C-SPAN allows you to watch Congress live on television and the Internet any time the House and Senate are in session.
Locally, you can watch meetings of the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, Las Cruces City Council and Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education on the city’s public access channel. You can watch the council’s meetings online by clicking here, and the commission’s by clicking here.
The county just recently implemented its system, and it didn’t cost very much. Broadcasting over the Internet is especially cheap.
So there’s no good reason why the state Legislature can’t implement a similar system in
Lawmakers have $75,000 to do it, but recently decided against spending the money on such a system. Though there may be some technical hurdles to making it happen, there’s no good reason for the Legislature to scrap a plan to broadcast its meetings online. In the Internet age, the Legislature has taken a step in the direction of the Stone Age, a step that is counter to democracy.
The only reason I can come up with why lawmakers don’t have the will to get this done is that they don’t want their meetings broadcast over the Internet. They don’t want to give people around the state that level of access to their meetings. They don’t want to make it easier for others to see what they’re doing.
It’s the same reason the Legislature won’t open conference committees to the public – a proposal that has repeatedly been blocked in the Senate.
In government, there’s only one question that should be considered when making decisions about public access: Would this proposal increase the public’s ability to understand and participate in its government?
Live Internet broadcasts from the House and Senate chambers absolutely would accomplish that goal. Lawmakers should reconsider their decision to scrap this plan.