An urgent alert from Nikki Love (Common Cause Hawaii) asks friends of open government to submit testimony over the weekend urging the City Council to restore funding for cable and internet broadcast of council proceedings.
Urgent! This Monday 5/24, the Honolulu City Council Budget Committee is deciding whether to drop TV and web coverage of City Council committee hearings.
This would be a huge loss for transparency in our city government. Without television and web broadcasts, those of us with work, school, and other commitments can’t possibly keep an eye on Honolulu Hale. In committee hearings, Council members discuss topics such as public transit, waste and recycling, property taxes, and many other critical city issues that impact all of us. Especially in light of declining news coverage in Hawaii, we need robust public access more than ever.
Please contact the Budget Committee before their hearing this Monday, May 24, at 9AM. Ask them to restore funding in Bill 14 to ensure TV and web coverage of City Council committee hearings. To submit written testimony, see the sample and email addresses below.
And for additional info:
— Meeting Agenda
— Honolulu Advertiser 5/17/10 articlePlease send your testimony no later than this Sunday. Mahalo!
— SAMPLE —
Email to: gmurayama@honolulu.gov, ltam@honolulu.gov, gkim@honolulu.gov
Subject: Budget Committee testimony 5/24/10Dear Budget Chair Garcia and Committee members:
I am writing to testify on Bill 14. I urge you to restore funding for television and web broadcast of City Council committee hearings. Please keep our City Council open and accessible! TV and web broadcast is so important for the public to stay updated on the happenings at Honolulu Hale. It is difficult for me to attend the hearings in person, so the only way to keep up with city issues is by watching on TV and online. Especially with declining news coverage in our community, we need these broadcasts now more than ever.
Mahalo,
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Letter sent, mahalo Ian, mahalo Nikki.
As an alternative to piling this cost onto the taxpayer, petitioners could also ask Olelo to reprioritize some of their budget. Olelo receives substantial income from the fees cable subscribers already pay to support Public, Education and Government (PEG) programming. Yet both the City Council and Legislature are expected to appropriate taxpayer funding to produce the programming that opens their Governmental processes to the public via Olelo’s PEG channels. Councilmember Garcia at one time proposed getting access to this funding. But Olelo’s lobbying efforts succeeded, as usual, in avoiding their full support of what most people think of as Governmental Access.
Ian, I hope you learned a lesson about your call for people to vote for Case. Voting based on polls = fail, and Hanabusa’s win should have been more convincing if not for people like yourself who voted for Case in the misguided belief that he was more electable.
Case doesn’t represent Hawaii in any way other than the D next to his name and when there’s a better Democrat running, you can’t be voting against her for bad reasons.
Olelo is sitting on a heap of money that someone should take a hard look at, especially since most of its programming just plain sucks.