The collective ego of the Arkansas blogosphere got a big boost last month when House majority leader and fellow blogger Steve Harrelson introduced a series of bills aimed at putting legislative committee meetings online via streaming video. He named the package “The Jason Tolbert Transparency Act of 2009,” after blogger Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report, who burrows through the halls of the capital building gathering video interviews with a Flip Cam.
Today, the bills failed to make it out of committee. Mr. Tolbert notes on his blog, “the Rules Committee was completely uninterested in creating this transparency. The committee’s excuses ranged from lack of funding in the governor’s approved budget to complaints that this would interfere with current rules in place . . . In the end, pettiness and concealment won out today instead of cooperation and transparency.”
Jessica Dean of KATV will feature all of this tonight on her “Choose Your News” program at 6:00 p.m. She sat in on the committee’s deliberations and observed via Twitter, “The live streaming bill is voted down after a rather tense discussion.”
Bravo for trying, Mr. Harrelson. Not only would it have brought the Arkansas legislature into the 21st century, it would have brought people closer to their government and encouraged greater accountability. The House Rules Committee, a group with very close connections to speaker Robbie Wills, a blogger, Tweeter and Web enthusiast, shot it down. That surpises me.
This will be the lead topic at tonight’s meeting of the Lonely Misfits Drinking Society.
[...] March 11, 2009 · No Comments For a discussion of the problems I found with the bill, click here. For a discussion of the committee meeting regarding the bill, click here. [...]
[...] Tolbert: So much for the Jason Tolbert Transparency Act, ha ha loser. (Blake’s Think [...]