Announcing the Release of the 74th Colorado General Assembly, the 2023-2024 Hawai‘i State Legislature, and the 152nd Delaware General Assembly State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) 

The Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL) is proud to announce the release of our State Legislative Effectiveness Scores (SLES) for the 74th Colorado General Assembly, the 2023-2024 Hawai‘i State legislative session, and the 152nd Delaware General Assembly. This initiative is part of our broader effort to measure the lawmaking effectiveness of individual legislators in all 99 state legislative chambers in the United States. 

These scores capture lawmaking effectiveness by tracking the number of bills legislators sponsor, how far those bills advance through the legislative process, and the substantive significance of the proposals. 

Colorado, Hawai‘i, and Delaware mark the latest additions to our public data release, following earlier reports on Montana, Georgia, and several other states. We will continue to expand our data availability and analyses to all fifty states in the coming months. 

Highlights from the 74th Colorado General Assembly, the 2023-2024 Hawai‘i State  legislative session, and the 152nd Delaware General Assembly include the following: 

• Top Performers: We identify the most effective lawmakers from each party in the Colorado, Hawai‘i, and Delaware lower and upper chambers, including legislators who have consistently ranked highly across multiple legislative sessions. 
• Above Expectations: We highlight members who earned our prestigious Above Expectations designation for lawmaking effectiveness, including both seasoned legislators with sustained records and first-term lawmakers who quickly distinguished themselves among their peers. 
• Majority Party Advantage: Consistent with CEL research, majority-party legislators were generally more effective lawmakers, reflecting structural advantages such as agenda-setting power and committee leadership. 
• Colorado Findings: In terms of broader patterns, the Colorado General Assembly continues to see lawmaking advantages of majority-party members over those in the minority party. With large Democratic majorities, proposals from Republicans are naturally more difficult to advance. Across all states, the average SLES of minority-party members is 0.6.  In Colorado, the averages among minority-party Republicans are somewhat lower still, at 0.55 in the Senate and 0.52 in the House. This does not mean that Republicans were completely shut out of the lawmaking process, however. In the 2023-2024 term, the average Republican in the House sponsored about 3.6 bills that became law, relative to 10.2 laws produced on average by Democratic sponsors. In the Senate, those rates were about 5.9 laws from the average Republican and 14.8 among Democrats. Collectively, the combination of the larger number of Democrats and higher numbers of laws per Democrat than for Republicans meant that only 139 of the 1,002 laws produced in Colorado in 2023-2024 were sponsored by Republicans.
• Hawai‘i Findings: In terms of broader patterns, due in part to the very few Republican lawmakers in Hawai‘i, effective lawmaking in the legislature is organized on grounds other than partisanship. In particular, the vast majority of lawmaking runs through leadership positions – namely through the Speaker of the House, President of the Senate, and committee chairs in both chambers. To give a sense of the scope of this institutionalized influence, the average SLES among those not in such leadership positions in 2023-2024 was 0.43 in the House and 0.44 in the Senate. Put another way, of the 516 laws produced during the term, only 94 were sponsored by legislators not in such privileged positions, compared to 234 coming from committee chairs, another 52 sponsored by the President of the Senate, and 136 sponsored by the House Speaker. 
• Delaware Findings: In terms of broader patterns, partisanship continues to be strongly associated with lawmaking effectiveness in Delaware. While the SLES of minority-party lawmakers across the country on the whole averages about 0.6, the scores for minority-party members in Delaware have been around half of that, averaging around 0.3. While Republicans are disadvantaged at lawmaking, they have not been completely shut out of the legislative process. For example, in the 2023-2024 term, Republican legislators introduced 50 bills that became law. In contrast, the number of laws sponsored by Democrats in that term totaled 473. This nearly 10-1 ratio is significantly out of proportion to the number of seats the parties hold in the chambers, and well beyond what is seen in most legislatures across the country. 

You can explore the full reports and detailed findings below: 

• Read the Colorado Report here
• Read the Hawai‘i Report here 
• Read the Delaware Report here
• View the SLES Scores here 

Photo by Greg O’Beirne, Wikipedia