What legislatures need now: the prescription for change offered 40 years ago in "the sometime governments" has run its course, but legislatures still face plenty of institutional challenges.

• Author: Kurtz, Karl

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The challenges of today's legislatures are complex. They involve questions of integrity, will, commitment and trust, and the solutions are not at all clear. The realities of today's government and politics require a new approach to strengthen legislatures. What's needed is a process that clarifies the current problems, what changes are needed and how to put those remedies into place.

In the 1970s, the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures launched a remarkable movement to strengthen our nation's legislatures by publishing "The Sometime Governments: An Evaluation of the 50 American Legislatures."

The book included sweeping recommendations for change. The guidelines were designed to give legislatures more resources of time, compensation, staff and facilities. Forty years later, that agenda for reform has been largely accomplished or is no longer as relevant.

In large measure, "The Sometime Governments" succeeded in igniting two decades of effort by legislatures in every state to build capacity--the amount of session time, the number of members, committee organization, facilities and staffing..

It provided state-specific marching orders and a battle plan to reform-minded political troops ready and able to carry out its agenda. At the time of its publication, American politics were in transition. The one-person, one-vote court decisions of the 1960s and subsequent redistricting after the 1970 census opened state legislatures to a surge of new members in the 1974 elections.

They were a generation inspired by Kennedy, but also battered by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. Armed with ideas set out in "The Sometimes Governments" and fueled by private foundation support, they transformed state legislatures.

For the next two decades, legislative leaders in almost every state engaged their members, the public and others concerned about legislatures in efforts to redesign and rebuild their institutions. These efforts were historic in scope and accomplishment. Legislatures became more muscular, agile, intelligent and independent than at any other time in American history.

The reform agenda of "The Sometime Governments" fell on hard times in the 1990s. There was a backlash, fueled by growing public cynicism about government, that developed against what political scientists call the "professionalization" of state legislatures. In almost all of the 24 states that allow voter initiatives, measures were placed on the ballot to limit the terms of state lawmakers. Virtually all of them passed, though some were later invalidated by courts or repealed, leaving 15 states today with term limits.

An NCSL study in 2007 showed term limits had significantly weakened state legislatures, especially in relation to the governor. Other initiatives placed limits on the tax and spending powers of legislatures in...