Discussing Effective Lawmaking with West Virginia House Speaker Roger Hanshaw

Alan Wiseman (00:11):

Hello! My name is Alan Wiseman. I’m the Associate Provost for Strategic Projects, and a Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University where, along with Craig Volden at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, I’m the Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking. Now, as many of our longtime viewers and followers of the Center know, our work has long focused on studying and promoting effective lawmaking within the United States Congress. Over the past several years, however, we’ve started to expand the mission of the Center to focus on U.S. state legislatures as well. And as such, we’re very excited to be similarly expanding our Conversations with Effective Lawmaker video series to focus on highly effective state legislators. In that context, today we’re delighted to welcome Mr. Roger Hanshaw, who has served in the West Virginia House of Delegates since 2014, and as House Speaker since 2018. Speaker Hanshaw was born in Clay County, where his family has lived for generations, and he now represents Clay County, along with Calhoun and Gilmer Counties – northeast of Charleston – in the House of Delegates. He earned his bachelor’s degree as well as his law degree from West Virginia University, and he has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame. And he combined these areas of expertise in his law practice, litigating a variety of environmental issues. From his earliest days in the legislature, Delegate Hanshaw showed significant promise as an effective lawmaker. In fact, according to our data at the Center for Effective Lawmaking, during his first term in the House, four of his ten sponsored bills became law, making him one of the most effective lawmakers in his freshman class. Since then, he rose to be a top-ten lawmaker in terms of his legislative effectiveness overall in a second term, and he’s been the most effective lawmaker in the West Virginia House in each term thereafter. So, Speaker Hanshaw, thank you so much for joining us for a Center for Effective Lawmaking interview. We really appreciate your time.

Roger Hanshaw (02:01):

My pleasure.

Alan Wiseman (02:03):

Great. As we corresponded with you a little bit earlier, we’re going to be asking you a series of fairly general questions, but we’d love to hear from you with specific examples as they come to mind, drawing on your own experience, that could help inform our viewers about your perspectives on effective lawmaking in West Virginia.

Roger Hanshaw (02:20):

Sure.

Alan Wiseman (02:21):

So all that said, you know, what I’d like to do is take a step back and ask you some questions about your background, and by that I mean from before you actually entered legislative office and try to get a sense about how your previous experiences shaped your approach to lawmaking. So at the most fundamental level, I’d be really curious to hear from you how your deep connections to your community, and also your academic expertise – the fact that you acquired a law degree and a PhD in Chemistry – how did this influence your decision to join public service as a lawmaker?

Roger Hanshaw (02:50):

Sure. Well, I did those degrees in reverse. So I actually went to grad – I did an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at West Virginia University, and a PhD in Biophysical Organic Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame in that order, specifically with the intention of returning back to the Canaan Valley of West Virginia to work for the Union Carbide Corporation and its successors. So Dow Chemical – Union Carbide before it – maintained one of its largest, most prolific global research and development facilities in South Charleston, West Virginia. And I had gone to school specifically with an eye towards returning to work there. And in my third year as a graduate student – a series of transactions that aren’t really relevant to this conversation, but nevertheless were very relevant to me – happened which sent the job for which I was training to first Midland, Michigan, and then Mumbai, India. So I was left in Year Four of my PhD Program with the life path I had planned for myself having disappeared. So I finished my training as a scientist, returned to West Virginia, as I had always planned to do, and took a position working as Laboratory Manager and Analytical Laboratory Director for the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. And over time, it became clear to me that if one wants to make an impact in public policy in America, one of the tools by which to do that is to combine some form of technical training with training as an attorney, or at least developing a better, more fully developed understanding of the lawmaking process. So West Virginia University offered me an opportunity to join its faculty after a couple years after returning home. So I did that, went to law school part-time while serving on the faculty at West Virginia University, and then ended up moving back to the home community where my family’s lived for a very long time shortly after that, and my wife and my daughters and I still live there today. My personal philosophy on life is that we all owe it to ourselves and our neighbors and our friends and family to make the place in which we live as good as we can make it. And there came a time in 2014 when to me that meant stepping into a leadership void in our state’s legislation.

Craig Volden (05:02):

Thanks for all of that background – really appreciate it. And thanks – let me add my thanks to Alan’s for you joining us today. When you then decided to kind of step into that leadership void and enter the legislature, how are you thinking about what you wanted to bring as far as coming up with a legislative agenda or the problems that you saw that you’d like to start to solve? How much were they based on some of those background characteristics as well as the expertise you gained in a variety of settings?

