NCSL Podcasts

Health care costs in the U.S. over the last 20 years have grown faster than the cost of other goods and services. Commercial health care costs, which include about half the health care market, have grown faster than Medicaid and Medicare spending.   Our guest on this episode is Alyssa Vangeli, a senior consultant with Bailit Health, a consulting firm in Massachusetts where she works with states to...

On this episode, Tim Storey sat down with Bruce Mehlman, founder of Mehlman Consulting, a D.C-based bipartisan lobbying firm whose clients include Walmart, AARP, Boeing and the Mayo Clinic. Mehlman’s perspective is also shaped by his experience as an assistant secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration and time in private industry. Mehlman has a savvy, insider’s take on how Washing...

Summary: Sometimes, the aisle lawmakers work across isn’t the one that separates the two parties. It’s the divide between rural and urban. That’s what happened in Colorado when urban voters narrowly passed a plan to reintroduce the endangered gray wolf. Lawmakers from both parties representing the rural part of the state—where ranchers and hunting outfitters feared livestock and business losses wi...

The ability to forecast how an infectious disease like COVID-19 will behave is a critical tool for public health officials. On this podcast, we sat down with Dr. Roni Rosenfeld, a computer scientist and a leader in the field of disease forecasting. Rosenfeld leads the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and also works with Carnegie Mellon’s Delphi Research Group...

Safeguarding energy systems from cyberattacks in a growing concern in the U.S. The Colonial pipeline ransomware attack a few years ago and some other high-profile incidents caught the public’s attention. But as the guests on this podcast point out, energy systems are facing an increasing number of attacks.  On the podcast to discuss the situation are Lynn Constantini, a cybersecurity expert with t...

Taylor Swift is making a big splash on stages this year, and also in state legislatures. That's because ticket sales devolved into online chaos, highlighting the problem of bots buying up tickets faster than humanly possible and putting them up for resale at exorbitant prices. The snafu became the catalyst for 24 states and Puerto Rico to consider 70 bills addressing ticket sales and fees. In this...

Reid Wilson is the founder and editor of Pluribus News, a 10-month-old news platform that focuses on the states and the policy trends that start there. On this episode, host Tim Storey sat down with Wilson to talk about how states are tackling some of their toughest issues: broadband, infrastructure projects, housing policy and artificial intelligence. Wilson started out his career as an assistant...

Improv comedy may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of public policy, but Tane Danger suggests maybe it should be. Danger is the keynote speaker at this year's professional development seminar for two legislative staff groups—the Research Editorial, Legal and Committee Staff (RELACS) and the Legislative Research Librarians (LRL). The meeting is Sept. 19-22 in Minneapolis and...

The 911 system was created in the U.S. more than 50 years ago to provide people with a single number to call in an emergency. Changes in technology have created enormous challenges for the system, which now receives more than 80% of its 240 million calls annually from cellphones and about 500,000 texts.  On this episode, we sat down with Brian Tegtmeyer, the National 911 Program Coordinator. The p...

Host Tim Storey’s guest on this episode is Lou Jacobson, a senior correspondent with PolitiFact and a longtime reporter with extensive experience covering politics and policy at the state and federal level. Jacobson is among the most astute observers of our political process, especially in the states. He proudly notes that he has filed stories from 49 states and 43 state capitols.  Storey sat down...

The charitable nonprofit sector of the economy is substantial, employing about 10% of the workforce and contributing about 6% of GDP. To better understand how charitable nonprofits work with legislatures and the states, we sat down with David Thompson, vice president of public policy for the National Council of Nonprofits, the nation’s largest network of nonprofit organizations.  Thompson explaine...

As the pandemic raged during 2020, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, were required by law to team up on the question of whether to postpone the election. They went much further, with bipartisan support from the Legislature, and instituted a long window for voting in a state that in modern times had only allowed voting on Election Day, with...

