Structure

The overall structure of government can influence management of the legislative and executive relationship. Nicholson-Crotty and Miller's (2012) study of the fifty US states found “that the link between bureaucratic effectiveness and influence over legislative policy formulation is moderated by institutional features of a government” (p. 365), specifically legislative term limits, united governments, and fragmented executive branches. For instance, Virginia's short legislative sessions allow a coordinated and engaged response by the executive branch because the short time line prevents it from becoming an all-consuming task for state agencies. Most evident is the variation in the local government structure that emphasizes the council-manager form of government, in contrast to the more explicit division of executive and legislative functions at the state and local levels. A respondent from our case studies explained that the context of local government created a wholly different set of expectations: “So whereas the legislative branch in a Madisonian system has limited abilities to direct the executive to do things, and granted they can put instructions in budgets and that sort of thing, in manager-council government, the council or board has the power to hire and fire the chief administrative officer.”

The organizational environment of the agency is similarly important to legislative relations because it affects who is in power, the political feasibility of policy initiatives, and the discretion allowed the liaison. Scroggs (1996) finds that organizational culture plays an important role in how agency leaders perceive legislative affairs work within their own organization. Location in an executive structure can similarly influence the practices in which legislative liaisons can engage. As one federal manager explained, a reorganization moving an agency from one cabinet department to another resulted in a curtailment of engagement with the legislature and public regarding a highly controversial agency.

Partisanship

The partisan mix of government also influences management of the legislative relationship. Agencies can become the turf in tugs-of-war between legislative and executive branches divided between political parties (Scher, 1963; Khademian, 1992), and competition for funding can heighten legislative battles over how much money agencies will receive and how they will spend it (Lee, 2011). Therefore, effective legislative relations can entail efforts to minimize partisanship. Cummings (2008, p. 216) finds liaisons present themselves in a “nonpartisan fashion while bombs are lobbed at them” by the legislature. There is a need to know members and staff on both sides of the aisle, provide technical support and advice to both sides, and keep both sides informed of an agency's activities, particularly those that directly affect a member's constituency. A state-level administrator made a similar point. The organized members of their agency's constituent base tend to separate into Democratic and Republican camps, a situation that requires administrators responsible for legislative affairs to work hard to portray a partisan balance. The administrator continued, “In this agency, there is less of that partisanship because we do a lot to try to cultivate goodwill on both sides . . . Make sure you don't play favorites.”

Such prominent concerns for maintaining a partisan balance (or living with a partisan imprimatur) are less prevalent at the local level. The typically nonpartisan city council is clearly a factor, but the tug and pull between a mayor's office and a council, which might otherwise impede agency activities, can be absent because of the mutual dependence of both branches of government on citywide agencies for staff support.

Personal Style

Particularly at the state level, it is important for administrators to personally know legislators and their staff in order to conduct effective legislative relations. As one manager of a large cabinet agency described it, “It is no doubt personal relations at all levels [of government], but [such relations are] predominant here. When you know someone in state government, you really know them. You play softball with them.” Individuals differ in what they deem a “personal” relationship, however. For some, it consists of knowing legislators on the softball field. For others, it means a long-standing commitment to provide technical assistance on important pieces of legislation, occasional visits to the capital to meet with legislators one-on-one, and visits to legislators' districts.

For agencies intended to be independent of political influence, there is a particular need for professional familiarity with legislators. The executive director of an independent regulatory agency described his personal style with legislators: “The statutory text provides for an independent agency, a fiercely independent agency, by design . . . [We have always made it a point to] keep some distance.” A division director at the local level made a similar point. While emphasizing the fact that people from the division “see a lot of” council members, he nevertheless noted that their relationship was “strictly business.” This director placed a strong emphasis on the need not only to respond to council members' requests but also to ensure an appropriate distance between the council and the department staff: “[Council] requests for assistance are reviewed according to staff availability, and given certain priorities . . . They might request a hell of a lot of work [from us], and we would respond that we understand the importance [of the request], but it might have to wait until next year.”

The personal side of an agency's legislative relations also depends on the particular approach of the administrator charged with managing. When asked about the pattern of managing legislative relations that might have taken hold in his agency over the past decade, a manager with longevity in state government argued that it “is largely personality driven. If someone else were here, they would do it differently. I like to be very proactive, to head issues off at the pass. This job can't be done like a mechanical process, with weekly briefing meetings on issues.”