Roger Hanshaw (05:39):

Well, bluntly, Craig, my philosophy on how I represent my legislative district has quite little to do with the educational background that I have in my professional experience, and much more to do with the lived reality that I’ve experienced, which is that the best social welfare program, the best economic development program, the best actions of government are to create the environment in which good jobs can develop and people can provide for their families. That was the motivation that I had in, and in fact, it’s still a motivation that I have in continuing to be a legislator ten years on now into the position. The barometer by which I measure success for the state of West Virginia, and for my legislative body in particular is, are we creating and maintaining an atmosphere that allows the private sector to create and grow good job opportunities? So that’s how I view my responsibility in creating and advancing and supporting legislation. It’s not so much around what I personally wish to accomplish as someone trained in science and law, but much more about how we create and grow a good job environment in West Virginia so that people can provide for themselves and their families.

Alan Wiseman (06:50):

I mean, I really appreciate the way you’re able to articulate that perspective so clearly, Mr. Speaker. And I am curious, though, if we get into the weeds a little bit about some of your early legislative work, you know, just diving into some of the bills you actually worked on: some of them dealt with issues pertaining to chemical spills, contaminated drinking water, chemical tank safety, and related matters. And in light of your personal academic expertise, I was curious to know, you know, what role did you play, and how do you feel your background expertise, I mean, as a PhD in Chemistry mattered on such issues compared to other lawmakers who might not have that sort of academic expertise?

Roger Hanshaw (07:29):

Sure. I think, Alan, you may be referring to a very unfortunate situation that happened in the state of West Virginia in 2014, when there was a water crisis, when there was a very unfortunate discharge of a compound called methylcyclohexanemethanol into the Elk River, which was at the time one of the intake points for the local water utility. So we all, as elected officials, provide the expertise that we have. Ours is a citizen legislature; we’re a part-time body. The 134 delegates and senators in our state’s legislature serve part-time, and as a consequence, we all have other jobs, we all do other things, and we all have other bases of expertise. The base of expertise that I had and have and continue to bring to the process is that training in both science and law, and in that particular incidence, or that particular incident that you’re describing, one of the ways I think I added value to the overall process was one in making sure that we were actually focusing on regulating what was the proper thing to regulate. So there was a great – I remember quite distinctly – there was a great theory of activity and flurry of activity around regulating something called methylcyclohexanol at the time, which sounds quite similar to cyclohexane methanol, but are in fact, are completely different compounds. And I only know that because I spent four years as a graduate student studying how one identifies the names of organic molecules, and I’m not sure that it’s as easy to differentiate between those two compounds without that training. Yet it’s quite easy for me, because I had the benefit of that background. So part of what I had to do during that process was make sure that we’re actually focused on the right molecule, the right compound, and that the regulations we’re writing do, in fact, achieve the goal.

Another way that that set of facts manifested themselves in legislation was when our state considered water quality regulations designed around how we actually measure criteria pollutants being discharged into receiving streams and receiving bodies of water within the confines of the state of West Virginia. For decades, one of the mechanisms – I should say it was the standard by which that determination was made – was by calculating what’s called the arithmetic mean of a data set. Well, there are three kinds of means: there’s geometric mean, arithmetic mean, and harmonic mean. And the only reason I know that the only way I know it is that, again, I had to analyze data sets for four years and compare and contrast the differences between what happens when you calculate those values using three different standards. So I had to explain that to the body while I was still a member and not yet on the podium as the presiding officer. There’s no reason others couldn’t have done that if they’d had the benefit of the same training opportunities that I’ve had. That was just one of the ways that I brought my personal background and experience to the legislative process. Others who are plumbers and mechanics are the ones who are the experts on fields related to their specific expertise. It just happens to be that mine was technical and relevant to the bills that we took up at the time.

Craig Volden (10:39):

Let me build on some of those connections that you made there about being in a citizen legislature and everybody drawing on their own background and expertise. When you kind of look across and over your experience over the past decade, the issues that have come up that you all have been confronting, how much do you just sort of naturally find the folks who are representing different districts, have that level of expertise that they can step in and build on their own experience to really confront those problems? Are there some where you need to bring in outside experts or learn from what other states have done? Kind of how do you think about that balance?

Roger Hanshaw (11:21):

Well, always. We’re always drawing expertise from whatever source we can find it, wherever we can find trusted, reliable information, we owe it to ourselves and our constituents in our state to analyze it and understand it. Now we cannot become an expert really on anything once you’ve arrived at the legislature. By that time, it’s too late. You’re into a process that’s in motion, and you don’t have the luxury of time to become an expert overnight on a particular area of policy. So we have to rely upon people who have done that academic work, who created the intellectual foundation for the steps that we need to take as legislators and regulators. So that said, one of the most difficult parts of that business, though, is learning what information is trustworthy and deserving of our consideration, and what is just simply tripe, what is just material that needs discarded immediately. And sadly, advocacy – issue advocacy in America has taken the unfortunate approach of quantity over quality. And I know, as an elected official, I can distinguish between who is just trying to bombard me with information and drown out the other side versus who is trying to provide a sufficiently sound intellectual basis to combat an alternative argument. We seek out information – elected officials do seek out information from as many sources as we can find. The quality matters, though, and we try to teach our new colleagues, our new members, on how to discern reliable information from just simply the cacophony of nonsense that’s frankly thrown at legislators.