Every state has rules governing interactions among legislators, legislative staff and lobbyists, whether those lobbyists represent business interests, nonprofit groups and others. The rules have evolved over the past few decades and are often being updated.  On this episode, three experts on lobbying and compliance with ethics rules sat down to discuss how ethics rules have evolved and how attitud...

Redistricting of state and congressional legislative districts happens every decade following the census. But once those maps are drawn and implemented, there are still ongoing court cases and state legislation that affect redistricting. Just in recent weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two significant redistricting cases.  For this podcast, the guest is Ben Williams from NCSL, an expert on re...

Darcy Luoma, a coach and consultant, will speak at the Legislative Staff Breakfast at NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Indianapolis in August. Before founding her consulting business, Luoma had extensive experience working on Capitol Hill, working on two presidential campaigns and as a senior adviser to a governor.  She has also worked with state legislators and staff. Luoma discussed her Thoughtfully...

ATA Episode 7 SUMMARY The Colorado River is a key source of water in Arizona, and it’s dwindling in the face of a mega-drought now in its second decade. Arizona lawmakers are working across the aisle to find new water supplies for the arid state, where some farming areas get only three inches of rain a year.

Even before the pandemic, there was a growing shortage of registered nurses in the majority of states. From 2020 to 2021, during the height of the pandemic, more than 100,000 registered nurses left the workforce, the largest exodus in at least 40 years. Adding to the problem, in 2019, nursing schools turned away about 80,000 qualified applicants because of too few faculty, clinical sites and prece...

On this episode, host Tim Storey dives into the world of artificial intelligence with Alex Wirth, the co-founder and CEO of Quorum, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs tech platform that organizations use to manage engagement, launch advocacy campaigns and keep track of legislation and policy trends in Washington, all 50 states, thousands of cities and even in Brussels. Storey talked with Wirt...

As many as 56 million private sector workers in the U.S. lack access to a retirement savings plan through their jobs. The subsequent lack of retirement savings could cost federal and state governments hundreds of billions of dollars by 2040. Joining the podcast is John Scott, the director of the Retirement Savings Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Scott explained the scope of the retirement sa...

Millions of Americans experience mental health problems and frequently experience challenges finding treatment, including in the workplace. That’s the context for national task force— Mental Health Matters: National Task Force on Workforce Mental Health Policy—funded by the U.S. Department of Labor working with NCSL and the Council of State Governments (CSG). The guests on this podcast are Colorad...

Until recently Alabama's constitution still had racist language from the original document written in 1901, led by an avowed white supremacist. Though the provisions weren't operable today, plenty of people have wanted them gone for years. But it wasn't easy to revise a constitution that is the longest such document in the world, one that has nearly 1,000 amendments. Still, the state legislature r...

On this episode, Host Tim Storey talks with Cedric King, a retired army master sergeant, speaker, and author, who will be the keynote speaker at NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Indianapolis in August. King joined the army in 1995, eventually rising to a leadership role in the elite Army Rangers. On his third combat deployment in Afghanistan in 2012, King was leading a patrol in a small village when h...

This is Legislative Staff Week 2023 at NCSL, and we sat down with two staffers to talk about why people come to work in the legislature and why they stay.  Our guests are Anne Sappenfield, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Council and NCSL staff chair, and Heshani Wijemanne, assistant secretary of the California Senate. Sappenfield began working in the legislature in the mid-‘90s while Wijeman...

Host Tim Storey’s guest for this episode is Leonor Ehling, the executive director of the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University. She is also co-director of the Legislative Staff Management Institute (LSMI), which is a flagship program that NCSL produces jointly with Sacramento State and the University of Southern California. They discussed LSMI and the hundreds of legislative...

Young students in New Mexico made history when they convinced lawmakers that the smell of roasting chilis should be the state's official aroma. They researched, wrote letters, testified in hearings and celebrated when the Governor signed the bill at their school. It's the only state with a designated aroma, and it was the first time students were the force behind a new law, with the help of Senato...