Karl Kurtz has been a leading voice for state legislatures and NCSL, even before there was an NCSL.
The longest-serving employee of the conference, Kurtz worked for the Council of State Governments when three competing groups formed NCSL in 1975. He helped write the bylaws for the new organization, wrote its first budget and served as a director of several NCSL programs.
Kurtz, who is director of NCSL’s Trust for Representative Democracy, a public outreach and education program designed to promote civic engagement and counter public cynicism and distrust toward American democracy, is retiring after 42 years on the job and was feted during a staff luncheon Thursday at NCSL's Denver office.
Kurtz's "by-the-numbers" NCSL timeline includes filing 1,009 time sheets, 814 expense reports, logging nearly 2 million miles on United, visiting 28 countries and 91 legislative buildings. Along the way, he estimates he has worn a blue blazer (the unofficial NCSL uniform) 2018 times.
Though he is leaving NCSL, Kurtz will continue to bring his talents and experience to bear on a major project.
"About three years ago, Brian (Weberg, director of NCSL's Legislative Management Program) and I started talking about the need for us to better understand partisanship and polarization in the legislature," Kurtz said at the luncheon. "Our view was that most state legislatures are in situations that are just as polarized as the Congress but most of them are able to reach settlement and negoiate differences in the way that Congress is not able to."
Funding was elusive for a study into why legislatures do what Congress can't, until the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced this summer that it was funding a $50 million three-year Madison Initiative to help alleviate polarization in government.
Kurtz is optimistic that NCSL will receive an award as part of this initiative. If so, he will be a consultant on NCSL's study of policy making in state legislatures.
"We're going to be doing case studies of nine legislatures around the country to look at how they are able to mitigate the problems of polarization," he said.
Kurtz said he was "an idealist about legislatures and I have this very, very positive view but I too can become cynical from time to time. There have been points in my career when I've wondered why I'm doing what I'm doing. I was at one of those points in the early 1990s when I went to Brazil and visited the Rio Grande de Sul legislature. I walked up to the legislatiave assembly building and there was this enormous sign that read, Povo sem parlamento 'e povo escravo.
"I didn't speak any Portuguese so I had to ask what does that mean. The translation I got was 'People without parliament are people in chains.'
"I thought to myself, 'Aha, that's why I do what I do. That's what I believe in: That legislatures are ultimately the guardian of the people's rights and freedom."