisanship.

Representative Dorothy Felton, Georgia: One of the major differences is the education level of the legislators. Today we have people who come to the legislature who have more formal education, but I don't know that they are better educated. When I joined the General Assembly, we had a lot of people who had been in World War II and had been around the world. They had a broad view. We've just had a third of our House taken over by new members. Some of these really young legislators who come in with all these degrees don't have anything but book knowledge. We need the citizen legislator with some real practical experience. It requires more than book knowledge to be a good legislator. It takes the ability to get along with other people and to know how to build coalitions. It's important for someone to have been a true success at something before they're elected to office. Otherwise they're going to think that the legislature is the greatest thing...