THE POLITICS OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT: MONITORING EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN SIX STATES

Legislative oversight traditionally has been viewed as a rational tool for achieving democratic accountability. Legislators conduct oversight to ensure consistency between implementation and official policy directives. The major theme of this paper is t h a t oversight is best understood as an integral part of legislative-administrative politics. By examining how six states monitored recent educational reforms, the author finds that legislators conducted oversight in ways that minimized time commitments and maximized political benefits.
The paper concludes that legislative interest in controlling implementation often was secondary to political considerations. Oversight, therefore, may not really be effective as an accountability tool.     

THE POLITICS OF LEGISLATIVE CURTAILMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE RULEMAKING: OBSTACLES TO POLICE-PATROL OVERSIGHT

State Administrative Procedure Acts (APAs), like their federal counterpart, attempt to even the odds that citizens’rights will be protected as administrative agencies exercise quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. North Carolina is one of several states which has recently attempted to constrain agency power in rulemaking and complaint adjudication. This is a case study of policy outcomes attained by the North Carolina General Assembly in its 1985 revision of the state's APA. Why did some state legislators’efforts to assume stricter oversight over administrative rulemaking fall far short of the kind of control and accountability they aimed for? We explore three types of obstacles to APA reform encountered in North Carolina. Each is relevant to other states. First, direct surveillance or “police-patrol” techniques of legislative oversight impose undesirable political costs on legislators. Second, there is an absence of (or categorical precedence is against) the adoption of such techniques. Third, executive-legislative branch conflict and complex separation of powers issues arise when state legislatures attempt to curtail administrative rulemaking in significantly new and restrictive ways.     

AGENDA-SETTING BY STATE LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUSES: POLICY PRIORITIES AND FACTORS OF SUCCESS

As their representation in legislative chambers has increased, black state legislators have organized into caucuses to maximize their policy influence. These caucuses act as policy entrepreneurs in initiating and advancing minority policy goals. The North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus is il- lustrative of an emerging force in half the states in moving minority policy issues from the systemic to the formal legislative agenda. Using the 1987 North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus as the research setting, supple- mented with selective data on other state caucuses, this article offers insights into the types of policy initiatives state legislative black caucuses advance. Also, situational and political factors that may foster successful agenda-setting are explored.     

EDUCATING BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY ABOUT DISASTERS: LEGISLATIVE PROBLEMS IN THE ADOPTION OF MODIFIED LENDING TERMS BY HOME MORTGAGE LENDERS

The regulation of home mortgage-lending is another strategy for mitigating the danger of natural disaster through such regulation. Property owners could be made aware of the dangers posed to their property and required to share the risk of damage by purchasing subsidized insurance. This strategy, however, has not been utilized to an optimal degree in mitigating site specific geologic hazards due to legal barriers. Nevertheless, such barriers are not insurmountable and are amenable to legal remedies.