Inside Report: Reviews of the 2009 Legislature are in, and they're not pretty
by LANNY KELLER - Advocate (excerpt)

The reviews of the 2009 Legislature are in, and they’re not pretty. Senate and House members clashed repeatedly on tax policy and the $1 billion-plus revenue shortfall.

“There was a lot of dissension between the two houses,” Senate Secretary Glenn Koepp told the League of Women Voters. His House counterpart, Clerk Butch Speer, who is also a veteran of more than 30 years, agreed. The Senate’s members are “overwhelmingly experienced” compared with new House members brought in for the first time in 2007 when term limits kicked in, Speer said. It is not just a problem of communication, he added: “You have people who don’t speak the same language.”

“The Senate attitude is, ‘How do we make this work,’ and the House or at least the controlling majority are saying, ‘We don’t want it to work,’ ” Speer said. Speer is hardly alone in noting that redrawing districts because of Voting Rights Act mandates has made many Southern legislatures more socially and ideologically conflicted, but Koepp said the impact of term limits in other states has been the subject of studies from the National Conference of State Legislatures.