| Chapter 1: | Governors and the National Governors Association (NGA) |
|
|
that governors generally choose to lobby for the fiscal and economic interests of their home states.
A fourth way governors are able to influence federal policy making is by working in conjunction with other governors through organizations such as the NGA. In order to lobby the federal government collectively through such organizations, governors regularly write letters and testify in favor of, or in opposition to, proposed legislation; participate in the drafting of legislation that is introduced and adopted in Congress; and assist in the development of rules in the executive branch of the federal government. Of course, organizations such as the Western Governors Association and the Southern Governors Association also try to impact federal policy, but the NGA represents the single organization through which all governors can work cooperatively toward a common cause.
A recent example of how the NGA has been able to help shape federal policy includes the successful recoupment of the tobacco settlement in the latter part of the 1990s. Another, less successful attempt to persuade the federal government was the group’s petition to allow the states to tax various components of the telecommunications industry—despite the petition’s ultimate defeat, this example is also indicative of the lobbying efforts of the NGA. Both of these examples are discussed in more detail as case studies in chapters 3 and 4, respectively.
The Case for Studying the NGA
The aforementioned examples show that governors are able to influence policy outside their jurisdictions in a number of ways. And although the variety of methods through which individual governors are able to do so (either by diffusion or through innovation) might lead some observers to think that gubernatorial