The False Imperative

By Jery Payne

Imagine you are a judge hearing a case.  The Raptor Commission has awarded a cash grant to the Raptor Education Association.  Unfortunately for the association, the commission did not have a quorum when it voted to award the grant.  The Raptor Recovery Foundation had also applied for the grant and is now suing.  The foundation wants the illegal grant repaid and the commission to award the grant again.  The foundation cites a provision that states, "There shall be a quorum for the committee to do business."  The foundation argues, therefore, that the grant was void and must be repaid because it violated the law.  The association replies that the word "shall" means that the commission had a duty to have a quorum to do business.  "Shall" the association argues, "is well established as a command; therefore, the commission had a duty to form a quorum.  The failure of the commission to obey the law does not, and indeed should not under the rules of agency, void the commission's actions.  The proper defendant in this case is the commission, not the association, because the commission, not the association, violated the rule."  The question you need to answer is: "Does the Raptor Education Association have to repay the grant?"

National Redistricting Seminar: Washington D.C. January 21-24, 2011

 NCSL is your primary resource for information on the process, law and technology necessary to successfully accomplish redistricting.  Attend NCSL's final special  redistricting conference of this cycle.  It is designed to prepare legislators, legislative staff and others for the challenging task ahead that will commence in just a few short months for most states.  Through hands-on training as well as tips and advice from peers, experts and practitioners, you will leave this intensive three-day seminar prepared to draw plans when the data arrives at your capitol in February or March. More

A Letter From NCSL Staff Chair Tim Rice

Greetings, colleagues and friends! The 2010-2011 NCSL conference year is off to a great start. Since the Legislative Summit in Louisville, five staff sections held professional development seminars, another major cross-staff section webinar took place, and numerous other smaller scale activities have occurred. More

State News

Each issue includes "State News" describing events, 
recent laws passed, and litigation that involves state legislatures
and state government. Current news from 13 states including:

•  Colorado's office of Legislative Legal Services has a new director.

•  Florida implements a the Leagis system for producing statutes.

• Lousisiana deals with the BP oil spill.

  

BIS: 50-State + Full Text Search: Legislators and Staff Only

NCSL has partnered with State Net to provide legislators and legislative staff access to a 50-state+ searchable legislation database containing the full text of every bill in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Congress for the current session.

Legislators and legislative staff members of NCSL have exclusive access to this resource, which also provides additional legislative resources, such as weekly session schedules and other state-specific resources. The service is not available to members of the public. To access the service, you will need to connect to the State Net site.

Online Training is available 24/7!

Call for Webinar Presenters

If you’ve ever wanted to test your presentation skills on a national audience, here’s your chance!

The Program Committee of the Legal Services Staff Section seeks volunteers to make webinar presentations. The content of the webinar may be suggested by the volunteer presenter. It need not be eligible for CLE credit, although that is a plus; the most important consideration is that the content of the webinar be relevant and useful to members of the Section. Volunteers may indicate more than one topic they would be willing to present, but if more than one topic is indicated, please rank them in order of preference for presentation.

If you are interested, please forward your name and topic(s) that you’d like to present to Kae Warnock at kae.warnock@ncsl.org. The Program Committee will compile a list of volunteers for future reference in planning webinar sessions. Thank you for your interest in this project!