By The Herald Editorial Board
Although we’ve harped on the Legislature for years regarding access to the public records of lawmakers, they are now due some praise for making what should be a significant step to improve the ability of the public to testify on legislation and issues that are before them.
Both Senate and House have passed resolutions this session to provide more opportunities for Washington state residents to testify regarding legislation during committee hearings using video-conferencing equipment, saving many the time and expense of making a long journey to the Capitol in Olympia.
Washington state residents have long had the ability, thanks to the TVW website, to watch committee hearings, floor debates and more, live or recorded, but the communication has been one-way. Those who had something to say regarding a bill had to make the multi-hour trek to Olympia to get her or his one to three minutes before a committee.
And who, aside from Tim Eyman, has time for that?
The Senate, after some preliminary video-conference experiments last year, adopted a bipartisan proposal by Eastern Washington lawmakers in February to make the video-conference option a regular part of committee hearings. And earlier this month, the House adopted a similar resolution by freshman Rep. Jared Mead, D-Mill Creek.
Needing 50 votes to adopt the resolution, Mead gathered 58 co-sponsors.
“I’m proud that this idea had such strong support from Democrats and Republicans in every corner of the state,” Mead said in a news release.
Mead’s proposal actually calls on House committees to begin developing a pilot program for remote testimony for the 2020 legislative session, but already a limited schedule of testimony opportunities have been offered in the Senate.
If the House and other Senate committees are looking for a template to follow in offering video testimony, the Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee appears to have already worked out most of the details with a webpage that shows the procedure for requesting an opportunity to testify. The page has links for the committee’s upcoming agenda of bill discussions and hearings, a list of locations where remote testimony can be given and an email link to make a request to testify.
As the pilot program is developed this year, House and Senate should look for opportunities to expand the locations where video testimony can be given. There are 19 sites now available throughout the state, 11 in central and Eastern Washington, but none in Snohomish County. Residents here would still have to travel to the closest locations in Mount Vernon, Bellevue or Oak Harbor to provide testimony.
While those locations are a much shorter drive than Olympia, the Legislature should be able to find willing partners — with the necessary video-conference equipment — at Edmonds Community College, Everett Community College, Washington State University-Everett or elsewhere.
Video-conferencing has been around for about 50 years now and has been widely used in business settings for decades. Extending the technology to the sphere of public meetings is long overdue. And welcomed.
More than expanding the opportunities for those who live hours away — and can’t take a day or longer away from work and family to travel to Olympia — video testimony will also make it easier for the state’s seniors and others with transportation constraints to weigh in on the legislation that matters to their lives.
And provided that opportunity, it will then be up to the public to make the most of it.
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