Heath Haussamen
As long as lawmakers refuse to webcast and archive all their proceedings, the governor and others will do it for them. And those others will be champions of open government, while legislators will continue to look like they have something to hide.
I’m really tired of senators who refuse to webcast their own proceedings complaining about the governor doing it.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, complained this week that Gov. Susana Martinez’s webcasting is intended to “catch us for political purpose,” the Albuquerque Journal reported.
And Sen. Linda Lopez, chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee, said, “in addition to transparency, most of it will be used for campaigning, and we all know that.”
The governor started out last year assigning one employee to webcasting. That employee was stretched thin simply catching pieces of hearings that focused on the governor’s agenda.
Martinez has dramatically expanded her office’s webcasting this year. Two employees and an intern are pointing cameras at every hearing they can attend and posting everything they film online. The video is archived. Markers placed in the video help you find exactly what you’re looking for.
It’s an impressive and incredibly useful service that you can find here.
By contrast, the Senate still isn’t webcasting committee meetings. Thank goodness the governor is doing it, or New Mexicans who can’t travel to Santa Fe would have no access to critical hearings on important legislation.
Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, is sponsoring legislation this session that would require audio and video webcasting of Senate committees. That would bring the Senate up to the level of webcasting already in place in the House.
But if the Senate follows past precedent, Feldman’s resolution is headed for the trash heap. If the comments from Jennings and Lopez are any indication, they haven’t changed their tunes.
Technology gives people better access
The most egregious aspect of all of this is that lawmakers like Jennings and Lopez appear more concerned about politics than making government accessible to their constituents. Both represent districts outside Santa Fe, where those who voted for them may not be able to travel to the Roundhouse.
Do they care? If they do, they should support expanded webcasting.
In fact, the entire Legislature still falls short in this area. The House may webcast everything, but it doesn’t archive. You watch it live or you don’t watch it at all.
Most hearings take place during hours when most people are at work and can’t watch.
That’s why the governor’s webcasting is so useful. People can watch live or they can come back to it when they have time. People can watch an entire hearing or, using the markers Martinez’s staff has placed in the video, they can find the discussion of a specific piece of legislation or other issue and skip right to that.
That is a true use of technology to give people better access to their so-called “citizen” Legislature, which some would say is not all that citizen-friendly.
Anyone can use the video
Of course Martinez could use the video for campaigning. The video is in the public domain and anyone can use it.
That means lawmakers who are being filmed could pull some of their best moments out of the governor’s video and use it on the campaign trail. Political committees on the left and right could pull moments out of the video to campaign for or against lawmakers or issues. Challengers could use it to attack incumbents.
But even the legislative webcasting can be used for such purposes, despite the bogus disclaimer below the livefeed that political use is “prohibited.”
That’s called life in the 21st Century. There are cameras around you, be they official webcasting cameras in the backs of the House and Senate chambers or smartphones in people’s hands. That video can end up on the Internet.
It might be used against lawmakers, but they can also use it to promote themselves.
Embrace reality
I know that many of our lawmakers have a difficult time grasping this new reality and don’t want to change. But that isn’t an option.
Lawmakers need to embrace the fact that we live in the 21st Century. If they webcast every hearing themselves and archived the video, does anyone think the governor would continue spending her limited resources to duplicate their work? I don’t. I believe she’s doing this because they aren’t.
And she’s earning a reputation as a populist who is bringing government to the people in the process.
It’s telling that, on Wednesday, the progressive blog Clearly New Mexico, a project of the left-leaning Center for Civic Policy, promoted the governor’s webcasting of a hearing in a liveblog about that hearing. In spite of their differing views on the corporate tax bill being discussed, Republican governor and progressive nonprofit came together to bring transparency to a committee hearing that otherwise would have been off limits to anyone outside the Roundhouse.
This is not a partisan issue. It’s a about transparency, accessibility and accountability. As long as senators like Jennings and Lopez complain about webcasting, I can only assume they don’t want their constituents to know what they’re doing in Santa Fe.
What the senators need to do is quit whining and pass Feldman’s resolution. Then the Senate and House should pass resolutions implementing archiving of all webcasting.
As long as lawmakers refuse to webcast and archive all their proceedings, the governor and others will do it for them. And those others will be champions of open government, while legislators will continue to look like they have something to hide.