Suchergebnisse

Graphic presentation of a survey regarding State Representation in Legislatures. Data representations include graphs, charts, tables and maps.

In Summer 2003, the Institute of Public Policy conducted a mail survey of state legislators to determine how legislators feel about constituency service and the use of technology, whether they believe email has a positive effect on communication, whom they contact via email and the impact of the internet on the legislature. The states that were surveyed were chosen based on a number of legislative features including multimember districts (MMDs) versus single member districts (SMDs) and term limits. Arizona, New Jersey, North Dakota, and South Dakota are all MMDs for the lower level chambers and single member district SMDs for the upper level chamber while Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina are entirely SMDs. Of these states, Arizona, South Dakota, Colorado and Missouri currently have term limits in place.

In 1984, New York became the first state to enact a mandatory seat belt law; since then, the District of Columbia and every state except New Hampshire have adopted similar laws. Of the 49 states with seat belt laws, eight states included in their original seat belt laws primary enforcement provisions, which allow police to stop a driver solely on the basis of not wearing a seat belt (New York, Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Connecticut, Iowa, New Mexico, and Oregon). During the 1990s, beginning with California, nine states upgraded their seat belt enforcement provisions from secondary to primary. According to a recent survey of nearly 2000 adults conducted by the Insurance Research Council, there is considerable public support for primary and secondary seat belt enforcement: 47% of the survey respondents indicated support for primary enforcement, while 41% of respondents favored secondary enforcement.

Powerpoint presentation by Dr. Lilliard E. Richardson on the topic of traffic safety legislation presented at the Blue Print for Safer Roadways conference November 30 2006.

What is the impact of a legislature's institutions on the representational roles its members adopt? We address this question by examining the role orientation of state legislators in eight states, explaining why some legislators identify more with a trustee model of representation & others identify more with the delegate model. Using ordinal logistic regression analysis on data from a survey of 447 legislators, we test for the effects of multimember districts & term limits, along with several other factors. First, we find that representational roles & behavior are related; legislators who think of themselves as delegates are much more likely to hold frequent district office hours than their counterparts who think of themselves as trustees. Second, we find that, overall, legislators are more likely to consider themselves trustees than delegates. Third, we find that multimember districts & term limits increase the likelihood that legislators think of themselves as trustees. Thus, legislative institutions can influence the representational roles legislators adopt. Tables, Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

In 1984, New York became the first state to enact a mandatory seat belt law; since then, the District of Columbia and every state except New Hampshire have adopted similar laws. Of the 49 states with seat belt laws, eight states originally included primary enforcement provisions in seat belt laws, which allow police to stop a driver solely on the basis of not wearing a seat belt. In 1993, California upgraded their secondary seatbelt enforcement provision to a primary law. Since then, 12 more states and the District of Columbia have strengthened their belt laws by making them primary enforcement laws. Missouri continues to permit only secondary enforcement and allows a minimal $10 fine. In 2002, Missouri ranked 35th in the nation in belt use rate, and the fatality rate per 100,000 persons was 21.6 in Missouri versus 14.6 for the national average and 7.18 in the safest state. Further, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the economic cost of motor vehicle crashes in Missouri was $4.7 billion in 2000. A 2004 study commissioned by the National Safety Council shows Missouri could save at least $103 million dollars over the next ten years in Medicaid costs once a primary enforcement seat belt law was adopted.

http://www.truman.missouri.edu/ipp/publications/index.asp?ViewBy=Date ; American state legislatures provide considerable institutional variation for testing theories of legislative representation, and one such feature is the multi-member district system (MMD). Whereas the U.S. House and most American state legislatures use the single member district system (SMD) in which a single legislator represents one geographic district, several state legislatures still use a system in which more than one legislator is elected from the same district in the same election. Although there can be considerable variation in the rules for such MMDs, one structure common to many state legislatures is a situation in which multiplecandidates run against each other for two seats from one district, and the two receiving the most votes are elected. Clearly, the electoral game is quite different in a situation in which a candidate is likely to be running against not only members of other parties but also another candidate of the same party. The incentives inherent in such a system are quite different than those for a legislator in an SMD, and it likely that such incentives change legislative representation in a number of ways. ; Includes bibliographical references

In Summer 2003, the Institute of Public Policy conducted a mail survey of state legislators in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and South Dakota. We found that the number of requests for casework a legislative office receives in an average week during session varied greatly by state. Pennsylvania reported 107 cases on average, which was more than four times that of any other state (North Dakota, 24; South Carolina, 17; Arizona, 16; Missouri, 15; New Jersey, 12; South Dakota, 8; and Colorado, 7). ; Includes bibliographical references

Privatization of traditional governmental functions has been extensively discussed in the United States for more than two decades, and states have chosen a wide range of programs for privatization and selected a variety of implementation and oversight strategies. In this report we examine the potential for privatization, privatization pitfalls, and ways to optimize the success of privatization effects. Privatization can be attractive for one of two different reasons. It may provide a revenue benefit when the contracting entity can provide the service at a lower cost than that experienced by the governing entity. Typically, lower costs arise from lower personnel costs or through the use of less expensive methods and technologies, including IT solutions. It may also be attractive because privatization may allow government to perform specific services more effectively or more efficiently than it could with its own employees. Typically, these situations occur when a private entity can be more flexible in the deployment of personnel and resources andwhen dealing with new technologies or processes. ; Includes bibliographical references

Analyzes official record of three congressional hearings on air bags and compares it with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rules, to examine the relation between how a social problem is defined and how policy is formulated; 1996-97; US.

How female legislators differ from their male colleagues in respect to the number of casework requests received and accepted; based on a mail survey of all state legislators in Colorado, Maryland, North Carolina, and Ohio, Spring 1992.

How and why state legislators aid their individual constituents, based on 1992 survey data for four US states. North Carolina, Colorado, Maryland, and Ohio.

Objectives. This article examines environmental policy attitudes, focusing on the differences in preferences across issue type (i.e., pollution, resource preservation) and geographical scale (i.e., local, national, global). In addition, we study whether an individual's trust in government influences environmental policy attitudes. Methods. Analyzing data from the 2007 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we estimate a series of OLS regression models to examine the public's environmental policy attitudes. Results. We find stronger public support for government action to address pollution issues than resources issues, and stronger support for local and national pollution abatement than dealing with global problems. We also find that Republicans and ideological conservatives are less likely to support further government effort to address the environment, and that more trusting individuals are more favorable to government action to address pollution and global issues. Conclusion. Environmental policy attitudes vary by the nature of the issue; however, political ideology and partisan affiliation are consistent predictors of preferences across issues, even when controlling for an individual's level of trust in government.

Scholars have long argued that state legislative professionalism, or the provision of staff, legislator salary, and session length, has behavioral incentives for legislators and implications for legislative capacity. Scant attention, however, has been devoted to public attitudes on the provision of these legislative resources. Using survey data on preferences for features associated with a citizen legislature versus a professional legislature, we examine the contours of public attitudes on professionalism and test models on the factors associated with these attitudes. Results suggest partisanship, trust, and approval of the local delegation matter, but the factors differ by the legislative professionalism of the respondent's state and for low versus high knowledge citizens.