Craig Volden (13:07):

Yeah, it seems like it would take some skill and training to be able to discern along those lines. You know, how do you guide those new members into discerning signal from noise?

Roger Hanshaw (13:20):

Yeah. So during every legislative session, no matter how well planned you think it may be, there are always issues that arise that elicit an unexpected reaction from the public or from constituent groups that wish to take a position or express an opinion. We have to quite consciously help new members understand “Okay, you are receiving 20,000 emails on this issue. 19,500 of them are carbon-copy form emails generated by a bot using the mailing list from some advocacy organization.” So it’s quite easy to immediately disqualify and discount all 19,500 of them. We teach our members that actual correspondence and thoughtfully thought out, well-drafted correspondence from real people are persuasive, and that those things matter. Form documents generated by a bot used working from a mailing list somewhere frankly aren’t worthy of our time or consideration. So we try to help new members understand that we likewise try to help new members see the history of those professional advocates who come before us, and who seek to influence the outcome of the work that we undertake as elected officials. It’s very easy, as an elected official, to develop a pretty keen understanding of who can be trusted and who cannot in the realm of professional advocates. I know that my own – I’ll say this publicly to anyone who’s watching – my own professional strategy in approaching that took me a couple years to develop, but I’ve used it ever since. I still use it today. At some point, in the first few meetings that I have with an advocate, I will ask him or her a question to which I know the answer that’s directly counter to the position they wish to advocate. And if they’ll answer that question truthfully, and tell me the answer that I know cuts against their desired outcome, that’s probably somebody I can trust, that’s probably someone I can believe. If they circumvent a question and say, “Oh, I’m not sure. Oh, I don’t know. Oh, I’ll get back to you,” maybe that’s the last time we talk.

Alan Wiseman (15:39):

Yeah, no, I really appreciate so many aspects of that response, Mr. Speaker, both in terms of the need or the ways by which members can acquire expertise, or the need to acquire expertise before they even come into the Chamber, as well as how to glean meaningful insight from external stakeholders who are trying to reach out to them. What I want to do is turn it back to you in particular, for a second, to think about your earliest days in the House of Delegates. I understand you’re a Certified Professional Parliamentarian which we at the Center for Effective Lawmaking greatly appreciate – people who’ve invested in trying to learn the process by which they’re engaged. So I’d just be curious to know is this common among speakers? In the West Virginia House? Is this something that you know you’re an outlier in? Did you acquire this training prior to assuming office? And if so, did it help you in your transition to legislating and lawmaking?

Roger Hanshaw (16:31):

So it’s not common, period. There are around, there are two organizations nationally that credential professional parliamentarians: the National Association of Parliamentarians offers a designation called the PRP – the Professional Registered Parliamentarian status -and the American Institute of Parliamentarians offers a designation called the Certified Professional Parliamentarian status. There are around 450 certified professional parliamentarians in America. That’s a designation that I achieved well before I ever ran for public office. It was just a part of my law practice. It was just a part of what I did, and still do, for that matter: advising advocacy organizations, nonprofit, and charitable groups, and corporate boards of directors, and civic societies on the productive civil deliberative process. Has it been helpful to me? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I use those skills every single day on the podium.

Craig Volden (17:25):

I’d love to hear some examples there. What were you taught? What kind of mistakes would you anticipate y’all would have got into if you didn’t have your skill set, and how’d you overcome them?

Roger Hanshaw (17:39):

Well, so most legislative chambers around the country have a professional parliamentarian on staff. As do we: we also have a parliamentarian for the House. Now, admittedly, I rely upon him much less than my predecessor, and probably much less than my successor will. That’s just, this is something that I brought to the process that’s just part of my background. As I said earlier, people come to these jobs from a variety of backgrounds; that happen to be a part of mine. So I think a direct answer to your question, Craig, it allows me to perhaps speed up the process rather than change it. I’m not sure the outcome would be different if someone else were in the chair. In fact, I’m confident that it would not. But I think it may perhaps move more slowly while someone consults our professional parliamentarian, whereas it’s just part and parcel of what I do, not just for myself, but for other clients that I serve in the private sector.

