The error message states: > `STATE_ID` is not a column in my table So try this code snippet to show whether or not it does exist there: import arcpy inFc = <your feature class> fields = arcpy.ListFields(inFC) for field in fields: print field.name You appear to be using geodatabase versioning so the above may or may not reveal anything. I think you should edit more details into your question about where this feature class is stored. To learn about where this STATE_ID column comes from I recommend reviewing the Online Help for [System tables of a geodatabase stored in Oracle][1] because it is: > The identifier of the database state to which this version points [1]: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/index.html#//002n0000008m000000