{"id":12247,"date":"2010-01-29T13:39:20","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T20:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=12247"},"modified":"2010-01-31T22:05:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T05:05:06","slug":"house-deserves-praise-for-increasing-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/01\/house-deserves-praise-for-increasing-transparency\/","title":{"rendered":"House deserves praise for increasing transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

The New Mexico House of Representatives took three giant steps forward in the area of government transparency today by approving resolutions that allow the expansion of webcasting and require, for the first time, that floor roll-call votes be posted online.<\/p>\n

The House, on voice votes that were unanimous or near-unanimous, approved:<\/p>\n

\u2022 House Resolution 1<\/a>, sponsored by Minority Whip\u00a0Keith Gardner<\/a>, R-Roswell, which allows the expansion of webcasting from the House floor to include video.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0House Resolution 2<\/a>, sponsored by\u00a0Jeff Steinborn<\/a>, D-Las Cruces, which makes permanent a temporary House rule that allows webcasting of committee meetings during legislative sessions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 House Resolution 3<\/a>, sponsored by Zachary Cook<\/a>, R-Ruidoso, which requires that House floor roll-call votes be posted on the Legislature\u2019s Web site<\/a> within a day of the votes being taken.<\/p>\n

All three resolutions began the day still needing the approval of the House Rules and Order of Business Committee, but were quickly moved through the process to final passage. The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government<\/a> was quick to praise the changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature has responded to an overwhelming public demand for access to its proceedings,\u201d FOG Executive Director Sarah Welsh said in a news release. \u201cJust a year ago, webcasting was wildly controversial \u2013 now it\u2019s a no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith these new rules, we\u2019re another big step closer to comprehensive, real-time access to our\u00a0elected officials,\u201d she said. \u201cImagine sitting in your living room in Silver City or\u00a0Raton, and watching your representative argue the finer points of a new tax bill before a key committee\u2026 now that\u2019s open\u00a0government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate already has video webcasting from its floor and posts its floor roll-call votes online, but it doesn\u2019t have official webcasting of committee meetings.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect video webcasting from the House floor to begin immediately. The next step is determining the cost of such a move. All official legislative webcasting can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The House deserves nothing but praise for approving these three rule changes today. These are huge steps toward making legislative proceedings and action available to the state\u2019s citizens like never before. It\u2019s a good day for open government in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Update, 3 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steinborn wrote in an e-mail that his bill not only makes the temporary rule allowing audio webcasting of committee meetings permanent, but it actually mandates audio webcasting of committee meetings this session and mandates audio and video webcasting of committee meetings in future sessions. Even better!<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a> \u2502 Commentary archives<\/a> \u2502 Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(UPDATED) The New Mexico House of Representatives took three giant steps forward in the area of government transparency today by approving resolutions that allow the expansion of webcasting and require, for the first time, that floor roll-call votes be posted online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[111,107],"class_list":["post-12247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}