Community colleges are increasingly influenced by state-level policies and dependent upon state financial support, making it a matter of necessity for community college leaders to develop positive liaisons with state public policy makers and law makers. Given the need for positive relations with state officials, community college leaders face a complex of four interrelated problems: (1) limited preparation in the area of inter-leader, inter-level relations in education and professional development; (2) limited information about trends outside their state; (3) a paucity of information about the forces that mold state-level decisions and patterns of policy formation; and (4) lack of knowledge about the theory and practice of effecting change in public policy directions. These handicaps must be overcome if community college leaders are to persuade state-level policy makers to favor greater institutional autonomy or if they are to assure that state-level policies are formulated to serve the colleges' best interests. (RO)