Craig Volden (18:33):

Yeah, thanks. That’s helpful. When I think about what you touched on earlier – of how to help new members get their own set of questions of lobbyists or their own ways to go through the massive amount of emails they’re getting and so on – those sound like a couple of maybe many ways that you help new members and maybe give them an orientation. I’m wondering what all is involved in kind of your new member orientation activities? And maybe put a different way, more personally, what do you wish you knew then that you know now?

Roger Hanshaw (19:06):

Yeah. So the formal orientation that we give new members is largely focused on legislative process more so than substance. It’s mostly focused on how does an idea go from conceptualization to the desk of the Governor into the Code of West Virginia. That’s a substantial portion of the time that we spend in orienting new members to the work of being a delegate or senator – particularly a delegate, that’s the body that I lead – in the state of West Virginia. Everyone, of course, has to develop their own informal personal ways of advancing an agenda, of getting something that that she or he believes to be important to the desk of the Governor. But in terms of what we’re able to provide as leaders of the body to a new member, it’s mostly about committee process, about how to properly draft a bill, how to work with the Senate, how to work with the executive agencies in identifying the problem and crafting a proper solution. That old saw that “if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” is prophetic. That turns out to absolutely be true. One of the things that we try to do for our members is help them understand that “look, not every problem is solved best by passing a new statute.” Some problems are best solved by working with the executive branch agencies to identify an administrative law solution, or some problems are best solved by working with the finance process to divert some more financial resources to solve a problem. So not every problem requires that we craft and create a new statutory law in the state of West Virginia. I would contend that’s true in the other jurisdictions around the country as well.

Alan Wiseman (20:51):

No, no, that’s very helpful and related to that, then, you know, if we think about the scope of your own legislative portfolio across your career similar to many legislators and many legislatures, you know, there’s an organic growth in the number of bills people introduce in their first term compared to later terms. And in your earliest terms, you were introducing about a dozen bills, and now it’s expanded to a much more sizable agenda. And I’d just be curious to know, as the scope of your legislative agenda expanded, are there different issues that you’re now focusing on, or additional issues you’re focusing on in particular, in comparison to when you were first elected? And what were the drivers in your thinking that led you to start to advocate or push for new issues compared to when you first started?

Roger Hanshaw (21:37):

Yeah, this is a great illustration, Alan, of what I said earlier about process matters and understanding the legislative process helps one understand outcomes better. So in West Virginia, the custom is that the executive branch agenda is introduced by the Speaker and the Minority Leader, so every bill sought by the executive branch carries the signature of the Speaker, whether I support that proposal or not. So because I am the Speaker, every executive branch, every agency agenda bill, becomes by custom one of mine. So it looks from the outside looking in as if I have many more things that I want to sponsor than perhaps I do. And that’s just a function of the process that we follow in terms of the organization and management of our legislature. To get the specific heart of your question, though, about the evolution of things on which I’ve worked over time, I think it’s generally true of most newly elected legislators that in the early days of those careers one’s focus is generally on one’s own home community and one’s district, and that certainly was true for me. It largely remains true for me today, although, being the Speaker means I have to be responsible for the statewide initiatives as well, and often have to sponsor those things that have a more expansive geographic reach.

Craig Volden (23:06):

Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about that process of proposals that are coming from the executive, from the agencies, from the Governor, and so on? Is that something of a consultative process as bill, as the language is put together? Or do they say, “here’s the way we’ve drafted these – go to it.” How does that kind of play out?

Roger Hanshaw (23:27):

So our rules – and this is not true of every state. What I’m about to say would vary across the nation. But in our legislature, every bill introduced into the House or the Senate must bear the signature of one or more members of the body. So the Governor himself may not introduce a bill; it has to bear the signature of at least one member elected to the body. Now, by custom, that member is the speaker for the executive branch proposals. So, Craig, the entire continuum is reality here. There are bills that we work with the executive during the course of an entire year to develop, and those bills hit our calendar, and the day they’re introduced, they’re becoming law two days later, and we know that because we work together to make sure that bills ready to roll before it’s ever even introduced. There are other times in which the executive says, “Nope, this is what we’re doing – introducing.” And of course we’ll give them that courtesy. I will sign any bill introduced by the executive. We do that, and then, that, however, in no way precludes us from fully amending it the next morning.

Craig Volden (24:38):

Right, right. You know, in terms of how much time you have in session as a citizen legislature, getting the priorities right and what’s going to be at the top of the list seems really quite important? How does that play out kind of back and forth with the executive, and both House and Senate, I guess?

