Few public institutions are more important than legislatures. Whether it is the U.S. Congress, a state legislature, city council, county commission or school board, legislative bodies have the power to impact citizens’ lives in profound ways. Despite their significance, some legislative bodies such as the U.S. Congress seem incapable of performing their most basic responsibilities.
When congressional approval of a two-month national budget is presented as a genuine accomplishment; when deciding not to close the government and shut down public services for millions of citizens is characterized as a victory; when important issues like tax reform and immigration remain unaddressed — one realizes how low the legislative performance bar can fall.
As citizen frustration with legislative inaction has continued to rise, public trust has plummeted. While state legislatures and local legislative bodies are not immune from performance paralysis, it is Congress, with its high visibility, where the decline of citizen trust and public approval is most evident. indicated that 66 percent of respondents rated as most knowledgeable about government thought Congress was doing a “poor or bad” job.
Congress’ job approval rating is currently about 14 percent, near an all-time low.
Public expressions of frustration with Congress and other legislative bodies might be taken with a grain of salt if the consequences were not so serious. Trust leads the public to comply with laws, pay taxes and show confidence in other ways. Conversely, a lack of trust leads, among other things, to voters limiting the power of legislatures and legislators. Term limits, tax and expenditure limitations, and ballot initiatives that bypass the legislature altogether all have foundations in declining trust in the legislative process.
Given the importance of legislative bodies, one would expect that legislative power would be balanced with a high degree of institutional public accountability. This proves not to be the case. While legislative bodies are comprised of individual legislators, public policies can only be established or amended as a result of collective action. However, the single mechanism for legislative accountability — elections — focuses exclusively on individual legislators, not the performance of the institution as a whole.
This lack of legislative institutional accountability is of more than academic interest. With individual elections as the only mechanism of legislative accountability, elected officials, quite logically, spend significant amounts of time raising money for campaigns, satisfying the most active elements of their political base, examining issues of interest to major donors, thinking about primary challenges and other matters that relate directly to election success. Legislators, like all of us, respond to what is measured. When elections are the only accountability mechanism, re-election is the focus.
Within the halls of legislatures, where a mechanism for accountability is absent, matters such as scoring political points, strengthening party positions or undercutting potential rivals can take precedence over addressing important public issues. This is not to say that legislators do not take policymaking seriously. Many do. But without an accountability process to recognize institutional accomplishment, there is little reward for making courageous political compromises to solve tough policy problems and few penalties for avoiding hard choices — except the steady erosion of public trust.
It is this troubling trend — declining public trust in legislative bodies — that led the University of Denver’s 2015 Strategic Issues Panel to examine the issue of legislative accountability. The panel concluded that legislative institutions should be assessed by the same standard to which citizens are held in their endeavors: actual performance. With this in mind, the yardstick for legislative accountability is clear: What issues have legislative leaders identified as most important, and what did the legislative body actually do about them?
The institutional accountability process identified by the panel is, in a sense, deceptively simple. The recommendation calls for legislative leaders from both parties to create a collaborative agenda that identifies the most important issues facing the nation, state or locality. It is important to note that this is a single institutional agenda, not separate party agendas. Shortly after the conclusion of the legislative session, the same leaders would publish a report describing what the legislature accomplished on each agenda item or, if no action was taken, the reasons why.
Although the process is simple, taking steps toward establishing institutional accountability could be significant. First and foremost, the legislative agenda and performance report would give citizens a basis for judging performance without requiring that they immerse themselves in legislative detail or rely on tactical blow-by-blow commentary of media pundits.
The accountability process also offers important advantages to legislators as well, providing a chance to demonstrate legislative leadership and highlight areas where legislators do work across party lines to address real problems. And, since the legislature will be judged by individuals and interest groups in any event, it gives legislative leaders an opportunity to establish a framework for assessing the institution.
The failure of legislative leaders to agree on a meaningful agenda would speak volumes. It would confirm for citizens the dysfunctional nature of the body and suggest that the legislature was unwilling or unable to address the most important issues facing the jurisdiction and its citizens. Conversely, a meaningful, agreed-upon legislative agenda would signal that the body was capable of providing leadership on important public issues. It would offer tangible evidence that legislative leaders were able to think strategically and identify important issues facing the state, nation or locality.
At the conclusion of the session, legislative leaders would issue a performance report describing actions taken on each item in the legislative agenda. For legislative leaders, the performance report would present an opportunity to inform and educate citizens about issues the legislature identified as the most important and the complexity of the legislative process.
Although the panel’s report focuses on legislatures generally (Congress, states, and local governments), it is appropriate to comment briefly on Colorado. While there are many ways to assess legislatures, Colorado gets high procedural marks for its GAVEL amendment, which encourages minority points of view to be heard, ranks first for gender parity, and is reported to have bipartisan cooperation on a good number of issues. Colorado rates about average on public trust and legislative transparency.
On balance, the Colorado legislature has a number of positive attributes and likely performs as well as, or perhaps better than, most other legislative bodies. Ultimately, however, effective legislatures should build, not weaken, public trust. In that respect, Colorado, Congress, various states and localities might be well-served by considering the panel’s straightforward approach to legislative accountability.
The simple act of creating a legislative agenda and reporting on actions taken is not a panacea for the lack of institutional accountability and declining public trust. But it is an achievable first step.
The Strategic Issues Panel report can be read at www.du.edu/issues
Jim Griesemer is a professor and dean emeritus at the University of Denver, where he directs DU’s Strategic Issues Program.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
