Minutes of 1997 Annual Business Meeting

The annual meeting of the Legislative Studies Section was held in Washington D.C. during the national convention of the America Political Science Association. The LSS meeting was convened on Friday, at 5:30 by Chair Bruce Oppenheimer of Vanderbilt University. 

The session began with the presentation of two awards, the Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Book Prize, and the CQ Press Award. The winner of the Fenno Prize was Participation in Congress, authored by Richard Hall of the University of Michigan, and published by Yale University Press, 1996. The committee making the award was composed of Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (Chair), University of Nebraska, David Canon, University of Wisconsin, and Wendy Schiller, Brown University. 

The CQ Press award went to Gary Cox, University of California-San Diego and Jonathan Katz, California Institute of Technology for their 1996 APSA paper "Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Senate Elections." The committee was composed of David Rohde (Chair), Michigan State University , Valerie Heitshusen, University of Missouri, and Gary Moncrief, Boise State University. The Chair thanked members of both award committees for their service. 

After the presentations the minutes of the 1996 LSS Business Meeting were approved as printed in the 1997 January issue of the LSS Newsletter. 

LSS Chair Bruce Oppenheimer made several announcements. The Short Course on "Using the Records of Congress," sponsored by LSS and put on by the Center for Legislative Archives, proved very successful. The chair thanked George Connor of Southwest Missouri State University who organized the participation of LSS members. The Chair then explained the means by which the Newsletter cost overruns would be resolved, pointing out that the publication has received wide praise as a model for section newsletters. Rice University has generously offered assistance to the Newsletter in the past and again will show its recognition of the efforts of Keith Hamm and staff efforts by eliminating the deficit one last time. 

The LSS Newsletter will now be published through the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma, edited by Ron Peters and co-edited by Gary Copeland and Allen Hertzke. It was indicated that they would experiment with the provision of Web site information for parts of the Newsletter. 

The Chair reported that the Organized Sections Meeting of chairs with APSA raised two issues: 1) Sections were encouraged to become more active in recruiting graduate students; 2) Sections were encouraged to adopt rules by which they could, if at all, take public positions on issues. APSA was concerned that such positions would mistakenly be attributed to APSA. The questions were deferred to the new officers. 

The Chair took pleasure to announce that the Carl Albert Center proposed to offer a $400 dissertation prize each year for the best dissertation on legislatures. Ron Peters, Director of the Carl Albert Center, expected that LSS would independently select the awardee, whom the Center would subsequently invite to campus to make a presentation on the topic. The Chair asked for a voice vote on the proposal and received unanimous approval. The new officers would set the ground rules and the award committee appointed by the chair, in order that an announcement could be ready by the next Newsletter. 

The chair awarded outgoing Newsletter editor Keith Hamm a copy of State Staff Directory, Summer 1997, published and furnished by Congressional Press (a volume of the fifty states, heavy enough to cause a mid-air bag inspection on the flight home). 

The chair made the following appointments: 

Fenno Book Prize Committee (1997 Copyright Date): Richard Hall (Chair), University of Michigan; Michael Beckman, Penn State University; Garry Young, University of Missouri. 

CQ Press Award -- Best Paper at 1997 APSA Meeting: Gary Cox (Chair), University of California-San Diego; Evelyn Fink, University of Nebraska; Paul Harrnson, University of Maryland. 

LSS Program Chair for 1997-98: C. Lawrence Evans, College of William and Mary. 

The nominating committee--Joel Thompson (Chair), Appalachian State University; Sarah Binder, Brookings Institution; and David Olson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro--recommended the following LSS officers for the next term: 

Chair: Wayne Francis, University of Florida (1997-99) 

Secretary/Treasurer: Wendy Schiller, Brown University (1997-99) 

Members-at-Large: Gary Jacobson, Univ. Of California-San Diego (1997-99); Elaine Swift, Eastern Washington University (1997-99); and Keith Hamm, Rice University (1997-1999). 

A motion to adopt the recommendation of the nominating committee was approved by voice vote. 

Announcements

Janet Box-Steffensmeier of Ohio State University announced a new book series on Parliaments and Legislatures, published by Ohio State University, with Advisory Editor, Samuel C. Patterson. 

Rick Wilson, National Science Foundation, reported the NSF funding for the next fiscal year appears to be okay (no cuts). 

Stanley Bach, Congressional Research Service, indicated that a large number of papers delivered by section participants were not made available for members to purchase. He indicated that he would send a proposal to the executive committee with a recommendation to alleviate the problem. 

The Meeting was adjourned. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Wayne L. Francis 
University of Florida 
Secretary-Treasurer 
Legislative Studies Section 
American Political Science Association