Roger Hanshaw (25:01):

Well, you’re right. You’re right about the pressure of time. So our legislative session is 60 days by constitutional rule. So we are allowed to be in session 60 calendar days. So we convene for 60 consecutive days every winter, and – absent the Governor calling a special legislative session later in the year – that’s the totality of the time we have available each year to do the business of the people. So we’ll have introduced in the House of Delegates each year around 3,000 pieces of legislation. We will take up and consider around 300 of them. We will pass around 275 of them. So we by necessity have to pare it down. There are states in which every bill introduced gets a vote. I never want to operate in one of those States.

Alan Wiseman (25:54):

Well, there’d be a lot of voting, obviously, with 3,000 bills.

Roger Hanshaw (25:59):

There’s a ton of voting, yes.

Alan Wiseman (26:01):

Yeah, I’m curious – I mean, just given some of the political realities, not only in West Virginia, but this is also relevant for many other legislatures across the country – I’d be curious on your perspective, you know, given the scope of the supermajority that the Republicans enjoy in the House of Delegates, how do you, as a parliamentary leader or legislator more broadly speaking, think about the coalitions that are needed to bring about policy change? And I guess, more specifically, you know, do you think the bipartisanship is important for the purposes of enacting policies that you think are going to be able to facilitate meaningful policy change, or likewise – especially given where you sit as leader of the legislature – you know, do you think there’s other natural divides that you and your leadership role are working to bridge organically or regularly that are cross-partisan in nature?

Roger Hanshaw (26:54):

So our legislative body at this moment numbers 89 to 11 – 89 Republicans, 11 Democrats – that will actually grow in the new session to 91-9. So, as a consequence of that, bipartisanship matters more philosophically than practically. So, it’s just my own personal view of the proper way to run government. I think there’s always a value to be had in trying to achieve consensus when consensus is possible. And I think there’s just a beneficial outcome that derives from that approach. Now, practically speaking, that’s not true. It takes 51 votes to pass a bill, and all I need is 51 Republicans and we roll. But I don’t like to do that. We’ll do it when the time’s right. We’ll do it. I am the leader of a majority caucus, and that caucus has objectives it wishes to accomplish, and if 51 of them are on board, we’ll accomplish it. But that does nothing to foster or further the philosophical reality that I do think is important, which is that we seek consensus when consensus is possible.

Craig Volden (28:07):

Just in terms of kind of navigating the parts of that – I’m kind of envisioning these 300 bills, getting whittled down, barely whittled down to 275, but probably not being, you know, enacted in the same form that they were first introduced.

Roger Hanshaw (28:26):

Almost never, almost never.

Craig Volden (28:28):

Yeah. A variety of amendments along the way, and different people weighing in, and whether that’s bipartisan, or House versus Senate, and I’m also thinking about kind of the stages and what the committees are accomplishing there. Again, with the caveat that this is gonna vary a lot from state to state, you know, in your experience, how does the committee structure work? Is it effectively designed at present? Maybe some reforms would be helpful? How are House/Senate relations working? Are you a pretty straightforward partners, or is there some difficulties there to overcome?

Roger Hanshaw (29:04):

So our committees are the absolute workhorses of a legislature, and that is not unique to our legislature. It’s not unique to state legislatures – that would be just as applicable to Congress, to the House of Representatives, as it is to my state legislature. Our committee process is largely the function of a process implemented in our body 75 years ago. We are in the midst now of a redesign of our committee process, specifically to address contemporary needs of a 21^st-century economy and 21^st-century society. We have what we believe to be a fairly mature body of statutory law in West Virginia. Our approach now has turned more towards just simply looking at problems rather than we need to pass this bill. The question is, we need to solve this problem, and perhaps that problem necessitates the passage of a bill. But maybe it requires working with an executive branch agency on a policy. Maybe it requires an administrative solution. Maybe it requires an appropriation. Who knows? But we’re trying to shift our committee process away from simply being a bill factory to being more of a center for solution ideation and the development of real-world solutions to problems.

Craig Volden (30:19):

So if we were to dive into one of those, I’d love to hear where you’re at on kind of the transition from a coal economy to a green economy or some other example that you want to pick. There’s big issues that y’all are confronting. I’d love to hear kind of the in-the-weeds – “Here’s a problem we’re thinking we’ll confront over the next year and here’s how we’re gonna try to do that.”

Roger Hanshaw (30:46):

Okay, let’s take a real-live problem. So I don’t typically say we’re transitioning to a green economy. I like to say we’re transitioning to a 21^st-century economy. Because we have historically been a fossil energy-driven state in the state of West Virginia. There will be a role for fossil energy in powering the country and the world for likely the remainder of my lifetime. But that said, there is also a substantial and growing demand for non-fossil energy into the economy. And we want to be a part of that. We want to be a player in the development and generation of every form of energy. If energy can be generated, we in West Virginia want to be involved in that generation process.

