The effect of Democratic wins in last year’s state-level elections is starting to show as state legislatures line up their trophies and begin to shutter their doors for the season.
Democratic gains in statehouses were instrumental in paving the way this year for the country’s first “living wage” law in Maryland, civil unions for gay couples in New Hampshire, and condemnations of President Bush’s policies in Iraq.
Stateline.org has culled the accomplishments of the first 29 legislatures to wrap up their work for 2007. Besides spotting ways that citizens’ lives are being changed by the shift in political winds last year, what also stands out are ways the states are ahead of federal policy on issues from health care to immigration to global warming. Policy-makers in Washington, D.C., may get more attention, but the action is in the states.
There is one way states are grabbing national attention — by upending the 2008 presidential primary calendar to give their voters a greater say in choosing candidates. 2007 will be remembered as the year states broke ranks with the national political parties, with 17 turning Feb. 5, 2008, into “Super-duper” or “Tsunami Tuesday” and Florida injecting new tumult by leaping ahead to Jan. 29, behind only Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wyoming.
Democrats make their mark
In the first legislative session since Democrats won control of 28 governorships (up from 22) and took the upper hand in 23 statehouses (four more than last year), the party is exerting its newfound power and enacting social and energy policies that had fallen to the wayside under GOP control. For example:
• In New Hampshire, where Democrats are in control of both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since just after the Civil War, lawmakers approved a historic civil union bill that gives same-sex couples the same state-level rights as under traditional marriage laws. The Legislature also voted to repeal the nation’s strictest parental-notification law for teenage girls seeking abortions.
• In Iowa, where Democrats now control both the Legislature and governor’s mansion for the first time in 42 years, lawmakers raised the minimum wage and banned discrimination based on sexual orientation — issues that prior to the elections got bottled up in a Republican-controlled House. Lawmakers also approved freshman Gov. Chet Culver’s proposal to increase cigarette taxes by $1 a pack to pay for health programs.
• Colorado, which has a new Democratic governor with Bill Ritter and a larger Democratic majority in the Statehouse, made gay adoption legal and outlawed workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, measures previously blocked by term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Owens.
• Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, signed into law the country’s only state “living wage” requiring $8.50 to $11.30 per hour for employees of state contractors, a measure that O’Malley’s Republican predecessor, Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., had vetoed. In addition, Maryland passed a smoking ban, also opposed by Ehrlich, one of only two incumbent governors — both Republican — defeated last year.
Democrats will try to add to their gains this November, but it won’t be easy. All three gubernatorial races this year — in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi — are in the South, the only region where Republicans made gains in state offices in 2006. All legislative seats in Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia also are on the ballot this year.
Weighing in on the war
This year states appear to be asserting themselves more with Congress and on issues that are not traditionally the purview of states, such as war.
As the country entered its fourth year of an increasingly unpopular war, Vermont’s Legislature became the first in the country to pass a nonbinding resolution calling for an immediate and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but stopped short of seeking the impeachment of President Bush.
Led largely by Democrats, 15 states followed suit, either passing nonbinding resolutions in one or both chambers or sending letters to Congress denouncing this year’s surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, with some also calling to bring U.S troops home, according to the Progressive States Network, which lobbies for state policies. California, which is still in session, could become the first state to ask voters to call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq under a ballot measure the state Senate approved in June.
In a direct challenge to the federal government on homeland security, a smattering of states are thumbing their nose at a federal overhaul of driver’s licenses that states complain sticks them with the $14 billion tab. New Hampshire, Montana, Oklahoma and Washington state are refusing to comply with the 2005 Real ID Act, aimed at making state-issued driver’s licenses more secure and keeping them out of the hands of terrorists and illegal immigrants.
States also are increasingly frustrated with the Bush administration’s foot-dragging on global warming. Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to sue the federal government if he doesn’t get the green light to go ahead with the state’s landmark law slashing greenhouse gases from cars. Maryland this year became the 12th state to mandate California’s stringent auto-emissions standards while Washington state enacted a measure similar to California’s 2006 pioneering law to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and other industries.
Citing global warming, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Oregon set the country’s highest goals for producing electricity from environment-friendly renewable sources such as wind and solar energy — 25 percent by 2025. Colorado and New Mexico this year doubled previous requirements of clean electricity to 20 percent by 2020. Twenty-three states now have renewable-energy standards.
Health care, immigration take center stage
Newly re-elected governors kicked off 2007 by unveiling ambitious health-care proposals to make insurance available to all children or all residents in their states. Universal health care proposals from California’s Schwarzenegger, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, are still pending, but the sticky question of paying for the plans still could unravel the efforts.
Freshman New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, however, succeeded in pushing through his health-care package that he figures will provide coverage for all 400,000 children currently uninsured. The plan makes New York’s State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) the most generous in the country by expanding S-CHIP eligibility to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, up from 250 percent. S-CHIP provides subsidized health insurance to families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Missouri, Oklahoma and Washington are among states that also expanded their S-CHIP programs this year.
