Staffing

And underscoring the things you learned last Friday in Section

Personal Staff Positions

• Washington Staff– Caseworker, 12.2 yrs, 50k– Chief of Staff, 10.2, 95k– Federal Grants Coordinator, 8.2, 50k– Legislative Director, 8.0, 75k– Scheduler, 6.6, 45k– Systems Manager, 6.3, 40k– Correspondence Manager, 5.7, 38k– Press Secretary, 3.5, 55k– Legislative Assistant, 3.3, 45k– Legislative Correspondent, 1.6, 30k

District Staff Positions

• District Director, 6.1yrs, 75k

• Caseworker, 5.6yrs, 39k

• District Scheduler, 4.4, 42k

• Field Representative, 4.3, 45k

• Clerk, Secretary, 3.1, 31k

Strategic Planning

• Learning how to strategically say “NO”• Sensible, flexible set of overall goals• Provides purpose and direction for office• Cannot address many questions without

articulating your strategic plan– First year budget– Legislative agenda– Scheduling objectives– Press plan– Job Descriptions

Budgeting & Financial Management

• Annual Size: $1.2 million for Reps.; $2.2-$3.7 million for Senators

• Decide on:– Staff number– Salary for each staffer– Number of district offices– Type of computer system to operate– Travel– Mail– Professional training

Avoiding Financial Problems

• Don’t spend on the wrong things– Consider how purchase affects long-term

goals

• Don’t spend more than you have– Member is personally liable for excess

expenditures– May need to forego later expenditures

• Don’t give the media reason to scrutinize– Expenditure reports are public information

Budgeting Toward Your Goals

1. Note any changes to your strategic plan or office priorities

2. Brainstorm: What resources will it take to accomplish the revised priorities

3. Look at last year’s budget with an eye toward surprises

4. Take note of the rules changes5. Determine variable and fixed costs6. Critically review major allocations7. Build a new month-by-month budget reflecting

changes

Financial Procedures• Written Office Policies

– Avoid questions and inconsistency, write policies on paper and provide to staff

• Accounting System– Record Keeping: track paperwork– Payment Processing: determine who can authorize

expenditures, set rules for travel spending, establish a good relationship with the Finance Office employees

– Reconciliation: monthly financial statements– Auditing: review financial expenditures

• Monthly Financial Review

Implementing Performance Management for Staff

Step 1: Establish Performance Goals for Each Staff

Step 2: Provide Feedback and Coaching During the Year

Step 3: Conduct Formal Evaluations

Step 4: Follow Up to Prepare Each Staffer for the Upcoming Year

Step 5: Reward High Performing Staff

Managing Ethics

• Gray Area: Gap between technical compliance and behaving in a manner consistent with the public’s expectations for public officials

• Institutional: House Committee on Standards & Official Conduct, Senate Select Committee on Ethics

• In practice: Ethics reviewed on the front-page or the evening news

Ethics Lesson

“An office that never proofreads letters runs a high risk of typographical errors. Similarly, an office that does not give adequate attention to managing ethics runs a high risk of ethical lapse.”

Power and Leadership

• Need to distinguish between authority and “leadership.”

• Sources of authority are often institutional, but they can also be moral.

• Leadership and a willingness to be led are clearly related,

• But a willingness to be led varies based on time and circumstances, so successful leadership styles will vary based on time and circumstances, too.

Two common ways of thinking about Leadership

• Transformational Leadership

• Transactional Leadership

Diagrams of Power/Leadership

• Leadership Diagram: http://clerk.house.gov/members/leadership_info.html

• The Median Voter

• The Committees Relative to the Floor

House Leadership Teams & Extremism1900-2000

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95% 100%

Percent of Party Caucus more Moderate than Party Leadership Team

Fre

qu

ency

Average DW-NOMINATE scores for 100 leadership teams (two per Congress). Leadership teams include Speakers, Party Leaders, Chief Whips, and Conference Chairs.

Leaders More Moderate than Party Caucus Leaders More Extreme than Party Caucus

Minority Party Leadership Teams

(n=50)

Majority Party Leadership Teams

(n=50)

Leadership Progressions,Percentage of Party Caucus more Moderate than Legislator

1900-2000

House Senate

Not Currently Holding a Leadership Position

49.9% 50.0%

Conference or Caucus Chair

57.9 (na)

Party Whip 62.3 54.4

Majority or Minority Party Leader

63.2 57.6

Speaker of the House 65.8 (na)

Leadership Extremism Over a Career,Percentage of Party Caucus more Moderate than Legislator,

