New Mexico legislators are at the forefront during the regular legislative session each winter, but what is happening in the roundhouse between sessions? The legislative council voted to start webcasting legislative interim committee meetings July 1. Broadcasts of legislative regular sessions began in 2009 in Santa Fe.
Sarah Welsh, executive director of New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said the webcasts are a big step forward for public access to state government.
“It’s an opportunity to track issues that you care about, and it’s a chance to listen to your representatives and senators at work,” she said. “Many people are too busy to pay attention to what goes on in the interim or can’t afford to attend the meetings, which can last for several days. But the interim committees do a lot of the heavy lifting in advance of legislative sessions, drafting major legislation and evaluating state programs. A lot of important things get done.”
Initially, Welsh said, many lawmakers thought it would be too difficult and expensive to broadcast interim meetings because take place at venues across the state.
Bernalillo County representative Janice Arnold-Jones wrote a letter to all committee chairs urging them to immediately begin broadcasting interim meetings.
Eventually, the motion succeeded, but it wasn’t easy to pass.
“It was a simple motion, but it took 27 minutes to get it passed,” Arnold-Jones said. “The idea is not popular among lawmakers, and the unpopularity of it exists across party lines. Several senators walked out before the vote finally took place.”
As a cost-saving measure, this year’s meetings are held in Santa Fe, so the meeting rooms are already wired and ready to begin broadcasting the webcasts. The live streaming audio feed of interim legislative committees is now available online, but is not archived, Welsh said.
The lack of archives prompted reporters from the New Mexico Independent to liveblog each meeting during the last legislative and special sessions, the transcripts of which are available on their website NMIndependent.com
Arnold-Jones said convincing lawmakers to allow for the archiving of meetings will be a task because they feel like it would restrict what they can say, even though archived statements cannot be used in campaigns.
“Sometimes uncomfortable topics come up, but there are uncomfortable things that need to be said,” she said. “There has even been legislation we have passed that I have wanted to go back and look at to see what our intent was in passing it. That’s where the archiving would come in handy.”
Student Caitlen Hudak said she would watch webcasts if the meetings contained discussion about important upcoming legislation. She said she agrees the meetings should be archived.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“I’d like to be able to rewind it and hear things again or listen more closely to things,” Hudak said. “It’s an inch in the right direction.”
Arnold-Jones said lawmakers still need to create points of access for the community.
“It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what we had,” she said.
