{"id":2750,"date":"2008-01-16T17:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T23:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/01\/legislative-meetings-should-be-broadcast-online\/"},"modified":"2008-01-16T17:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T23:06:00","slug":"legislative-meetings-should-be-broadcast-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/01\/legislative-meetings-should-be-broadcast-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislative meetings should be broadcast online"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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C-SPAN<\/a> allows you to watch Congress live on television and the Internet any time the House and Senate are in session.<\/p>\n

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<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Locally, you can watch meetings of the Do\u00f1a Ana County Board of Commissioners, Las Cruces City Council and Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education on the city\u2019s public access channel. You can watch the council\u2019s meetings online by clicking here<\/a>, and the commission\u2019s by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The county just recently implemented its system, and it didn\u2019t cost very much. Broadcasting over the Internet is especially cheap.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

So there\u2019s no good reason why the state Legislature<\/a> can\u2019t implement a similar system in Santa Fe<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The only reason I can come up with why lawmakers don\u2019t have the will to get this done is that they don\u2019t want their meetings broadcast over the Internet. They don\u2019t want to give people around the state that level of access to their meetings. They don\u2019t want to make it easier for others to see what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same reason the Legislature won\u2019t open conference committees to the public \u2013 a proposal that has repeatedly been blocked in the Senate.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In government, there\u2019s only one question that should be considered when making decisions about public access: Would this proposal increase the public\u2019s ability to understand and participate in its government?<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Live Internet broadcasts from the House and Senate chambers absolutely would accomplish that goal. Lawmakers should reconsider their decision to scrap this plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 Do\u00f1a Ana County Board of Commissioners, Las Cruces City Council and Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education on the city\u2019s public access channel. You can watch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750","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=2750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}