Technology

Advances in technology over the past twenty years have changed the communication landscape for legislative liaison officers. From the advent of e-mail, which allows multiple individuals to be copied on responses, to advanced tracking systems, which provide continuous data on the status of inquiries, the day-to-day management of the liaison office has been transformed along with the rest of society. Ahn and Bretschneider's (2013) case study found that “e-government transformed the bureaucracy from an authoritarian culture toward a more citizen-centric culture and increased transparency, responsiveness, and citizen trust in the government” (p. 420). For example, social media platforms have encouraged a more engaged citizenry. One public manager explained that alongside many other forms of technology, his locality had developed an app that sent concerns, pictures of potholes, and other information directly to city government. Mobile technologies allow up-to-the-minute updates on legislative hearings while simultaneously giving the audience a tool to fact-check information that is shared.

The Internet and social media have widened the audience that localities and states expect will be attentive to their policy issues. A federal legislative liaison explained the impact on the way legislative liaisons deal with the public issues: “I think it's made LL [legislative liaison] much more sensitive to what's going on in social media. Because things go viral that much quicker.” The inquiries coming in are no longer just citizens of a given locality or state but, if it is a viral issue, a larger audience that doesn't necessarily vote in the jurisdiction.

There are numerous benefits of these advances. One is that they allow increased ease of communication. Responsiveness is easier, in some ways, as advanced systems developed for these purposes aid tracking and sharing of information. The improved engagement by the public fosters the ideal of representativeness in the democratic republic. One local public manager felt that the interactive and crowdsourced nature of these technologies has changed the organizational structures in which legislative liaisons work because “it's just a lot less hierarchical than it used to be.”

Nonetheless, there are drawbacks to easily accessible communication tools. The threshold for constituents sending inquiries to the legislature that must be routed to the executive was higher. “Instead of sending a letter, it's rattling off an e-mail and clicking and instantly it goes in . . . It's easier to do and it's low cost for the person that is sending it.” The low cost can lead to such a high volume of inquiry that the executive branch has difficulty managing the inquiries.

Structure and Staff

The evolution of the organizational and professional legislative liaison function affects management challenges due to a parallel growth in the legislative staff function. At the national and state levels, legislative professionalism and the growth of personal and committee staffs have heightened the institutional capacity of legislatures to conduct routine oversight of agency activities. Legislatures are more likely to thoroughly investigate the fiscal and operational activities of agencies and, if necessary, specify procedural restrictions in their enabling statutes (Squire, 1993; Weberg, 1988; Aberbach, 1990; Jones, 1988). The executive has built organizational mechanisms to complement this professionalization and growth in the legislature (Clinton, Lewis, & Selin, 2014). The executive public manager now has an impetus to share information and interact with these new legislative entities because “the reliance of members of Congress upon their staff should not be underestimated” (Cummings, 2008, p. 227). In the sphere of liaising, staffs are key to information sharing, with the staff “there to be worked with, not circumvented” (Scroggs, 2000, p. 9). Over the past two decades, the number of staff supporting the legislative liaison function has grown. The Congressional Research Service contact list of federal congressional liaison offices for members and committees of Congress grew from a listing of 150 offices in 2008 to 200 in 2013 (Crane-Hirsch, 2011). Local legislatures are less likely to have full-time representatives and professional staffs, and city managers and their staff play the role of linking technical standards and professional criteria to political decisions made by elected officials (Arnold & Plant, 1994). The growth in staff, activities, and specialization presents distinct management challenges that we examine.

At the federal level, legislative relations are typically managed through a formal office of congressional relations. A director who oversees staff responsible for two basic functions heads each such office: direct liaison with Congress and correspondence with individual legislators and their constituents. The scope and scale of these activities can vary dramatically across agencies. In an analysis of LL offices for the military services, Scroggs (2000, p. 22) found a complex operational structure that included a diversity of offices: “front office,” “congressional inquiries,” “senate liaison division,” “house liaison division,” “programs,” “legal,” “travel,” and “administrative support.”

