Capitol Comments

Interstate Compacts: Structure and Governance

It’s obvious states want to work together. With more than 200 interstate compacts, states address wide-ranging issues that are not confined to geographical boundaries or jurisdictional lines. Interstate compacts are legal agreements between states that are designed to resolve concerns that transcend state lines, such as allocating interstate waters.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office reviewed the structure and governance of environment and natural resource compacts. According to the report, at least 76 compacts are designed to address environment and natural resource management issues such as conservation and environment, planning and development, energy and water resource management.

State Legislatures Consider Compact Bills

With the 2007 state legislative sessions purring along (some having already concluded), interstate compacts have again become an area of emphasis for state policymakers.

Following the trend of the last several years, compacts continue to receive heightened attention with 104 interstate compact bills having been introduced as of the end of March. Last year (2006) saw approximately 95 compact bills considered on the heels of the wildly successful 2005 in which 49 compact bills were enacted –- the largest number of compact adoptions since 1969.

The increase in interstate compact introductions comes at a time when states are increasingly flexing their muscles on the national stage. As states individually struggle with their federalist relationship, they are collectively working to establish and preserve state authority over key policy areas. Interstate compacts are proving to be a remarkable tool for promoting not only multi-state problem solving, but enabling states to speak with one unified voice on regional and national policy issues.

Compacts of particular interest to states in 2007 include:

2008 Presidential Election: States may play historic role

While the field of presidential contenders for 2008 continues to widen, the way in which our national leader is elected has been called into question and at no time in our nation’s recent history has a change in the Electoral College system been more contentious – and more likely.

National Popular Vote Inc., a national nonprofit composed of a broad group of political science academics as well as current and past national political figures, has crafted an interstate compact that would dramatically revise how state electoral votes are allocated. According to the new interstate compact, each state participating in the plan would award all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide (in all 50 states and the District of Columbia).

Supporters claim the measure is long overdue and point to recent presidential elections in which the popular vote winner did not obtain the required 270 electoral votes to secure the White House. Detractors simply assert that the proposed plan is unconstitutional – going against the entire purpose of the Electoral College system.

Educating Military Children: Serving those who protect

"Successful outcomes for children - that should be our primary concern," said Dr. Jean Silvernail, chief for Military Child in Transition and Deployment at the U.S. Department of Defense. And thus began the second series of meetings facilitated by CSG's National Center for Interstate Compacts to craft interstate policy on the educational transition challenges faced by today's military children.

With 690,000 children of active duty military personnel currently enrolled in public schools around the country, each is virtually guaranteed to move three to four times during their school-aged years – some even more often. Further, this number is expected to explode as the children of National Guard and Reserve personnel are increasingly counted in this group and as children move home from overseas with a rapidly changing international deployment strategy.

The challenges facing these children are not new - every child that moves between schools or districts face them - but for military children, both they and their parents have little choice as to military assignments and postings.