The Council of State Governments promotes a reasoned approach to policymaking

by

For more than 50 years, a Lexington-based organization has been quietly working to strengthen the bonds between American states.

Since the Great Depression, The Council of State Governments (CSG) has worked to “create more harmony between states,” said David Adkins, executive director and CEO of the nonprofit.

The goal of CSG, he said, is to foster cooperation and education between states while providing states with the information their elected officials need to make more informed policy decisions.

“How do we, in a non-partisan environment, bring state officials together to learn from each other and how can we provide those state officials in all three branches of government with actionable data?” Adkins asked. “We see ourselves as a research-driven, consensus-based forum in which state officials are convened to learn more about public policy.”

How the organization landed in Lexington is another story.

CSG started in 1925 as the American Legislator’s Association (ALA). The brainchild of Henry Wolcott Toll, a Colorado state senator, the ALA provided legislators with information and the opportunity to connect with their cohorts in other states. Toll believed that interstate cooperation was fundamental for states to maintain control over state issues.

In 1933, the ALA created the Council of State Governments as a national organization that would serve all three branches of state government. Within five years, it had moved into its new home in Chicago.

“CSG took from its early origins this idea that states working together actually could accomplish a great deal that did not require a federal government to intervene,” Adkins said. “In 1933, a long-distance phone call would have been very expensive. There weren’t interstate highways. There wasn’t much of a chance for state officials to have an opportunity to meet. And so, here came this idea for inter-governmental and state cooperation that we could be better and do better as a nation by having stronger states that learned from each other.”

In 1967, however, the leadership of CSG decided it was time for a move.

“The leadership of CSG said, ‘Let’s see if somebody else wants to host the headquarters and a number of states submitted proposals,” Adkins said. “Kentucky’s was accepted. It agreed to build a building that was opened in 1969, which is still the headquarters that we occupy today. That’s how we came to Kentucky. It’s the first question I always get from people. ‘Why is The Council of State Governments headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky?’ Basically, because Kentucky was kind enough to build us a building.”

From its headquarters off Iron Works Pike and across from the Kentucky Horse Park Campground, the organization’s more than 50 employees work to provide elected officials with leadership training, provide data and information on policy issues facing states, and work with states on topics ranging from justice and incarceration to innovation to implementation and investment of COVID19 pandemic relief funds.

CSG has four regional offices located throughout the country, as well as a Justice Center in New York City. The Justice Center brings together state officials from all three branches of government to drive the conversation about criminal justice based on objective research.

“Mass incarceration is a huge problem for states — as a result of three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws; as a result of criminalization of substance abuse disorders; as a result of the ways in which behaviors that are symptoms of mental illness have placed people in correctional facilities,” said Adkins, who is also a former Kansas state senator. “We are able to go into a state and evaluate their state-specific data … and give their policymakers options based on the data as to how they may restructure their sentencing laws to both protect public safety and reduce costs of building more prisons.”

The biggest issue facing states right now, Adkins said, is what to do with funding from legislation like the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, now sometimes referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The states have had an unprecedented infusion of resources from the federal government,” Adkins said. “Many of those resources will be onetime dollars and some states are very reticent to create programs that will require them, at some point, to step in and sustain those programs, but they also see that there is tremendous need.”

And, as a historic amount of funding for infrastructure comes to states, the question arises of balancing the needs and allocating resources and creating revenue streams that will support that infrastructure.

“We hope to bring people together to discuss things like, for example, the complexity facing states that generally fund infrastructure with gas taxes,” he said. “In a world in which we’re quickly moving to electric vehicles, … those taxation systems, which essentially are paid for when you buy a gallon of gas, are going to become obsolete. So we help states understand what the options are for replacing those revenues.”

For Lexington, being home to CSG means having a nationally significant policy institute located in the city and a partner that shows off the city to the rest of the country.

“We’re sort of a hidden jewel in that, we’re very externally focused, but we have a commitment to be good corporate citizens,” Adkins said. “Every year, we have 48 state officials from around the nation come together for an intense leadership boot camp here in Lexington … so we expose people from all over the country to Lexington, Kentucky, and that helps, I think, create ambassadors of these folks who have been here and who come here for meetings.”

Tags

by