Download Setting Course: A Congressional Management Guide

Staffing
And underscoring the things you learned last
Friday in Section
Personal Staff Positions
• Washington Staff
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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
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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
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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
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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:
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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 changes
5. Determine variable and fixed costs
6. Critically review major allocations
7. 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 5: Reward High
Performing Staff
Step 4: Follow Up to
Prepare Each
Staffer for the
Upcoming Year
Step 1: Establish
Performance Goals for
Each Staff
Step 2: Provide
Feedback and
Coaching During the
Year
Step 3: Conduct Formal
Evaluations
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 frontpage 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 & Extremism
1900-2000
14
Leaders More Moderate than Party Caucus
Leaders More Extreme than Party Caucus
12
Frequency
10
8
Majority Party
Leadership Teams
(n=50)
6
Minority Party
Leadership Teams
(n=50)
4
2
0
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
55%
60%
65%
70%
75%
80%
85%
90%
Percent of Party Caucus more Moderate than Party Leadership Team
Average DW-NOMINATE scores for 100 leadership teams (two per Congress). Leadership teams include Speakers, Party Leaders, Chief Whips, and Conference Chairs.
95%
100%
Leadership Progressions,
Percentage of Party Caucus more Moderate than Legislator
1900-2000
House
Senate
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)
Not Currently Holding a
Leadership Position
Leadership Extremism Over a Career,
Percentage of Party Caucus more Moderate than Legislator,
1900-2000
House
Senate
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
Member Never Held a
Leadership Position
How a Bill Becomes a Law
(or at least what we teach, but it’s not
so simple)
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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
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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
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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