NCSL Podcasts

For today's episode, we're podcasting from NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Boston where the organization is celebrating its 50th anniversary. We're positing podcasts Aug. 4, 5 and 6 with some voices from the Summit. Today our guests are  Utah Sen. Wayne Harper, the president of NCSL,  and John Snyder, the Transportation Committee staff administrator for the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission an...

This episode is the fourth and final show in a series celebrating and exploring the 50th anniversary of NCSL.  On this episode, the focus is on legislators. Along with Senator Lee, two other lawmakers offer their perspective on the role of state legislator. Also joining the discussion are Tim Storey, the CEO of NCSL, two political scientists with deep knowledge of state legislatures and an NCSL re...

Nearly 60 million people in the U.S. fall into the broad category of independent workers. Those include contract, temporary and gig workers. Their jobs do not fall neatly into employer-connected benefit systems, so policymakers increasingly are exploring benefits that are instead attached to the worker.  Several states have enacted legislation allowing portable benefits to be set up in their state...

Our focus on this episode is wildlife crossings, underpasses or bridges built just for animals. Millions of animals are killed by vehicles annually on U.S. roads, ranging from large mammals like deer to smaller creatures like squirrels and birds.  Animal-vehicle collisions result in about 200 human deaths and 26,000 injuries each year. Joining the podcast to discuss the issue are Matt Skroch, dire...

Electrical co-ops and public power utilities provide service to about a 100 million Americans, including many rural parts of the nation and counties with persistent poverty. They have many of the same concerns about both physical and cybersecurity as investor-owned utilities, but different challenges in terms of terrain, staffing and resources. On this episode, we focus on those challenges and how...

A core tenet of the U.S. legal system is that an accused person must be competent to stand trial, which means a defendant can understand the charges against them and assist their lawyer in preparing a defense. In practice, defendants who need to be evaluated for competency often spend long periods in confinement because of a shortage of behavioral health services. When they are finally released, i...

Our focus on this episode is the behavioral health workforce. More than a third of the U.S. population lives in areas with shortages of psychologists, counselors and social workers, and nearly two-thirds of shortage areas are rural. Those workforce shortages occur during a period when many experts, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have concluded we have a mental h...

Biosimilars, a group of drugs that are similar to biologic drugs, which are medications produced using living organisms and are often used to treat complex medical conditions. Biosimilars were first introduced to the prescription drug market about a decade ago and as of March, the FDA had approved scores of products that may be used interchangeably for some of the most expensive brand-name biologi...

Defiance is often thought as a negative trait, but as our guest on this podcast explains, it can actually be a positive force both in the workplace and in our lives generally.  Dr. Sunita Sah, a professor at Cornell and an organizational psychologist, is the author of “Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes,” published earlier this year. Sah’s book explores why people say yes and go alo...

Oral health care for children is required in every state under Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Plan. But dental coverage for adults is optional. And while nearly every state provides some level of coverage for adults, what is covered and who is covered varies widely from state to state and even within states. Our first guest on this podcast is Ian Hedges, the director of Medicaid and M...

This is one in a series of podcasts celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National Conference of State Legislatures. On this episode we focus on legislative staff, the approximately 30,000 professionals who keep the trains running at this nation’s legislatures. While legislative staff outnumber legislators by more than 4 to 1, their role is often poorly understood by the public and even by their...

A new book published jointly by NCSL and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission is aimed at serving as a resource for election administrators, secretaries of state, state legislators and legislative staff. It will be available soon in digital form on the NCSL website.  “Helping America Vote: Election Administration in the United States” was the focus of this podcast and features a discussion with...

Medicaid is a program jointly funded by the federal and state governments. It provides health care coverage to nearly 80 million people, primarily those with low incomes, people who are living with disabilities or are in long-term care.  On this episode we discussed the nuts and bolts of how Medicaid is financed and how states are handling some new challenges in the post-pandemic world. The pandem...

The Women’s Legislative Network of NCSL is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Every female state legislator in the 50 states, territories and the District of Columbia belong to the Women’s Legislative Network. The network sponsors informational briefings, hosts skill building workshops for women and opportunities for female legislators to interact.  Senator Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Democrat of Col...

Since 2008, Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at MIT, has conducted the Survey of the Performance of American Elections, asking voters in every state and Washington, D.C., about their voting experience after every presidential and midterm election. His report from that survey offers a window into how Americans voted—not who they voted for— and if they were satisfied with their...

Power-sharing in tied legislative chambers is typically no picnic. But about 15 years ago in Oregon when the House faced a historic tie, things went so smoothly people from both sides of the aisle are still talking about it today.

At the start of each year, we sit down with NCSL CEO Tim Storey to discuss the most important issues facing state legislatures in the upcoming session.  While the November election did not bring big changes for state legislatures—there was minimal turnover at both the legislative and executive levels—the big change in the federal government may mean significant changes in the state-federal relatio...

Nuclear energy plays a significant role in our national energy supply picture and is seen by some as an invaluable piece of a future clean energy system. About 20% of the nation's energy supply comes from nuclear generation at more than 90 reactors and some experts believe the nation needs another 200 gigawatts of electricity from nuclear generation in the next 25 years. On this podcast, we spoke...

About 1,000 new lawmakers were elected in November’s election and will be joining their legislatures in the new year. Every legislature is different, of course, but we asked two veteran legislators to offer a little advice on a few issues that likely apply in most legislatures. Sen. Karen Keiser (D) from Washington state and Rep. Walker Thomas (R) from Kentucky shared some of their experiences as...

Massive wildfires in the U.S. have caused widespread damage in recent decades. The Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas this year, the Marshall Fire in Colorado in 2021 and a series of fires in California in 2020 that were the worst in the state's history are just a few examples. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has spent more than a billion dollars annually to fight wildfires, including $3.5 billion...

Recent polls find that many Americans have declining confidence in higher education, in large part because of the levels of student debt, the cost of college and concerns about uneven student outcomes.  To better understand these challenges, NCSL formed a Task Force on Higher Education Affordability and Student Outcomes in 2022. The group has now issued its report. The co-chairs of the task force...

On this episode, we sat down with two election experts from NCSL to discuss the state legislative races and statewide ballot measures in the Nov. 5 election.  Ben Williams, NCSL’s associate director of Elections and Redistricting, discussed the 5,508 legislative seats on ballots in 44 states, more than 78% of all legislative seats nationwide. He also explained how the outcomes could affect legisla...

This is one of the series of shows this year and next reflecting on the 50th anniversary of NCSL. For this episode, our focus is the legislative institution and how today’s legislatures evolved over the last 400 years. Guests include historian Pev Squire, who sketches out how legislatures developed both from the colonial assemblies and from the territorial legislatures. We also spoke with three pe...

Artificial intelligence, most broadly thought of as the use of computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, is being employed in a wide array of ways, from self-driving cars to health care. But concerns about the potential misuse and unintended consequences of AI is prompting legislatures around the country to study the issue and in many cases, pass legislation. In 2...

A class of drugs that are used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity are becoming increasingly popular as a weight-loss drug. However, the high cost of these GLP-1 drugs—the annual list price is around $12,000—has posed a dilemma for states as they decide whether to cover the drugs in their own state health plans, Medicaid and possibly require private insurers to cover the drugs.  On thi...