WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FiscalNote, the Washington DC-based company that dramatically improves the way organizations engage with government, today announced the most effective State legislator in each of the United States’ 50 states.
“State legislatures are taking a much larger role in policy setting for heavily-regulated industries, and in some cases significantly diverge from Federal lawmakers,” said Tim Hwang, FiscalNote CEO. “For companies and groups operating in these sectors, engaging the most influential lawmakers across a number of key states is even more essential to achieving nationwide legislative and regulatory goals.”
In a typical year in the U.S., between 120,000 to 150,000 pieces of legislation are introduced at the state level. That compares to 10,000 to 15,000 at the Federal level.
“At Federal level, most bills don’t become law,” added Vladimir Eidelman, FiscalNote vice president of research. “At the State level, they’re very active. State legislatures pass 30 to 40 percent of the legislation they introduce, so organizations need to figure out very quickly if something is relevant or not. And whether they need to fly over to a state capitol to engage someone.”
FiscalNote’s Legislative Effectiveness Score – determined by the company’s proprietary government relationship management (GRM) platform – measures how successful a legislator is at sponsoring and steering legislation through each important stage of the legislative process, all the way through enactment.
The company's proprietary algorithm weights 12 factors for each individual, including bills sponsored, bills out of committee, bills to the floor and bills enacted, with each stage receiving more importance. A legislator’s score for each stage is further weighted by whether the bill is substantive (i.e., attempts meaningful change) or non-substantive (e.g., a resolution, memorial or commendation) as well as the legislator’s performance relative to other members of the chamber. Legislators are also categorized by ideology.
Values for each factor are then normalized and used to rank multiple legislators as well as identify a percentile of effectiveness. State legislators are compared to their peers within their own state and chamber, and not to legislators from other states.
Legislators can be scored for overall effectiveness as well as on specific subject areas. For subject scores, only bills related to that topic are considered. Further, legislators can be scored on effectiveness across all legislative sessions in which they’ve served or just for individual sessions. For cumulative scores, the methodology favor legislators with long tenures of service.
FiscalNote created the government relationship management (GRM) category a year ago with the first comprehensive engagement platform, services, and mobile application. The company will be exhibiting next month at National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Summit, August 6-9, 2017 in Boston.
Republicans Edge Democrats In Overall Effectiveness
The most effective U.S. State legislators – all with cumulative placements in the 96th percentile or better, compared to colleagues in their respective chambers – are:
- John B. Coghill (R-AK)
- Arthur Orr (R-AL)
- Melissa Thomas Irvin (R-AR)
- Gail Griffin (R-AZ)
- Gerald A. Hill (D-CA)
- Kent Douglas Lambert (R-CO)
- Martin M. Looney (D-CT)
- Phil Mendelson (D-DC)
- Margaret Rose Henry (D-DE)
- Jack Latvala (R-FL)
- Jeffrey E. Mullis (R-GA)
- Calvin K.Y. Say (D-HI)
- Jerry A. Kearns (D-IA)
- Michael Joseph Madigan (D-IL)
- Lonnie M. Randolph, Jr. (D-IN)
- Boyd Orr (R-KS)
- Jody Richards (D-KY)
- Daniel R. Martiny (R-LA)
- Bruce Edward Tarr (R-MA)
- Alfred Clinton Carr, Jr. (D-MD)
- Thomas B. Saviello (R-ME)
- Rick A. Jones (R-MI)
- Ronald Steven Latz (D-MN)
- Ryan Silvey (R-MO)
- Herbert Dale Frierson (R-MS)
- Jim Keane (D-MT)
- Julia Craven Howard (R-NC)
- Judith Lee (R-ND)
- Robert J. Krist (NE)
- Sharon M. Carson (R-NH)
- Jeff Van Drew (D-NJ)
- Mimi Stewart (D-NM)
- David R. Parks (D-NV)
- John J. Bonacic (R-NY)
- James Michael Hughes (R-OH)
- Antony Sykes (R-OK)
- Arnie L. Roblan (D-OR)
- Jacob Doyle Corman III (R-PA)
- V. Susan Sosnowski (D-RI)
- Alan Delk Clemmons (R-SC)
- Deb Peters (R-SD)
- Mark Norris (R-TN)
- Judith Pappas Zaffirini (D-TX)
- Curtis S. Bramble (R-UT)
- Emmett Wilson Hanger, Jr. (R-VA)
- Richard W. Sears, Jr. (D-VT)
- Karen L. Keiser (D-WA)
- Lena Carolyn Taylor (D-WI)
- John Ronald Unger II (D-WV)
- Henry H.R. Coe (R-WY)
About FiscalNote GRM
The FiscalNote GRM platform is the most effective solution for managing government impact and public issues. It aggregates global public data and internal data to deliver contextual insights via elegant workflow and collaboration tools. The platform creates an enterprise-based approach to modern government affairs – and the entire system learns over time. The platform marries deep data mining and breakthrough machine-learning techniques.
More than 200 companies rely on FiscalNote GRM and its services. The platform automatically tracks and analyzes data on more than 1.5 million active pieces of legislation, 800,000 federal and state regulations, more than 19,000 legislators and their staffers, more than 10 million regulatory comments, more than 6,000 watch lists, and more than 125,000 individual entities. Data is automatically collected from more than 150 sources at least four times every day.
About FiscalNote
FiscalNote has reinvented influence – dramatically improving the way organizations build and manage their relationships with all levels of government, and empowering them to have maximum impact on legislation and regulation. The company has raised more than $30 million from prominent early-stage investors including Renren, First Round Capital, Green Visor Capital, MediaToday, NEA, Visionnaire Ventures, Perle Ventures, Steve Case, Mark Cuban and Jerry Yang/AME Cloud Ventures. More than 200 organizations use the company’s proprietary tools and services. The growing number of enterprise companies depending on FiscalNote – from startups through global multinationals – include Akin Gump, Amazon, AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dish Network, Expedia, Fidelity, Freddie Mac, HealthSouth, Illinois Tool Works, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, The Kraft Heinz Co, Microsoft, Sallie Mae, Salesforce, Schlumberger, Southwest Airlines, Staples, Tenet, Thomson Reuters, Walgreens and Whataburger. Non-profits and advocacy groups relying on FiscalNote include the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Code.org, Consumer Technology Association, the Information Technology Industry Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Education Association, and the University of Virginia’s Law School.
FiscalNote is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and CEO Tim Hwang is a WEF New Champion.
