A coalition of local organizations have asked House and Senate leaders to make the legislative process “more open, inclusive, and ‘user-friendly’ for the public.”
The groups suggested four changes which, they say, “would go a long way towards boosting the public’s confidence and trust in the legislative process.
The suggestions include:
• Increasing the broadcasts of legislative hearings and archiving them on the Internet for later viewing “on demand”. Only Senate hearings are currently made available via the web.
• Providing at least three business days notice of legislative hearings, up from the current two days (House) and three calendar days (Senate).
* Posting proposed amended drafts of complicated bills online so that the public can examine them in a timely fashion.
• Include the names of those organizations and agencies supporting or opposing a bill in the accompanying committee report. The groups say: “Historically, this information was always listed in committee reports, but recently the Senate has dropped this practice.”
Organizations endorsing the suggestions include Common Cause Hawaii, League of Women Voters of Hawaii, Americans for Democratic Action Hawaii, Sierra Club Hawaii Chapter, Blue Planet Foundation, Right to Know Committee, Citizen Voice, and Hawaii Pro-Democracy Initiative.
A copy of the groups’ press release is available.
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It would help if Olelo would do its contractually mandated rebroadcasts in a time slot different than the one in which the original proceeding occurred; if a person can’t make it to the Capitol at 10 a.m. one day, they probably aren’t going to be able to watch it on TV at 10 a.m. the next week.
Webcasting by the House is long overdue, but it is irrational/paranoid about appearing on video in any medium.
As for who testified on a bill, the testimony is all online anyway so it’s not like one can’t find out who testified. Is it that they want the testifiers identified in the Journals for posterity?
A Maui high school class used to put all the legislature and Maui County Council meetings on the Internet for free until Akaku sued them and their teacher for copyright a few years back.
check out
http://www.hawaiivotes.org
Ian … all the things the group mentioned are valid and significant. But THE most significant issue when it comes to making the Ledge “more open, inclusive, and ‘user-friendly’ is more parking. On the days when there are big meetings, people can just forget it. Until they fix that, everything else is just “nice to have.”