Public managers have worked to influence the legislature since Jefferson's presidency when executive officers were considered to be on executive “‘diplomatic missions’ to Capitol Hill” (Heaphy, 1975, p. 43). The second half of the twentieth century introduced the institutionalization of these types of activities. Pipe (1966, p. 14) recognized that the “Congressional liaison activity is not new . . . What is new is the institution of an office in each Department especially assigned to conduct the Department's relations with Congress.” In the twenty-first century, the existence of the office is a given at the federal level and has itself become a complex organization. As one federal official explained, it's “created a level of bureaucracy between straight from the top of the organization from leg [legislative] affairs; now it goes through the typical bureaucratic process of layered before it gets to the director.” These changes may be accompanied by a process of professionalization that socializes individuals for interaction with the legislature through training and development opportunities, as two of our respondents mentioned. Said one interviewee, “We're actually sending them to a very structured and formalized education process to get them to the point so they can function effectively on the Hill and not just drop them.”

Holtzman (1970) suggests that a highly partisan past jeopardizes legislative liaisons' success in building relations with legislators from the opposing party. Often the director of legislative relations is a former Capitol Hill staff member with expertise in the agency's activities. Military and law enforcement agencies tend to assign internal employees to the position as a way to recognize exceptional public service. One public manager explained that promotion from within, in organizations that equate success with fieldwork, sometimes results in legislative liaisons who are unhappy in the halls of Congress: “They're dreading having to come to the Hill every day . . . You can't really criticize them. They're military officers. They're not necessarily there to work on the Hill.”

The number of staff reporting to the legislative relations director in each federal office varies with levels of congressional attention and an agency's leaders. In one federal agency, managers have realized the connection between organizational survival and the size of the legislative liaison office: “So we've kind of professionalized this process both on the legislative affairs side and the public affairs side. And in the process of doing that we've started to add people. We've recognized it as a function that has great significance to our future as an organization so we've started to add people to it, grow it, grow its mission. As a result, it's gotten so big it needed to be separated.” The increased resources devoted to congressional relations represent both the agency chairman's effort to make congressional relations a priority and the increased demands placed on the agency by legislative activity.

Among large state agencies, the legislative relations function is not managed from a separate office; rather, it is managed by or in coordination with the executive assistant to the agency's politically appointed (or, in some cases, elected) director. In some cases, an appointed legislative liaison who reports to the executive assistant shares the responsibility. In medium to small state agencies governed by an independent board or director, the agency director or an executive director is primarily responsible for managing legislative relations; at times, an assistant director shares this responsibility. In most cases, staff responsible for legislative relations can have dual or triple functions.

In some states, legislative engagement takes place in silos with each agency engaged directly with legislative overseers. In contrast, in a state with a strong executive, the governor's office coordinates legislative liaison work.

As one former state-level administrator explained, “The structure in a typical governor's office is, you have a legislative team: people in all of the agencies as well as in the governor's office are responsible for legislative liaison relations and information sharing. And that team has to meet very frequently. In our case, we would meet every day at noon when the session would go in.”

These two forms of organization (silos versus interconnections) are not reflective of the gamut of executive legislative liaison approaches by states but rather indicative of the diverse means of engagement by state agencies. Nicholson-Crotty and Miller's (2012) study of state governments found that executive fragmentation was associated with increased bureaucratic influence by individual agencies because “as the executive branch becomes increasingly fragmented and bureaucracies are viewed as more independent from the governor, it becomes increasingly important for agency officials to develop their own relationship with legislators” (p. 363).

At the local level, such as in smaller state agencies, agency leaders are a common contact for members of city councils. The impetus for relationship building at the local level reveals the importance of context. Whereas the state and federal executive and legislative branches are intended to be separate, in many localities government is designed for the council and executive to work together. One former member of the city council in a council-manager system explained: “The manager is an appointee of the board but is basically a professional hired with credentials from ICMA [International City/County Management Association] and that sort of thing. And the manager works with the board and the board can direct the manager and in that way can exercise executive authority.”

Two additional variations should be noted regarding the local level. First, an administrative support person often plays a central role in council relations management, from directing inquiries that come through the main office to following up on earlier concerns. Second, council members commonly contact division managers within these agencies directly rather than passing through the agency director. In fact, the more familiar a council member becomes with a particular agency, the more likely he or she is to go directly to the source for dealing with a problem. A local council member who had worked with six city managers over eighteen years explained that each had a different set of guidelines for council relations management. As the former city council member noted, “The way information is shared: I've seen every possible variation . . . When I started, it was very rigid and controlled. Manager chaperoned employees to speak to the board.”

