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Massachusetts lawmaker becomes next in line to lead nation’s state legislators
Moore chosen as NCSL President-Elect
July 24, 2009...Meeting in Philadelphia this week, the nation’s state legislators unanimously elected Massachusetts State Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, to be President-Elect of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Moore, who has served as Vice President for the past year, is now in line to be NCSL’s 38th President in 2010-11. NCSL is the premier national organization that represents the Nation’s 7,382 state legislators.
“Being chosen by my peers, who are all legislative leaders from across the Nation, to lead this prestigious national organization and represent state concerns in the highest councils of our American government, is an honor not only for me, but for the people who choose me as their state senator and for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Sen. Moore stated.
As President-Elect, Sen. Moore will be part of NCSL’s 2009-2010 leadership team headed by Georgia Republican State Senator Don Balfour, President; Kansas Republican State Representative Melvin Neufeld, who will succeed Moore as Vice President; and North Carolina Democratic House Speaker Joe Hackney, who becomes Immediate Past President. Also joining the legislative leaders will be Nancy Cyr of the Senior Legal Counsel in the Legislative Research Division of the Nebraska Legislature. Ms. Cyr will now be leading legislative staff officers of NCSL.
In addition to Sen. Moore’s service as Vice President this past year and as a member of the NCSL Executive Committee for six years before that, he is co-chair of NCSL’s Task Force on Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness; co-chair of NCSL’s Health Information Technology Champions (HITCh) Project, and co-chair of the Advisory Committee for NCSL’s Trust for Representative Democracy. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of NCSL’s Foundation for State Legislatures and serves on the association’s Health Chairs Project, which represents legislators who chair health care related committees in their home legislatures.
Moore serves in Massachusetts as Senate Chairman of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, and is one of the principal architects of the state’s landmark health care reform law. Along with Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, he led successful passage last year of comprehensive legislation to improve the quality and containment of rising costs in health care. In a related effort, the Senator is an active member of the National Governor’s Association’s State Alliance for e-Health, promoting the use of health information technology to improve quality and safety while containing health care costs. He recently traveled to Washington, DC to accept the Safe Rx Award for Massachusetts’s third consecutive year as the top state in electronic prescription.
Moore was among those who were instrumental in launching NCSL’s “America’s Legislators Back to School” program ten years ago. Last year, an evaluation of the program, which supports efforts by state legislators to visit schools to explain the important role of state legislatures, found that visits by lawmakers made a positive impact on students and enhanced their understanding of civic education. Sen. Moore has been a frequent visitor to local schools and successfully sponsored the establishment of a Special Commission on Civic Engagement and Learning aimed at restoring the civic mission of public education of preparing future generations of active citizens.
“I am especially proud of the fact that, for the second consecutive year, my Massachusetts colleagues and I have led the nation in visiting schools to promote the concept of representative democracy,” Moore stated.
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is a national bipartisan organization that serves the legislators and legislative staffs of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and American territories. The organization provides research, technical assistance, and opportunities for policymakers to exchange ideas on the most pressing state issues as well as advocating the interests of state government with Congress and federal agencies. The organization was founded in 1975, and its founding president was then-Massachusetts Senate President Kevin B. Harrington of Salem.
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