This evening, I shall be heading up to Boston to blog the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Like any such blogging outing, I like to spend a little bit of time ahead of time getting my bearings. This entry will provide a little insight into my thoughts going up.

When Gov. Dean ended his 2004 Presidential bid, he encouraged his supporters to run for office. It was probably the first time that I gave any serious consideration to state legislatures. Kim decided to run for State Rep., and I was surprised to find that 85% of people don’t know who their State Reps are. People asked Kim if she would have to move to Washington if she were elected State Representative.

Over the following years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people, especially through Democracy for America, that are very interested in State Legislatures. Many important legislative decisions are made at the State level, and State Legislatures are a great farm team for the U.S. Congress. It is shocking how many State Legislative races go uncontested.

Years before all of this, I was at a financial services conference where Eliot Spitzer, who was Attorney General in New York at the time, spoke about the importance of state government in response to pressures from federalists. As the federalists get more issues pushed down to the state level, state legislatures become even more important.

It was through a group of liberal bloggers focused on regional issues that I first got the idea of attending the NCSL annual meeting. As I searched around, I found that Bill Hobbs from the Media Bloggers Association attended last years NCSL annual meeting as a blogger and I was glad to see focus interested in the role of blogs in our media ecology covering the event.

I’ve spent some time reading through press releases, the schedule for NCSL, contacting various State Legislators and activist groups and slowly the narrative I’m expecting begins to emerge.

Back when I was in high school, I went to a symposium at Williams College where Lester Thurow was a keynote speaker. He spoke about how as the basic needs of people could be met by fewer workers, more and more time would be spent arguing about how wealth would be distributed. That idea has stuck with me. When Kim was running, I remember Gov. Dean commenting about how much of the time in State Government ends up being about the allocation of resources.

Grover Norquist is often quoted as wanting to get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” It has been suggested that he should have borrowed Bush’s Mission Accomplished sign to put up over New Orleans.

One of the methods to shrink the Federal Government has been to push programs off on to the States, but not fund them. In response, lawmakers at the NCSL annual meeting will on the schooner Roseway on Sunday afternoon for a modern Boston Tea Party.

State lawmakers will show their displeasure with the growing number of unfunded mandates and cost shifts passed along to the states by the federal government.

I expect to hear a lot of talk about cost effectiveness of various proposed programs. I sure hope that is the case. However, I do have some doubts.

As I read through the program, I find NCSL gratefully acknowledging ‘the National Grid/KeySpan for the continental breakfast’, ‘AT&T for breakfast ‘, ‘LexisNexis for lunch’, ‘Propylon for dinner’, ‘Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for this reception.’, ‘Zipporah Films for this session’, and ‘AstraZeneca for this tour’.

Concurrent with this, I received an email on a different list about eGovernment. These are from my activists friends who seem primarily driven by a love of technology or a desire to make the government more open. I hold both of these positions, yet what needs to be talked about is how eGovernment could make various government services more cost effective. I hope I’ll see a little bit of that too.

Beyond that, I will be looking at various initiatives on education and childcare, broadband, supporting local agriculture and other rural initiatives. I will be looking closely at how well different state legislatures understand the importance of the emerging regional political blogs. I will be looking at if any state legislatures are taking advantage of blogs, citizen journalism, and even high school journalism to get their message out and further their agendas.

It should be a fun few days. If you have thoughts on the annual meeting, or issues you would like me to pursue, please leave me a message and I’ll see what I can do. Then, stop back and lets see what really happens at the NCSL annual meeting.