Protocols for Contact

An important part of managing legislative relations is knowing how to prioritize legislative contacts and where to allocate responsibility for formulating responses. Top priority is assigned to issues requiring direct communication between the head of the agency and members of the legislature. At the national level, legislative relations directors call these items “member issues,” referring to direct inquiries from a legislator. These require the immediate attention of the agency leader. A member issue might also include a high-profile agency effort to initiate or block a legislative action such as expanding the agency's jurisdiction, preventing a change in its jurisdiction, or negotiating an appropriation. Successful legislative relations management requires the ability to recognize member issues, which may differ by agency. For example, at both the state and federal levels, specific inquiries from constituents require a direct reply from the head of the agency (or at least his or her signature on a letter).

The management challenge includes knowing whether an inquiry requires the agency leader's attention or someone else's. If citizen inquiries are not handled in a judicious and attentive manner, legislators are sure to probe the offending agency on behalf of their ill-served constituents. An occasional personal touch from the agency leader is, consequently, imperative. But an agency leader cannot spend all of his or her time on the phone with constituents. One large state agency has a system in place to direct legislators to the staff person best able to handle their inquiries. In many agencies, those responsible for legislative relations centrally monitor and track this system of delegation.

The frequency of contact between a division manager and council member makes protocols for handling inquiries less relevant at the local level. Administrative support staff or the director receiving an inquiry makes referrals to the appropriate manager to follow through with the appropriate council member. Particular inquiries require informing the director of the contact and, at times, brought in on the response. In the words of one division director, “It depends on the item. If it's a routine request, no. The division director will give the response directly to the [council member]. But if it is a request for an opinion [on a particular ordinance or proposal] or our support of a project, the director will be copied in on it. It varies with each situation.” Regardless of agency protocol, maintaining effective legislative relations requires a prompt response to any legislative inquiry.

Managing Inquiries and Replies

At the state, local, and national levels, a prominent part of an agency's job is managing legislative correspondence and daily telephone inquiries. Most frequently, a legislator forwards a constituent inquiry to the agency, or the legislator writes a direct inquiry in response to a constituent's concerns. At the federal level, the Office of Legislative Relations manages such inquiries, where they track correspondence to ensure a prompt response, either directly to the constituent or to the legislator, and the appropriate agency division or department thoroughly reviews an answer for accuracy and sends it to the constituent or member with the appropriate signature. One respondent described the online system in place to manage inquiries: “The way the board gets that information is to put in this request to this system that the manager's office maintains. They send it out to the relevant department and it's tracked. It's tracked all the way back up through the chain, through the manager's office and then goes to the board office.”

In another agency, the process was not tracked, but it was conducted by the director of legislative relations and his staff. One director described the system he had in place this way: “We have changed the way we do things. If we get a letter [from Congress], we will ascertain who has substantive knowledge [on the issue] and we go to them, but we prepare the response and run it by that person. We do the work, so there is no tracking [of the response back to Congress] . . . [Responding] is a good deal of what we do.”

Centralized management of correspondence with Congress is essential to preempt additional congressional inquiries and pressures. If inconsistent, inappropriate, or incorrect responses go to Congress or if responses are not made in a timely manner, additional inquiries are sure to follow—if not investigations to get to the bottom of the problem. When asked if an agency employee could respond to a congressional inquiry without first contacting the Office of Legislative Relations, a legislative relations director for a federal agency replied, “Outside of our [agency leader], they damn well better go through me.”

As legislative and constituent inquiries grow more demanding at the state level, similar centralized efforts to track and respond to correspondence are being put into place to ensure more coordinated communication, particularly in large state cabinet agencies with high volumes of constituent and legislative inquiries. The volume of inquiries has increased dramatically since our original case studies, according to our interviewees, due to advances in technology. A council member in a local jurisdiction explained that the volume of correspondence the agencies must address has grown alongside constituent expectations: “So technology makes a lot of things possible. You can communicate with a lot more people. You can respond more quickly. But mostly it raises the expectation. And a lot of things that have to happen don't happen any faster.”

