Legislative Effectiveness Comittee Business Meeting Summary 

December 9-10, 2010
Phoenix, AZ

Committee officers and members discussed plans for committee sessions at the Spring Forum 2011, a webinar for new members and a list of biographical sketches of committee officers.

 Spring Forum 2011 

The committee made plans for sessions for its available time slots at the upcoming 2011 Spring Forum in Washington, DC. The committee sessions will likely take place Friday, April 15, 2011. The approved sessions are: 

1. Speaking for the Legislature---In order to be a strong, co-equal branch of government, legislatures need to build institutional strength. They do this through establishing strong leadership, developing the ability to take on tough issues, building consensus, providing transparency and connecting with citizens. This session examines strong legislatures, with particular focus on reaching the public. 

2.      NCSL: Get Your Money’s Worth. NCSL provides meetings, information, advice and technical assistance to legislatures and legislators. This help can take many forms, such as testifying at committee hearings about practices in the other states, providing workshops to learn tips about working with the media and briefing legislators on the impact of recently enacted federal legislation. Is your state getting its money’s worth from NCSL? Put NCSL’s experts to work for you.

3.     The Best of Constituent Service. Legislators make constituent service a point of emphasis, but what are the current best practices? Some legislators and constituent service agencies have developed extensive expertise, background information and contacts to help them handle constituent casework. This session looks at proven approaches for low, medium and high staff states, identifies basic guiding principles and examines some initiatives to involve constituents more directly in the policymaking process.

Webinar 

The committee will work with others in NCSL and with available funds to help provide a webinar designed to reach out to the newly elected members and make them aware of the range of help and information that they can get from our organization.

Biographical Sketches 

Representative John Patton of Wyoming suggested that we create a document with biographical sketches of all the committee officers so that we have a better understanding of one another. Committee officers are requested to send biographical information to Bruce Feustel at bruce.feustel@ncsl.org  . The information can be in bullet or other form and legislators may refer to a website bio if they wish.