NCSL Executive Committee Minutes of Winter Meeting Salt Lake City, Utah Jan

NCSL Executive Committee Minutes of Winter Meeting Salt Lake City, Utah Jan. 9, 2016 President Curt Bramble called the meeting to order. The following officers and members were present: Officers Senator Curt Bramble, Utah, President Senator Mike Gronstal, Iowa, President-Elect Karl Aro, Maryland, Staff Chair Raul Burciaga, New Mexico, Staff Vice Chair Peggy Piety, Indiana, Immediate Past Staff Chair Executive Committee Members Senator Pamela Althoff, Illinois Stephanie Barrett, Vermont Senator Randi Becker, Washington Wayne Kidd, Utah Martha Carter, Nebraska Representative Greg Leding, Arkansas Lore Christopher, Oregon Debra Levine, New York Senator Bill Cowsert, Georgia Ken Levine, Texas Randy Dowell, Oklahoma Senator Karen McConnaughay, Illinois Representative Dan Flynn, Texas Representative Jeff Morris, Washington Sarah Freeman, Indiana Francois Ouimet, MNA, Quebec Sonia Gavin, Montana Representative Joyce Peppin, Minnesota Senator Kemp Hannon, New York Representative Scott Saiki, Hawaii Senator Wayne Harper, Utah Jim Smith, North Dakota John Heining, Texas Representative Greg Snowden, Mississippi Senator Sara Howard, Nebraska Chuck Truesdell, Kentucky Russell Humphrey, Tennessee Martha Wigton, Georgia Senator Neville James, U.S. Virgin Islands Representative Art Wittich, Montana Wendy Jackson, Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos, Wisconsin Representative Jay Kaufman, Massachusetts Jan Yamane, Hawaii Representative Helene Keeley, Delaware Senator Delores Kelley, Maryland Representative Brian Kennedy, Rhode Island A quorum was present with 42 members in attendance. Several guests and NCSL staff also were present. APPROVAL OF MINUTES NCSL President Curt Bramble called for a motion to approve the minutes from the NCSL Executive Committee meeting held in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 17. The Executive Committee unanimously approved the minutes from the fall meeting. 1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT NCSL Executive Director William Pound called the members’ attention to the NCSL Public Affairs report, noting that it shows an increasingly vigorous public affairs effort. Pound remarked that NCSL Director of Public Affairs Mick Bullock has done an excellent job. Bullock joined NCSL a little more than a year ago and has done a terrific job in developing and enhancing the visibility of NCSL in the media. Pound thanked Christine Csizmadia with the Nuclear Energy Institute for securing the support by Nuclear Energy Matters for the Friday evening opening reception. Pound also recognized the State Government Affairs Council for its continuing support of the Thursday evening welcome reception. Pound reported that NCSL has been working on a demographic study of state legislatures over the past year. The study was conducted by former NCSL Director Karl Kurtz and constitutes the most complete examination of state legislatures and their membership that has been conducted in recent years. Pound explained that a presentation of the results of the study took place at the NCSL Capitol Forum held in Washington, D.C., in December, and that a summary of the findings would be presented to the Executive Committee. The full presentation can be found online at http://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/public/execlscc/Demographics_011516.pdf. STATE LEGISLATIVE DEMOGRAPHICS PRESENTATION Kurtz began his presentation by noting that he is a white male Protestant, a member of the silent generation, and that he holds a graduate degree. Kurtz explained that he chose to introduce himself in that fashion because it illustrates the focus of the study: an examination of six demographic characteristics of state legislators. The study looks at something which political scientists refer to as descriptive representation. The study asks: To what extent do our 7,383 state legislators look like the rest of America? The data illustrated that while legislatures are more diverse than they have ever been in the past, they are not as diverse as the general public. Kurtz prefaced his presentation by explaining how NCSL obtained the data for the study. The data used in the study was self-reported by legislators. NCSL contracts with KnowWho, a company that supplies the information used to maintain NCSL legislative directories that are used by NCSL staff for official purposes. KnowWho uses an automated method of scraping websites. Therefore, if a legislator says that he or she was born in 1960, KnowWho would capture that. Beginning with self-reported data as a base, NCSL then conducted independent research, contacting clerks, secretaries and other staff in the legislature to obtain information. Finally, NCSL staff conducted independent online research to fill in remaining gaps in the data. Kurtz told the committee that while he would be reporting exclusively on national data, the NCSL website provides an interactive map that offers information specific to individual states and provides a comparison of individual state legislatures to the population of each respective state. Data can be found online here: http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/who-we-elect-an-interactive-graphic.aspx. Kurtz