In another similarly large state cabinet agency, the method of tracking is less formal. Inquiries and requests come to the executive assistant's office, but not exclusively. In the assistant's words, “We don't have an organizational chart, [and] there is some seepage in the process.” Nevertheless, he has in place a policy for how individuals within the agency are to handle legislative inquiries: “We do have a policy in this agency that if it is a factual question, [they should] answer and notify this office. If it is a question of a policy nature, they are to refer it to us.” This legislative relations manager works in an agency that is central to managing the state's executive branch; hence, the agency encourages other agencies to have similar policies in place.

Managers at the local level track inquiries in a more limited capacity. In smaller localities, an administrative support person manages an informal process that relies heavily on the individual contacted by a council member to report to the administrative staffer. In one local agency, a secretary in the director's office who directs council members' calls to individuals in the agency maintains an informal system of ensuring written responses to council inquiries by having managers send a copy of each response to her. But contacts are decentralized, so the council does not limit its contact to the agency director's office or a single head of legislative relations, which hampers the task of tracking. Some local agencies make no effort to track responses unless the council requests an opinion from the agency.

The integration of information processing technology has changed the tracking of inquiries over the past two decades. Now, automated systems of inquiry tracking at all levels of government allow up-to-the-minute monitoring of an inquiry's status. One local official explained that they track in real time the number and types of inquiries each council member has submitted: “You see the status of everything that is currently active . . . There is a database that is continually monitoring these things.”

Legislative Service Bureaus

A final component of effective legislative relations is contact with legislative service bureaus, particularly at the state level. Service bureaus facilitate the work of state legislatures. They include audit bureaus (similar to the federal government's Government Accountability Office), fiscal bureaus (the legislative equivalent of a state budget office), and legislative councils (designed to provide guidance on legislative development). The type of contact any one administrator might have with these entities (particularly audit bureaus and legislative councils) varies depending on the size of the agency and the nature of its work. For the most part, managers of legislative relations in larger state agencies occasionally facilitate contact between a service bureau requiring the cooperation of the agency and the people in the agency who will provide the bureau with assistance.

The concept of a legislative service bureau is not as relevant at the local level. Instead, agencies provide staff support required by the council directly. A comptroller's office might put together agency requests for annual budgets, while a clerk's office might provide direct staff support to the council by organizing and posting the agenda for each council meeting, maintaining the minutes of all meetings, managing the electoral process, and housing all city ordinances, in addition to performing a multitude of other tasks. At the federal level, the primary service bureau is the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which a member or committee of Congress may charge to audit an agency or evaluate its internal management, the effectiveness of its programs, or its regulatory activities. The primary contact point when the GAO conducts an audit is the agency leader, who then directs the bureau toward agency staff who are best able to provide the technical assistance and data necessary for the study. As with agency-legislature relations, the goal for contact with legislative bureaus is to maintain a professional, nonpartisan relationship.

Preparation of Testimony

Presenting testimony to the legislative branch is typically just a formality as far as it concerns legislative relations. As one administrator in a state agency put it, “I think it's less important than it may appear on its face. It's a little bit like public hearings on a budget bill. That's not how things are going to get added or new issues raised in relation to a budget. You've either done your homework before the public testimony, or after the public testimony you spend a lot of time talking to people.” Formal testimony is not to be taken lightly, however. While thorough testimony might not boost an agency's stature within the legislature, poor and uninformed testimony can damage it. Furthermore, testimony provides an opportunity to put an agency's position on the formal record. One state-level administrator argued that “it is the lowest hurdle you have to get over, and you don't want to screw up. I use the opportunity to do two things: to succinctly state our position . . . [and] to send messages for those listening, such as lobbyists.”

It is the responsibility of state and federal legislative relations professionals to help coordinate the preparation of agency testimony and often to write or edit the final testimony text. The testimony must be accurate and thorough, and the presenter (typically the agency director) must be fully briefed on a range of issues in anticipation of legislators' questions. Perhaps most critical to this preparation is the “homework,” the informal contacts with relevant legislative staff prior to the hearing. A federal manager describes the preparation process succinctly: “For our appropriations testimony or for testimony on some bill, we will be working long in advance to [communicate] what we are going to say and how, what questions they are going to ask, and what would be a good answer.”

