Although you post was in the Configure It! forum, am I correct to assume that you want to do this in a custom module?

Here's a bit of code I used in a 3.x version module. I don't beleive there have been any changes in the ListController in 4.x, but have not tested it- got to get back to rewrite some of my early modules :)

Private Sub PopulateStateDDL()
  Dim LC As New DotNetNuke.Common.Lists.ListController
  Dim StateCollection As DotNetNuke.Common.Lists.ListEntryInfoCollection = LC.GetListEntryInfoCollection("Region", "", "Country.US")
  With ddlState
     .DataTextField = "Text"
     .DataValueField = "Value"
     .DataSource = StateCollection
     .DataBind()
     .SelectedValue = "ME"
  End With
End Sub