So, Craig, take that with what I just said, let’s talk about data centers. So data centers turn out to be one of the largest drivers of energy policy in the world today. It’s – I heard Elon Musk speak a couple of months ago now about his view of the economy and his view of the future, and he said that in the short-term, the limiting factor, or the most limiting factor for the development of AI and the deployment of AI in the economy was coders and programmers. But in the medium-term, the greatest impediment to full development of AI was the availability of energy – the availability of adequate, sufficient energy resources to allow us to fully realize the benefit of that technology. So we’re trying to answer the question, how do we as a state embrace and foster the development of a data center economy in our jurisdiction? Now that comes with environmental implications, that comes with tax implications, that comes with property, valuation implications. It comes with workforce training considerations. So how do we take that singular problem that permeates the work of all of our committees and roll that into one or more proposals for action that allows us to jump onto the data center scene in an effective way and contribute to the overall 21^st-century global economy? We’re going to be charging our committees this year with answering the question I just posed to you in that way. So rather than saying, here’s our quote “data center bill” it may be ten bills. Who knows? So that’s the problem. The focus is the problem, not a bill.

Craig Volden (33:24):

Yeah. So that’s the subdivision of work, then into those committees where they have more expertise, or they have a particular focus on those issues, presumably also working with the administration in a variety of ways. Tell me how that back and forth goes then – the committee and some administrative officials would get together and start working through some ideas?

Roger Hanshaw (33:49):

Yes, ours, because we’re a part-time body, much of our work is done during the nine months of the year – nine-and-a-half months of the year – when we are not convened in session. So our members will meet with representatives of the executive branch, they’ll meet with representatives of industry, they’ll meet with representatives of the communities that we represent as elected officials, and just do whatever’s necessary to arrive at the solution to this problem. And there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer to that. There’s no singular answer I can give you, Craig, that would let you say this is the process by which a bill gets developed – there would be no such process. Every bill that becomes law at least is a bespoke creation.

Alan Wiseman (34:31):

Well, I mean related to these discussion points, Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the emphasis you’re putting on problem-solution, or at least problem-identification rather than just bill generation, per se. But you know, just thinking about the statistics you tossed out a little bit earlier, you know, just think about a typical session where there’s 3,000 bills introduced, they get whittled down to about 300 to 275 ultimately being passed in some form. You know, I am curious, especially given your role as the Speaker, you know, if it’s a case that a member of the legislature comes to you and identifies to you something, or at least articulates to you, something that they deem to be a serious and earnest policy problem. You know, I expect this or some form of that happens quite often, and I just guess, you know, given you’re only in session for 60 days – barring special session – given you have such a substantial potential docket, I mean, how do you or other legislative leaders actually address or identify whether or not the problem that this individual legislator is bringing to you is, you know, frankly, sufficiently high enough in terms of priority to get that scarce calendar time to try to push this forward?

Roger Hanshaw (35:42):

Yeah, it’s a good question, Alan. My usual answer follows something akin to this: Question 1 is, how many other members of our body have you spoken to about this, and how many of them are prepared to also sign the front of that bill to say this is a problem and this is a bill worth pursuing. Second, by the time that bill’s been introduced – and at the point about which we’re talking, it will have been referred to at least one, perhaps more than one of our of our committees. Has the member spoken to the committee chair about it yet? Has the member already gone to the committee chair to discuss whether it’s going to get committee time? So before discussing whether I’m going to give it floor time, the prerequisite is that some committee chairs going to give it committee hearing time. So the Steps 1 and 2 are 1) How many other members of the body have consented to sign on to say, yes, this is a meritorious issue, and 2) is have the committee chairs that have jurisdiction over the issue going so far as to tell you yes or no; and if the answer is yes, then proceed; and if the answer is no, well, then we’ll talk about why. But those are the two steps.

Alan Wiseman (36:48):

So I mean building on that point then, that definitely suggests that for rank and file members, I mean, they have to exhibit a lot of agency on the front end to, first of all, at the very least, try to identify a potentially viable coalition who’s going to be in favor of this moving forward, and then clearly engage and perhaps negotiate with committee leaders to make sure that they are actually on board with this, and think this is sufficiently important to justify this – taking up the calendar time in some way.

Roger Hanshaw (37:14):

That’s true, that’s true, Alan, but there’s a role for us as leaders of the body and helping a new member identify who the natural coalition partners may be. So, who are the natural constituencies both within the House and within the Senate, as well as within the executive branch who can help bring an idea from the ideation stage to the desk of the Governor?