1900-2000

House Senate

Member Never Held a Leadership Position

49.8% 50.0%

Career Before Election to Leadership Team

61.3 57.6

While Serving on Leadership Team

61.1 55.8

Career after Leaving Leadership Team

58.1 52.6

How a Bill Becomes a Law(or at least what we teach, but it’s not

so simple)• Introduction & Referral• Committee Hearings• Committee Markups• Committee Reports• Schedule Floor Action (Rules, UCRs)• Floor Votes• Conference Committee• Conference Report & Floor Vote• Presidential Signature (or Veto)

Categories of Bills

• Bills Lacking Wide Support– Introduced with no expectation of passage– Die in committee

• Noncontroversial Bills– Expedited– Passed on Floor with little debate

• Major Legislation– Executive Branch Bills– Influential Members’ Bills– Must Pass Legislation

Bill Referral Procedure

• Receives a number: H.R. in House; S in Senate

• Speaker assigns bill to committee– Parliamentarians make assignment on behalf

of Speaker

• Referrals typically routine but committees clash over turf

• Representative can only appeal assignment in instances of erroneous assignment

Legislative Drafting/Referral Strategy

• Draft bill in such a way that it is referred to a favorable committee

• Technique 1: word it ambiguously so the Presiding Officer has options

• Technique 2: amend existing laws over which a committee has jurisdiction

• Know precedents regarding bill referral• Parliamentarians provide advice to staff

about referrals

Referral to Several Committees

• Committees often share jurisdiction– Formal– Informal

• Speaker allowed to refer bill to multiple committees since 1975– Joint– Sequential– Split

• May create ad hoc committees to deal with bills that overlap jurisdiction of several committees

• 1995: Joint referrals abolished, but sequential and split are allowed

Consideration in Committee

• Options– Consider and Report the Bill

• With amendments or recommendation• Without amendments or recommendation

– Rewrite bill entirely– Reject bill– Refuse to consider bill

Consideration in Committee

• Whole Committee may consider bill• Often Chair sends bill to subcommittee

– Public hearings or No Public Hearings– Approve, rewrite, amend or block bill– Mark Up: consider the bill line by line– Report bill to full Committee

• Whole Committee may repeat subcommittee’s procedures in whole or part

• If bill passes Committee, it is sent for consideration for Floor debate with a Report (statement of committee action)

Role of Committee Chair

• Controls committees legislative agenda• Refers bills to subcommittees• Controls committee finances• Hires/Fires committee staff• May refuse to consider a bill• May refuse to recognize member for questions• Used to be determined by Seniority• Now subject to majority selection within

caucuses

Hearings

• Format– Traditional, Panel, Field, Joint, High Tech

• Purpose– Public record of committee members’ and interest

groups’ positions– Orchestrated– Testimony solicited and taken

• Timing– Chairs may delay or schedule hearings to affect

outcome of legislation

Markup

• Line-by-Line review of legislation by committee members

• May implement formal or informal procedures

• House markups occur at subcommittee and full committee levels usually

• 1/3 membership needed for quorum, majority needed to report bill

Markup Procedures

• Usually in open session

• Issues decided by voice vote or show of hands

• Proxy: allowing a member to cast a vote for an absent member– Banned by Republican Majority– Modified rule allows Chairs to reschedule vote

when they are certain of majority support

Report

• Written statement of committee action that accompanies a bill that has passed committee– Describes purpose and scope of bill– Explains committee revisions– Outlines proposes changes to existing laws– Outlines views of Executive Branch agencies

affected– Committee members may file Minority,

Supplemental or additional views

Bypassing Committees• Committee Power has diminished

compared to Party Power

• Techniques to Bypass– Partisan Task Forces– Riders to Appropriations Bills– House Rules Committee can send bills to floor

without previous committee consideration

• Reasons– Time, Partisanship, Committee Gridlock,

Electoral Salience, Consensus

“The Nature of Committee Jurisdiction” from Turf Wars

-David C. King

Committee Borders

“Jurisdictions are, at once, both rigid and flexible.”

• Sources of Jurisdictional Legitimacy– Statutory Law– Common Law

Statutory Jurisdictions

• Easy to quantify, rarely change

• Based on 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act– Supposed to get rid of jurisdictional fluidity

• Previous statutory jurisdictions were imprecise– “committee boundaries were like

gerrymandered electoral districts”

Common Law Jurisdictions

• Precedents are KEY

• Decision are made by Parliamentarians routinely

• Typically affect discreet bills and not wide issue areas

• The closer a bill is to committee turf increase its chances of being referred to that committee

Policy Entrepreneurs

“Jurisdictionally ambiguous bills arise in areas that are not yet clearly defined and within issues areas that are undergoing redefinition.”

• See turf as malleable

• Strike claim on turf as they are motivated by policy or election