Talk:Connecticut State Troubadour

Overlapping terms

For 1993-'98, the article showed a 2-year term starting every odd year, and a 1-year one in the following even year (presumably either overlapping with the 2-year one, or reflecting partial completion of the two-year one). However, the citation i've provided on his entry in the table says "Pere was named the official state troubadour for 1995."
That suggests that there may never have been any evidence for 2-year terms in that period, and that that insinuation merely reflects an editor's over-interpretation of the statement that terms are two years. Occam's razor and the legislative history i've footnoted -- "June Sp[ecial] Sess[ion] P[ublic] A[ct] [19]99-1 required troubadour to be designated biennially, rather than annually, effective July 1, 1999" -- suggest that someone mistakenly assumed that two-year terms were required since '91. Archeology of the edit history and perhaps of the earlier press releases may show more (e.g., whether one of the incarnations of the commission had authority to institute the State Troubadour or set the term without specific legislative action), but the only evidence at hand conflicts with the "1995-1996" entry and makes 6 years of single-year terms for now the presumable fact.
One possible scenario, tho, is that the terms were much less formal in the first decade, and e.g. that they didn't bother appointing a new troubadour until they had an event in mind, and/or that the usual pattern of the legislature (long session starting early in an even year -- putting greater demands on commission staffs to prepare legislative language, testify, etc. -- following the November legislative elections, and a shorter session in the odd year) somehow led to a pattern of odd-year troubadours serving more than 12 months, and even-year ones serving fewer.
--Jerzy•t 23:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)