Craig Volden (37:35):

Yeah, I mean the interesting elements of building out those coalitions, getting to know one another for new members and what others are interested in, what they would support, and so on, really then does lead back to this comment you made before about each bill, each solution being bespoke to your community. At the same time, we hear about kind of this model legislation that floats from one state to the next, and one issue after another. Is that pretty much dead on arrival if it gets to West Virginia?

Roger Hanshaw (38:13):

Well, no. No, those things are helpful. When we, as leaders of legislative chambers, of legislators around the country, get together, we like to talk about the benefits of uniformity to the extent uniformity can be properly achieved. Perhaps there’s no better example of that anywhere in the law than, for example, the Uniform Commercial Code. So if you take the UCC, so the UCC is an almost unfathomable work product. The UCC is a product of the Uniform Law Commission, having decided that “Well, look, if Congress isn’t going to act and isn’t going to legislate in this area, we’re going to go out and we’re going to convince all 50 State legislatures to enact the exact, same provision of law to deal with the exact, same business issues in the exact, same way.” When you say that it almost sounds ridiculous on its face, except that it happened, right? It’s ridiculous, except for the fact that it happened so. So, no, model legislation is not dead on arrival, per se. But what is dead on arrival is the view that we, as elected officials, ought not consider our own unique role in that process. So what I find extraordinarily frustrating – and even I’ll go so far as to say offensive – is the notion that some advocates try to portray that “Oh, you can’t possibly amend one comma in this draft piece of legislation. It is imperative that you pass this exactly as it is, no matter how poorly drafted it is, no matter what a terrible job we’ve done of adequately cross-referencing the bill and pointing out the unique features of your state. You must pass it exactly as it is.” That’s dead on arrival.

Craig Volden (39:58):

And is that a lobbying strategy that many are taking with y’all?

Roger Hanshaw (40:00):

More than you would think. It’s a poor one, by the way, if they’re advocates watching this program.

Craig Volden (40:09):

I would imagine there would be some learning over time, but perhaps not.

Alan Wiseman (40:15):

This is shockingly timely, Mr. Speaker, given that just yesterday in my undergraduate legislative process class, we got into a discussion about the extent to which model legislation is distributed pervasively into different legislatures, and whether or not it’s the case the legislators themselves just decide to accept it as whole cloth and move it on. And I commented that it’s quite likely that these legislators would have a strong incentive to both read it and interject their own perspectives on this. Thank you for that – I really appreciate it.

Roger Hanshaw (40:50):

The more multi-jurisdictional the issue, the less likely that is to be the case. So, for example, if we’re talking about the regulation of artificial intelligence at the state level – now, that’s a bit of a bad example, because much of that would be preempted by federal law, but to the extent it isn’t – there’s a great motivation for states to have uniformity and harmony among the 50 jurisdictions on how we regulate something as monolithic as artificial intelligence. But if we go to the complete opposite end of that continuum, and we think about something like bituminous coal mining – of which there is a lot in West Virginia, but not in many states around the country – we exercise our own view of mining law, because that’s not unique to West Virginia, but it’s important to West Virginia, and it’s important enough that we’ll do it our way.

Craig Volden (41:47):

We’ve been talking a little bit about policies that float from state to state, but also the degree of uniformity in the decade or so that you’ve been paying super close attention along these lines. If we’re thinking more about the vertical aspects, what’s being done by the national government versus what’s being done by the states and, say, the role of Congress versus the role of state legislatures, have you been seeing that evolving over time? Are you taking on more and different issues now, and just sort of how has that been playing out?

Roger Hanshaw (42:22):

Well, frustratingly often we’re not, and often we’re unable to, because of the inability of Congress to legislate. So many state legislatures and legislators around the country live in a state of constant frustration, and I would be among them, in that Congress – for whatever reasons, and we could have an entire seminar about why that’s true – but Congress is just largely unable to act and unable to legislate on many issues of significant importance and substance to the country. But yet the federal agencies won’t allow states to legislate in those areas citing federal preemption. So I’ll give you a specific example: our legislature passed a very sweeping, very comprehensive piece of broadband expansion legislation aimed at the deployment of fiber optic cable across the 55 counties of West Virginia, largely because the Federal Communications Commission won’t do its job in terms of regulating pole attachment for fiber optic cable, and Congress has demonstrated it’s unwilling or unable to legislate in this area. Okay, fine, if you won’t do it, states will do it. But literally, the next morning, literally the next day after the Governor signed that piece of legislation, a federal court – the Federal Communications Commission sought a permanent injunction of that bill in a federal district court, and were successful, and our bill was permanently enjoined by the trial court citing federal preemption. That’s an extraordinarily frustrating reality, which happens sadly all too often.

Craig Volden (43:51):

And from a problem-solving perspective, then no one’s making progress on that?

