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Rep. Janice Arnold Jones webcasting a legislative committee hearing.
What a difference a year makes.
Nearly twelve months to the day after some House lawmakers worried about getting caught napping on camera, the New Mexico House of Representatives on Friday voted unanimously to allow video webcasting of debates and votes on the House floor as soon as next week.
Meanwhile, audio feeds of House committee meetings could begin next week, about the same time the Legislative Council Service begins posting how lawmakers in the House vote on the passage of bills, resolutions or memorials on the Legislature’s Web site within 24 hours of each vote.
The House passed all three measures Friday morning in a flurry of activity that belied the halting, sometimes heated, campaign it has taken to get the House to this point. Gone were the passionate arguments against video webcasting. Only one ‘nay’ resounded through the House chamber Friday morning on the three separate votes take on the measures, and that came on the measure to post lawmakers’ votes online.
“Just a year ago, webcasting was wildly controversial – now it’s a no-brainer,” said Sarah Welsh of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. “With these new rules, we’re another big step closer to comprehensive, real-time access to our elected officials. Imagine sitting in your living room in Silver City or Raton, and watching your representative argue the finer points of a new tax bill before a key committee…now that’s open government.”
Also celebrating the House’s votes Friday was Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, one of several lawmakers who led the charge for webcasting. Last year she resisted legislative leaders’ demands that she not use her own camera to webcast committee hearings. At one point last year, a committee chairman asked her to put her camera away. She said no.
“Across the board it’s the right thing to do,” Arnold-Jones said on the House floor. “It’s the time. The technology is there. And if we don’t trust our own citizens to comment on what we are doing, you have to ask what are we doing. We are supposed to be servants of the public. And if the public is going to have oversight, they have a right to know what we are working on and what we’re doing. They just do.”
John Yeager, deputy director of the Legislative Council Service, said Friday the service hoped to mount the video camera in the House chamber soon.
“We are going to look at putting up the camera up in the House,” he said.
The service also will get audio feeds up and running in six House committee rooms around the Capitol. Three of the larger rooms already have built-in sound systems. Three smaller rooms don’t so “We have to order minimal equipment,” he said.
Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, who sponsored the resolution to begin audio feeds in committee rooms, said that video webcasting would begin in committee rooms next year.
The House followed the lead of the Senate, which began webcasting last year.