Testimony before a city council is more routine, taking the form of a formal presentation of a requested report at a council meeting. Reports are presented either by the director of the agency or lead division director, and presentations often include follow-up questions by council members. Two additional features of formal testimony can facilitate effective legislative-agency relations. First, it is an opportunity to visit with legislators on an informal basis following the testimony. A state administrator described the use of post-testimony time for the agency's secretary and herself to become more acquainted with members and “let them know that we're here, we're open, we're receptive, and we do want that close communication with all of them.” Second, formal testimony occasionally provides an agency leader an opportunity to make an important point publicly, often unexpectedly. A state-level manager of legislative relations noted an unexpected question about staffing needs raised at a public hearing, which allowed the agency's director to elaborate, in a public forum, on a concern long held by the agency. Given the visibility of the question and the response, the agency was able to follow up with research for legislators working with a staffing-needs task force.

The Gray Zone

Achieving successful legislative relations often rests on knowing when to pick a fight over a piece of legislation and when to take on an issue in a more strategic manner. Describing the calculation he must make on each legislative issue and how he must advise his boss (the agency director), one official responsible for legislative relations notes, “I have to get the director to agree with the people on the Hill. I have to let him know what the issues are and to think about which ones we might want to tackle. If we win on this issue, what could we lose?” Successful relations require the ability to facilitate legislative priorities to secure an agency's own needs. This often means having the confidence of the agency leader or board members in order to bargain effectively with legislators on the spot. Credibility is key to the bargaining relationship; an ability to deliver to legislators on key issues is fundamental to the success of future negotiations.

Scroggs (2000, p. 2) defines liaising activity as “communicating directly to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an agency and Congress,” and Jeffrey Berry (cited in Scroggs) defines lobbying as “any legal means used to try to influence government.” Legislative liaisons operate in an environment where it is important to distinguish between simply communicating information and using that information to influence government. Each legislative liaison approaches what we refer to as “the gray zone” differently, with a mix of opinions as to whether a distinction exists between liaising and lobbying. A public manager who did not differentiate between liaising and lobbying described a situation where the two overlapped: “I didn't directly ask for the money for that, but I told them strategically this is what we have in mind and this is what would make this program so much more effective.” Another legislative liaison who strongly believed in a difference between the two explained that being a liaison “is making sure there is an accurate understanding of a program,” whereas lobbying is to “push or promote a particular program.” Even with the difficulty in determining the line between liaising and lobbying, most state and national respondents did not follow guidelines or protocols for relationship building. The need for flexibility and the unique nature of each relationship prompted a public manager to claim in regard to guidelines, “I don't know if that's helpful.” At the local level, however, the professionalized city manager has a code of ethics that helps draw necessary ethical lines, such as tenet 7 of the International City/County Management Association's (ICMA) Code of Ethics (2014): “Refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in professional administrators.” These ethical guidelines highlight the values that are integral to effective legislative relations. Public managers in state and federal levels of government need to be cognizant that while bridging the divide is important, the “founders intended tension as a means of keeping power in check” (Cummings, 2008, p. 232).

Contact with Organized and Regulated Interests

Achieving effective legislative relations also entails knowing the views and opinions of organized interests related to an agency's activities or those of the general constituency served by the agency. These constituent groups are an important link to legislators who respond to complaints or problems related to the agency (Holtzman, 1970; Cummings, 2008). A state-level administrator involved in legislative relations discussed the efforts of his office and of administrators from a particular agency division to do “a lot of work with the constituencies ahead of time to develop proposals that we're confident will have support.” Ten percent of this agency's contacts with the legislature, he noted, are “proactive”: the agency is seeking something, such as an expansion of authority, so working with the affected constituency groups is considered essential. In one case, where the agency sought an expansion of authority for a group of state inspectors, there was “some potential disagreement with local sheriffs concerned about competition with the state . . . It took a very sustained effort by a number of people from [the division] working with constituencies as well as the legislature . . . When there is a comfort level, then things tend to pass [the legislature].”

