Interstate Cooperation, Second Edition

Joseph F. Zimmerman

Description

Cooperative interstate relations are essential for maintaining the economic and political union established by the United States Constitution. Despite this importance, interstate compacts, federal-state compacts, and interstate administrative agreements have generally been neglected by political scientists for more than half a century. In this second edition of Interstate Cooperation, Joseph F. Zimmerman demonstrates that many public goals can be achieved by either a compact or an agreement. Interstate administrative agreements, moreover, may be verbal or written, and have increased sharply in number because their flexibility allows changes to be made quickly without legislative authorization. Zimmerman aims to stimulate additional research on these forms of interstate cooperation in order to help formulate additional innovative solutions to our major interstate problems.
Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Interstate Comity

2. Constitutional Interstate Governance

3. The Compacting Process

4. Compact Commissions

5. State-administered Compacts

6. Formal and Informal Administrative Agreements

7. Interstate Comity: An Assessment

Appendix A: Interstate Compacts Granted Congressional Consent

Appendix B: Federal-Interstate Compacts Granted Congressional Consent

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• Region
• Regional
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 14 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438442365
• Langue: English

Extrait

I NTERSTATE C OOPERATION
Compacts and Administrative Agreements
SECOND EDITION
Joseph F. Zimmerman

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zimmerman, Joseph Francis, 1928-
Interstate cooperation : compacts and administrative agreements / Joseph F. Zimmerman. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4235-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Interstate agreements—United States. I. Title.
KF4618.Z53 2012
342.73'042—dc23
2011027893
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Peggy with Love for Her Support
P REFACE
H armonious interstate relations in general are a central feature of successful federal systems that have constitutions allocating substantial powers to member states. Conflicts, however, arise in these systems and can be resolved by means of interstate cooperation that in the United States may assume the form of interstate compacts, formal interstate administrative agreements, and reciprocity statutes. The alternatives in the United States to these methods of conflict resolution are adjudication by the United States Supreme Court if one or more states bring an original jurisdiction suit against another state(s), or a congressional preemption statute removing regulatory powers from states. Although the national legislature can not resolve a boundary dispute, Congress may grant its consent to an interstate compact establishing the boundary line(s) between two states.
Preemption statutes date to 1790, but had a relatively minor effect on the state-reserved powers until the mid-l960s when Congress increasingly removed all or certain regulatory powers from states and local governments in a number of fields. The question of whether Congress should employ its preemption powers to solve a nationwide problem is highly political and typically involves important interest groups. Complete preemption of state regulatory authority in a given field has the advantage of establishing uniform policies throughout the nation, but limits the ability of individual states to innovate new problem solving approaches that may be adopted by sister states. In a number of instances, an interstate compact and/or formal interstate administrative agreement could be employed to achieve the goals of a preemption statute.
The politics of interstate relations generally has been neglected by most political scientists in recent decades, although such relations affect directly thousand of business firms and millions of citizens. This book attempts to rectify in part the neglect by examining the use of cooperative instruments—compacts and formal and informal administrative agreements—to address interstate problems, construct and operate physical facilities, regulate activities of business firms and individuals, and provide legal rights and services on a multistate basis by means of joint programs and reciprocity. The law of interstate relations is subjected to detailed analysis to promote an understanding of the legal basis for interstate cooperation and challenges to such cooperation.
A unique feature of this volume is the chapter on formal and informal interstate administrative cooperation whose importance can not be overestimated as the economic union and the political union established by the United States Constitution is dependent in large measure upon sister states acting in unison to solve major interstate problems. This volume also is unique in including the first listing, with legal citations, of all interstate compacts that have received the consent of Congress—and the first listing, with legal citations, of all federal-interstate compacts.
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
C ollecting information on interstate cooperation was a major task because of the relative lack of published current data and information. Numerous state and federal government officers, compact administrators, associations of state administrators, and individuals supplied information in response to my requests. In addition, a significant number of state government officers, compact officers, and association officers granted interviews to the author, and provided copies of materials that otherwise would have been unobtainable. The cooperation of these officers is reflective of their professionalism and their desires to improve the functioning of the federal system. Any errors of fact or misinterpretations, of course, are solely my responsibility.
A special debt of gratitude is owed to Addie Napolitano for her excellent preparation of the manuscript for publication.
CHAPTER ONE

I NTERSTATE C OMITY
A n imperium in imperio (an empire within an empire) is an apt descriptor of a federal system as sovereign political powers are divided between a national government and constituent state governments. 1 This power division automatically produces national-state relations and interstate relations characterized by competition, cooperation, and/or conflict. This book focuses on interstate comity in the United States that in origin predates the emergence of the federal system and is traceable to the Declaration of Independence of 1776 that necessitated interstate cooperation, similar to an international alliance, for the successful prosecution of the War of Independence.
The literature on national-state relations in the United States is vast in contrast to the scarcity of interstate relations literature. The first comprehensive book on such relations was not published until 1996. 2 This fact is surprising since boundary and trade disputes between sister states were major factors contributing to calls for amendment of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, and ultimately led to the convening of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that drafted the U.S. Constitution as a replacement of the articles.
Political scientists generally had relatively little interest in interstate relations in the post-1940 period until the turn of the twenty-first century. The lack of interest is difficult to explain when one considers the wide variety of major economic, political, and social matters involved and the importance of daily interstate cooperative activities. The declining scholarly attention paid to such relations is apparent upon a perusal of three special issues of The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science devoted to federalism and intergovernmental relations. 3 The 1940 issue contained six articles on interstate relations. The number of such articles declined to two in the 1974 issue, and to none in the 1990 issue. Fortunately, there has been increasing scholarly attention to such relations commencing in 1996.
The advantages of a federal system, according to its proponents, are avoidance of overcentralization of political power, national uniformity in policy areas where needed, states controlling their internal affairs and experimenting with new policies that lead to adoption of successful ones by sister states and/or the national legislature, greater opportunities for citizen participation in the policy making and implementation processes, and ability of states to remedy an internal problem without waiting for the national legislature to develop a solution.
A federal system, however, may have four major disadvantages. First, the exercise of concurrent powers by the national legislature and state legislatures may produce conflicts between the two levels of government and/or uneconomical performance of overlapping functions. Second, disharmonious state policies in numerous important areas—such as banking, criminal justice, highway safety, and taxation—create major problems for business firms and citizens who have to ascertain conflicting provisions in the various laws of the fifty states and be alert to frequent changes in many laws. Third, the refusal of a state government to recognize the public acts, judicial proceedings such as divorce, and records of another state generates significant problems. Fourth, serious transboundary problems (air and water pollution are examples) may remain unabated in the absence of national legislative action or interstate cooperation to solve them.
Formal interstate cooperation and informal interstate cooperation are the keystones holding the United States federal system together and contributing to its success, yet they are a largely unexplored area of the federal system. Cooperation is manifested in many forms. Formal cooperation is reflected in interstate compacts, reciprocity statutes, uniform laws, and written interstate administrative agreements for joint action that may be the product of self-interest of sister states and/or congressional promotion as explained in a subsequent section. Whereas compacts and uniform laws usually are intended to be relatively permanent, administrative agreements between sister states may be temporary or permanent and may be verbal or written. Interstate compacts can be located in the consolidated laws of states and, if consent has been granted by Congress, in the United States Statutes at-Large. Unfortunately, there is no central repository in any state holding all writte