Roger Hanshaw (43:58):

Correct. It’s maddening.

Alan Wiseman (44:01):

Yeah, I want to shift gears a little bit, or at least the direction of the conversation. Just to think about the ways in which some of your personal characteristics – you as a human being, and your perspective on life – influence your approach to public service. You’ve spoken eloquently about your family, your faith, including your service as a deacon in the Baptist Church. You’re obviously actively engaged with many aspects of your community at a really on-the-ground level. I’d just be curious to know from your perspective, especially now, having served as an elected representative for a decade, how do you feel that those different roles and backgrounds have influenced your perspective as a public servant, as a leader, and ultimately, in the broader context that we’re discussing as an effective lawmaker in the West Virginia House?

Roger Hanshaw (44:49):

So our elected officials at every level, whatever else they might be, whatever else we might be, are all still human beings, are all still people. And it’s important to remember that everyone who comes to these jobs does so with a background of lived experience. We all have families. We all have things that are important to us. And those realities shape everyone’s view on what’s important and what is right and what is wrong. And while it is our job to administer the secular government of the United States of America and of the sovereign states of this union, we are all still, nevertheless, a product of our own lived experience. We are all a product of our own belief structure, our own thoughts on faith and family and freedom, and they’ll never be a way to separate those things. And frankly, I’m not sure that they should be separated. Because in large part, our constituents elect us because of who we are. They elect us, not just based on what we say we’ll do for them, but they elect us based on who we are, and what they believe to be the judgment that we’ll exercise on their behalf. So I don’t shy away from or hide in any way, the belief structure that I have as a Christian person to inform my thinking on how I decide issues of public policy. I don’t believe that we, as elected officials can ever or should ever separate ourselves from who and what we were and are before we became elected officials.

Craig Volden (46:23):

I’d love to connect that to some of the work that we’re doing at the Center. Since we’re situated at a couple of universities – Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia – we’re also in a position to offer advice and guidance to young people, college students who are thinking about what paths they’ll take, both personally and professionally. In terms of the paths that you’ve been following, is there any set of advice or guidance that you’d like college students today to be considering along the way?

Roger Hanshaw (47:03):

Yeah, there is, Craig, Alan, and it’s simply this: I hope that every university student in America considers very deeply the obligation that we have as educated professionals in America to engage in public policy, in public service in some way. That doesn’t necessarily mean putting your name on a ballot and running for the state legislature. Public service comes in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you want to run for office, but maybe you also want to serve on your local library board. Maybe you also want to volunteer to serve on your local watershed association board. Maybe you want to volunteer at the local elementary school in some way. It’s so critically important that professionals engage in public service in some way and step into the leadership voids that we have that exist now. It’s said so often it probably would now pass for being trite, but we have a hunger and a thirst for leadership in our country that perhaps surpasses any time in our history. And I hope that it’s the educated professionals who are populating our colleges and universities, and that it will be the leaders of the workforce in the very near future that will step up and fill those roles. Look, I was a chemistry major. Okay, I was a chemistry major. You need not be a political science major or a pre-law student to make a meaningful and substantial impact on public service and public policy in America. Everyone can do it.

Craig Volden (48:29):

I appreciate that. Thanks.

Alan Wiseman (48:31):

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. That’s a really great way to articulate a concluding point. Unfortunately, we’d obviously go on for a really long time if we were able to, but our times winding up right now. But I also wanted to just give you a last opportunity to, you know, share any thoughts, or if you think we might left out any other topics or points of conversation that you think are essential for trying to understand things that might contribute to effective lawmaking in West Virginia, or more broadly speaking, given the positions that you’ve been able to sit in over the last 10 years. And it goes without saying that we just really appreciate your time and your thoughts today as we’ve been engaging with these topics.

Roger Hanshaw (49:10):

Sure, it’s been my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity. I’d like to perhaps just end on the notion that effective lawmaking comes in lots of ways. There are a multitude of ways to quantify and assess what constitutes effectiveness. I would challenge anyone to step back and view effectiveness through a lens that’s not quantifiable, per se, that simply counting the number of bills that one introduces, and how many pass and become the law is a measure of effectiveness, for sure, but so is one’s ability to also influence the development and evolution of strategies that solve problems in other ways that don’t perhaps require a change to statutory law. So, effectiveness means lots of different things to lots of different people. The important thing is that we get quality people engaged in public service for the right reasons.

Craig Volden (49:49):

Fantastic – perfect way to end our conversation today. So, thanks once again for your public service and for joining us.

Roger Hanshaw (50:06):

My pleasure. Have a great day.

Alan Wiseman (50:08):

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Roger Hanshaw (50:09):

Bye.