Holtzman (1970) describes this distinction as direct versus indirect lobbying, where one form requires direct interaction with the legislature on the issue of interest and the latter works to generally build relations or involve outside constituencies. Laws against direct and indirect lobbying introduce ethical considerations of what constitutes appropriate management of legislative relations. Historically, when the US Employment Service pressured Congress in an information campaign aimed at self-preservation, Congress passed the 1919 antilobbying statute that prohibits public agencies from using federal funds “for any personal services or to pay for any advertisement, telegram, letter, or circular designed to defeat or enact any proposed legislation by Congress, or to influence any Member of Congress to vote on any appropriation unless specifically authorized” (Anti-Lobbying Act of 1919). Aggressive efforts to build a comfort level with constituency groups by urging them to lobby the legislature can be of concern to legislators. Legislators wary of this type of activity passed a series of amendments to appropriations bills starting in 1951 with the intent to limit the rallying of constituency groups by federal agencies (Lee, 2011). Although this law exists alongside the 1919 antilobbying state, Scroggs (1996, pp. 479–480) claims that “members consistently voiced in interviews that if the Anti-Lobbying Act were taken literally, the government (and Congress' role in that government) could not function as intended by the framers of the Constitution.” These laws have little precedent of prosecution but are still important due to their potential use as political tools (Lee, 2011).

For a regulatory agency in particular, contact with a primary constituent group must be made in a manner that does not raise questions of capture or influence peddling. A federal manager of legislative relations noted that he made an effort to “speak at conferences and roundtables” held by the trade association of the regulated industry: “I talk with them often. Most of the time they want to know, ‘What in the hell are you doing?’” While there is a need to maintain a safe distance from the group, there is also a need to know the opinions of the group on legislative and regulatory matters. In the words of this same manager, “It's important that we don't appear too buddy-buddy with them [but] most would say, ‘Gee, it's stupid if we don't know what they are up to.’ [So] we always pay our own way.”

The roundtable or trade meeting speech is a common source of contact for managers of legislative relations. However, contact varies depending on the type of constituency and the activity of the agency. For example, a state-level administrator in an agency closely connected to the governor's office routinely meets with lobbyists, not only to sound out their positions on a variety of issues but also as a means of informally addressing potential constituency problems that will otherwise be debated on the Senate floor: “Lobbyists are helpful when they bring to the forefront a particular problem, and if we can preempt the problem, it doesn't have to be debated on the floor of the senate.”

Managers of legislative relations in agencies with generalized public constituencies often need to arrange public functions by the agency leader across the country (Holtzman, 1970). The reasoning behind this is twofold. First, it is important for the general public to know what the agency is doing, as a means of building support for its activities. Second, public ceremonies held with a legislator's constituency provide the legislator with a means to glean positive publicity in connection with the agency. The contact facilitates both public and legislative relations for the agency. A state-level administrator described an agency director's efforts to attend “parades, ribbon cuttings, whatever it is.” That type of constituent contact builds goodwill with legislators: “I think the bottom line is not to be making contacts only when you want something. Get to know people on their turf.”

Contact with constituents at the local level is more direct, and it plays a dual role. Citizens from any council district can call the public health department, for example, to complain of excessive noise or the public works department to report a missing stop sign. While these inquiries can be handled directly by the agency, the agency will also inform the council member in that district of the problem. Hence, not only do these constituents provide an agency with information to do its job appropriately, they also let the agency serve as a monitor of constituent problems. More formally, agency managers can attend neighborhood meetings called by council members to offer technical advice and information on constituent concerns. The effective management of legislative relations demands some attention to constituents affected by agency activities. Such contact not only enhances the information available to an agency for its decision making, it can serve to preempt a legislative inquiry initiated by disgruntled constituents. This type of contact can provide feedback to legislators with respect to constituent problems or the practical consequences of legislation that might need legislative attention.

Insights for Public Managers

Keeping in mind the overall challenges, and the context within which managers manage, the strategic and tactical components of the job are central. Managers must pursue a range of legislative liaison activities from the efficient and responsive processing of inquiries and requests, to the preparation of and delivery of testimony, to the face-to-face contact with legislative staff and legislators to provide information and advice on legislative affairs that directly affect the agency. Each manager of the legislative liaison function in each agency may give different priority and emphasis to this range of activities and may adopt different styles of communication and interaction, but the overall goal of achieving a balance between accountability and responsiveness to the legislature, with some flexibility to accomplish agency goals, is the core objective. Toward this end, we emphasize here the importance of building a culture of credibility as the context for effective legislative and executive branch relations. Several defining characteristics of a culture of credibility stand out in the interview data and provide a point of focus for managing liaison activities.