ABSTRACT
As on the national level, local officials regularly attempt to win over state lawmakers. Sometimes they are on the offensive, trying to secure needed changes from the legislature. Locally elected officials have several things going for them at the state level. They may, for example, have a particular advantage in gaining access because legislators, and other decision-makers found there, view them as having a legitimate right to speak on behalf of their constituents and to be considered as people who should be given “insider status.” From time to time, governors have expressed concern over the quality of state–local relations. In 1949, for example, the always eloquent Adlai E. Stevenson, at that time Governor of Illinois, told the state legislature: “The people are impatient with bickering between the state and local governments over the division of duties and revenues. They look only for efficient and responsible government by whatever agency is best fitted.”.