reported that there has been a very significant increase in the representation of women and minorities dating back to 1971. There are six times as many women legislators today as there were in 1971, but that was also true in 2009. In other words, gains in representation have leveled off for women. The same is true of African Americans. The largest growth in African-American representation occurred 2 beginning in the 1970s and since 2009 has mostly leveled off. The number of Hispanic legislators continues to rise, as is reflected in the data from before the 2015 elections. When comparing women and minorities to the population as a whole, women constitute 24 percent of state legislators, but they’re 51 percent of the population. Blacks make up 9 percent of state legislators and of Congress, which is fairly close to their 13 percent share of the general population. While Hispanics are growing in number in state legislatures, they’re still only at 5 percent compared to their 17 percent share of the general population. Geographically, women hold the largest number of state legislative seats in the West and in the Northeast. In terms of partisan affiliation, 34 percent of the Democratic legislators in the country are women and 17 percent of Republicans are women. Women make up majorities among the Democratic legislators in four states: Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah. Of course in three of those four states - Idaho, Montana and Utah – those women are part of a very distinct minority party status as Democrats, so they are relatively small caucuses. Kurtz said data shows minority legislators are very much concentrated in the coastal and border states. Minorities make up one-third of Democratic legislators across the country and 5 percent of Republican legislators. The majority of the Democrats in nine states in the South, mostly the Deep South, are African American. Minorities also make up the majority of the Democrats in California, Arizona and Nevada. Kurtz reported that there is a broad age range among state legislators; the youngest state legislator in the country currently is 19 years old and the oldest is 94 years of age. The average among all state legislators is 56. There is not huge variation from state to state with respect to age, but New Hampshire’s legislature is easily the oldest with an average of 66 years of age. There were no significant partisan differences between Democrats and Republicans in terms of the age of members. However, Kurtz reported, the data do reflect significant differences in age in term-limited legislatures. On average, legislators in term-limited states were three years younger than legislators in non-term-limited states. This is not surprising, as there are fewer senior members by definition in term- limited legislatures. Kurtz reasoned that if there are fewer senior members, members will be relatively younger. Kurtz further explained that a decrease in the average age of members is the only impact on the makeup of legislatures that can be attributed to term limits. When arguments were made in favor of term limits in the early 1990s, some of the key arguments centered upon an anticipated increase in representation of women and minorities. That has not been the case, Kurtz reported, stating that there are no significant differences between term-limited and non-term-limited states in terms of the numbers of minority or women members. Generationally, the U.S. adult population is pretty much equally divided among millennials, genxers and baby boomers. In state legislatures, however, baby boomers significantly predominate. Millennials are underrepresented relative to their share of the population. Over time, however, the number of millennial legislators is growing as members of that generation age. In 2009, millennials made up only 1 percent of the members of state legislatures; by 2015 they made up 5 percent. 3 Kurtz told the committee state legislators are much better educated than the general public. Democrats and Republicans are equally matched in terms of members who have a bachelor’s degree, but Democrats have a higher proportion of members with advanced degrees. There are only a very small portion of legislators who have less than a bachelor’s degree. It may be that legislators without a college education are substantially under-counted. In collecting data, NCSL was unable to obtain information about education for 23 percent of state legislators. Congress has a substantially higher proportion of members with advanced degrees than state legislatures. Thirty nine percent of congressional members are attorneys by profession, compared to only 17 percent of state legislators. Kurtz said the order in which he addressed each area of demographics during the presentation reflects the order in which the data are most concrete. Data on age, for example, are much softer than that on gender, race or ethnicity. The numbers are especially nebulous for religious affiliation. Protestants and Catholic legislators predominate: 56 percent of state legislators are either Protestant, Catholic or identify as members of other Christian denominations.

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