The Reflecting Pool

A friend of ours who has been a senior staff director in two different legislatures claims he begins each morning with a cup of coffee and the following toast, “Damn the governor.” When you work in our nation’s capital for NCSL, you have some mornings when that first venti tastes especially good because you and the folks at the National Governors Association have managed to pull on the same end of the rope in the state-federal tug-of-war. Other mornings, though, you have no choice but to raise your cup in frustration and add an “s” to our anonymous friend’s toast: “Damn the governors.”

In the interest of semi-objective reporting, I should point out that NCSL and NGA have been on the same end of the rope a lot over the past year or so, especially in our battles with Congress and the Department of Homeland Security over Real ID. Some recent developments over renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act, though, have made our friend’s toast among the milder epithets we’ve juxtaposed with the word “governor.” The most frustrating thing is that we still don’t know exactly what happened and why.

The story has its origins in the passage of No Child Left Behind six years ago. NCSL was a very public and vociferous opponent of the bill that became the country’s new education law in 2001. Because governors were divided over the merits of the legislation, NGA was on the sidelines. NCSL continued its work after the bill became law—creating a bi-partisan task force that developed 44 recommendations for fixing No Child Left Behind. We’ve used the recommendations to guide our efforts to secure changes to the law as Congress labors to reauthorize it this year.

Earlier this year, when our staff began strategizing over the reauthorization, we decided to approach our colleagues at NGA about whether we could work together on it. We did and they responded favorably. We had a couple of meetings and started drafting a joint statement. We were optimistic and thought they were, too. Then, for two weeks, there was silence. We thought maybe the “reply” button on the NGA e-mail was broken or their voice mail system was down. When communication was finally re-established, we learned that the governors had been engaged in a complicated and intense set of negotiations over a position statement on No Child Left Behind reauthorization. The NGA staff had been told not to tell us about it; but we were welcome to sign-on to it now that it was done and, of course, we wouldn’t be able to make any changes. They apologized profusely, but we decided we couldn’t sign-on, both because of the substance of the statement and because of that bad coffee taste left in our mouths. The worst aspect of the episode is that we all know—NCSL and NGA staff—that our chances of affecting the reauthorization would have been immeasurably greater if we had been able to collaborate.

The coda for this story came in a phone call from a legislative leader friend. I asked him how he and the governor are getting along. He said, “Well, pretty well, except he has this habit of not letting us know what he’s up to and then not understanding when we get upset about it.” That certainly sounded familiar and provided some comfort that governors are governors and legislatures are legislatures wherever the venue might be.

Some folks say they’d rather be lucky than good. Sometimes it helps to be both. Two weeks ago, Susan Parnas Frederick, who covers federal elections issues for NCSL, got to the Hill early for a mark-up of a new election bill, one that would preempt state voting paper trail laws. She ran into one of the staff for the committee chair, California Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald. The staffer told Susan they were really having trouble with the bill, primarily because the chair had gotten calls and letters from legislators around the country who are upset. That was the good part, because NCSL had been encouraging legislators to make the calls and send the letters. The lucky part came next, when the staffer invited Susan in to meet privately with Representative Millender-McDonald, who was in her office pondering what to do. In the course of the 15-minute conversation, the congresswoman announced that she was canceling the mark-up and, at Susan’s urging, decided to convene a group of stakeholders to come up with a redrafted paper trail bill. That will give NCSL and state and local elections administrators a chance to make the legislation more palatable and workable.

Massachusetts Senator Richard Moore will represent NCSL on Monday at a meeting to be convened by the Department of Homeland Security on the proposed Real ID rules it released in March. The department has called the meeting at the insistence of Maine Senator Susan Collins, who is one of several U.S. senators attempting to make the Real ID rules more responsive to state interests. Also at the table will be other stakeholders, including our friends at the National Governors Association, who participated in a negotiated rule-making process, which was authorized by the so-called 9/11 commission law, but was then abrogated by Real ID. Sound confusing? Well, it is. What’s also confusing—or, at least, unclear—is how much effect Monday’s meeting will have on the final Real ID rules when they are issued this summer.

Next week’s meeting of the NCSL standing committees—the Spring Forum—will give legislators a good chance to weigh-in on the Real ID issue. The Budgets and Revenue committee, the Transportation committee and the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness task force have appointments with at least three members of Congress to talk about fixing and funding the Real ID law. Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka, Maine Congressman Tom Allen and New Hampshire Senator John Sununu have all indicated interest in amending or scrapping the law.