• Agriculture and International Trade and Foreign Relations—joint meeting (AG/ITFR) – relationship of international trade issues to U.S. economic performance
• Community and Economic Development (CED) – effective state economic development programs; and housing assistance programs: aids to fulfilling the American dream
• Criminal Justice and Public Protection (CJ) – dangerous offenders: implications for criminal justice operations—prison overcrowding and sentencing
• Energy and Environment (EE) – NGA Electricity Utility Task Force report
• Executive Committee (Exec) – 1983 strategy on fiscal federalism, economic recovery, and other top priority NGA concerns
• Human Resources (HR) – the impact of economic conditions on the need for and availability of human services, including unemployment insurance, income assistance programs, health care, and other social services
• Legal Affairs (LA) – Supreme Court cases bearing on state-federal relations; and update on the State and Local Legal Center
• State-Local Relations (SLR) – local government priorities for 1983; and Governors' initiatives for infrastructure
• Transportation, Commerce, and Technology (TCT) – report from the special work session on technological innovation and economic development in the states; review of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982; and transportation and economic development: state financing policies in an era of limited resources
• Other Governors' Sessions – special session on illegal drug trafficking in the United States; and special session on technological innovation and economic development in the states
• Plenary Session Discussion Subjects - Governors' approach to fiscal federalism and economic recovery; update on implementation of the Jobs Training Partnership Act of 1982

• limiting national defense to between four and six percent real growth in 1984 and 1985 and between three and five percent total from 1984 through 1988;
• restricting increases in funding for non-defense discretionary spending—including grants to state and local governments—to three-fourths the rate of inflation;
• providing nearly full funding for means-tested and other critical entitlement programs; and
• restraining the projected 60 percent growth of non-means tested entitlement programs, such as various federal medical insurance, disability and retirement programs.

At a special session on technological innovation and economic development, Governor James Hunt of North Carolina noted the important role that education would play in regaining our nation’s stature as a producer of innovative products for competition in a world marketplace. He argued that the federal government and states must pursue policies to strengthen science and math education, reverse declining student enrollments in math and science courses, and upgrade the quality of teachers.

During a work session on drug trafficking, Governor Charles Robb of Virginia highlighted the magnitude of the drug problem in American by noting that illegal drug sales in 1982 alone had exceeded $80 billion, more than the combined profits of the nation’s 100 largest private companies. Attorney General William French Smith and FBI Director William Webster addressed specific steps being taken by the Administration to promote an active, substantive role for the states in the national attack on trafficking. One element mentioned was federal law enforcement training programs available to state and local governments, a list of which was soon to be published in catalog form.

Selected Policy Positions Adopted:
(1) Updating NGA’s position on the federal budget, jobs, and federalism; (2) urging Congress to adopt legislation permitting states to enter into regional organization to plan for future electricity supply and demand and to site new facilities and/or regulate electric utilities regionally; (3) recommending that Congress permit natural gas pipelines to renegotiate or cancel contracts containing take-or-pay or indefinite price escalator by including market-out provisions in all such contracts; (4) clarifying NGA’s support for the mortgage revenue bond program, and calling for elimination of the sunset provision to terminate the program at the end of 1983; (5) calling for sanctions against employers of undocumented immigrants, for limits on the number of new immigrants admitted, and for full reimbursement to state and local governments for costs associated with legalization of undocumented immigrants; (6) with respect to employment security, recommending among other things: increased state responsibility and authority in the management of the employment security system, increasing the FUTA wage base by indexing it to equal a percentage of the average annual wage in covered employment (old), establishing an adequate general revenue base for non-FUTA funded activities (new), revising the funding of extended benefits by the infusion of federal general revenues in states with catastrophic levels of unemployment (new), and reimbursing states for a portion for excess benefits costs incurred during the 1974-75 recession (old).