Using a different approach, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, like Iowa’s Culver, successfully pressed his Statehouse to hike cigarette taxes by 44 cents a pack with the new money to pay for health insurance for thousands of uninsured.
Congress and the White House once again are seriously debating illegal immigration, but state lawmakers continue to make their own policy. State lawmakers so far have enacted 57 new statutes in 18 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Oklahoma passed one of the nation’s most far-reaching measures to crack down on illegal immigration — similar to laws passed last year in Colorado and Georgia. The new law restricts state benefits, allows police to arrest illegal immigrants, makes it a crime to harbor them and requires companies with state contracts to verify that their employees are U.S. citizens. Texas created a Border Security Council to tighten security and curb illegal immigration.
Among other new immigration laws, Wyoming made it a crime to use false citizenship documents. Arkansas prohibited state agencies from doing business with companies that employ illegal immigrants, and Maryland launched a program to encourage immigrants to learn English and become U.S. citizens. Social issues also dominated statehouses. Virginia, home of the former Confederate Capitol, became the first state to express remorse for its past support of slavery. Alabama, Maryland and North Carolina followed suit.
The year started out with a flurry of legislatures debating whether schoolgirls should be vaccinated against the virus that causes cervical cancer. When the dust settled, however, only Virginia acted to require middle school girls to be inoculated against human papillomaviruses, or HPV, but gave parents the OK to opt out. And in a shift toward teaching contraception along with abstinence, Colorado Iowa and Washington passed laws requiring schools that teach sex education to ensure the information is “medically accurate” or “science-based” — code words for a comprehensive program.
Also on the school front, Utah passed the nation’s broadest statewide program to provide vouchers to pay for private schools, and Georgia became the 13th state to allow the use of public funds to send students to private schools when it approved state-funded scholarships for disabled children.
Pocketbook issues are popular
After a record 17 states boosted their minimum wage rates last year, Congress this spring took the cue and raised wages nationwide for the lowest-paid workers to $7.25 an hour over two years. The rate trumps many states’ levels. However, a law enacted this year in New Mexico will yield a heftier $7.50 hourly rate in 2009.
Washington became only the second state after California to require five weeks of paid family leave for parents of newborn or adopted children but left it up to a commission to figure out how employers will pay for it.
Property-tax relief was hot despite a cooling housing market with action in Indiana, Montana, New York, North Dakota and Vermont. A property-tax plan from Florida’s Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, failed to get enough votes in the Legislature during its regular session and will be the focus of a June 15 special session. Three of the 15 states that still tax groceries acted to ease the burden, either by scrapping it altogether, like Wyoming, reducing it, like Arkansas and Utah, or offering larger tax credits, like Hawaii. But efforts on this front failed in Mississippi and Idaho.
Record-high gas prices put the kibosh on several proposals to raise the state gas tax. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, both Republicans, vetoed transportation packages that would have been paid for in part with hikes in the states’ gas taxes. Maine Gov. John Baldacci, a Democrat, also rejected a legislative proposal to raise taxes on gasoline sales, despite calls to boost funds for road construction and repair.
States continue to toy with the idea of leasing their turnpikes and lotteries for upfront cash, but so far this year politicians are cautious. A backlash in Indiana against leasing the Indiana Toll Road helped Democrats take control of the House in last year’s elections and helped defeat Daniels’ initiatives this year to build two new toll roads and lease the state lottery. Texas legislators placed a two-year moratorium on privately run toll roads, a key initiative of Republican Gov. Rick Perry. California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan are among states still in session considering privatization plans.
Big tax-increase proposals from Democratic governors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all were roundly criticized by their fellow Democrats and appear doomed. All three states are still in session.
On the public-health front, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and New Mexico joined 16 other states to prohibit smoking in workplaces, including bars and restaurants, while Virginia and South Dakota rejected the bans. In Idaho, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, vetoed a measure that would have included bowling alleys in the state’s smoking ban.
And Florida, which played such a pivotal role in the 2000 elections, scrapped its touch-screen voting machines for a paper-based voting system at the behest of its freshman GOP governor, Crist.
In a separate article, Stateline.org has compiled a state-by-state synopsis of 2007 accomplishments for those legislatures that have adjourned or completed their budgets. Eight states operate year-round.
Unlike some years, all 50 statehouses meet in 2007. New Hampshire is expected to complete work July 1. Its summary will appear the next time this wrap-up is updated. Nevada, which adjourned June 5, and South Carolina, which adjourned June 7, also will be part of the next version.
Staff writers John Gramlich, Eric Kelderman, Christine Vestal, Daniel C. Vock and Pauline Vu contributed to this report.
Contact Pamela M. Prah at pprah@stateline.org
Stateline.org is an independent element of the Pew Research Center and is based in Washington, DC