Archiving of webcasts caps eight-year battle
Roundhouse culture changing, opening doors to more transparency
SANTA FE — A state lawmaker once took her own camera to a committee hearing — frustrated by her colleagues’ refusal to broadcast their work on the web.
But after a decadelong struggle, the culture is changing at the Roundhouse.
Starting this session, the state House and Senate are not only providing an online video stream of their work, but they’re archiving it, too, so the public can catch up on committee hearings and floor action anytime.
“It was a long journey,” former state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, said in a recent interview.
She’s the lawmaker who irritated her colleagues
eight years ago by setting up her own webcam in a committee room at the Capitol, streaming video of the proceedings online.
Arnold-Jones’ colleagues weren’t happy with the move. She was blasted by then-House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, who said Arnold-Jones should have warned her fellow representatives ahead of time.
Arnold-Jones, in turn, said legislators had already refused repeatedly to make their work available online, and they would have tried to stop her if she’d notified them beforehand.
‘Change takes time’
The Roundhouse is a different place now. At least two lawmakers — Sen. Jacob Candelaria and G. Andrés Romero, both Albuquerque Democrats — just turned 30, young enough to have been in college when Arnold-Jones was battling her colleagues on transparency.
Without opposition last year, the House passed a rule change that went into effect for this session: All floor and committee webcasts will be archived for five years.
That was after two earlier tries by then-Rep. Jeff Steinborn — a Las Cruces Democrat who joined the Senate this year — to win House approval for archiving.
“The dam kind of broke at the at the end of the last session,” Steinborn said Friday in an interview.
The Senate last week embraced a similar archiving rule on its first day, without controversy.
Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said it’s been a step-by-step progression as lawmakers have grown more comfortable with the concept of online video. He was one of only three senators in 2009 who supported turning on the floor cameras, he said, but leaders on both sides of the aisle were ready for full archiving by this session.
The state pays about $35,000 a year for video archiving and about $48,000 a year for live streaming.
“Change takes time,” Wirth said.
Steinborn credits newcomers to the Legislature with helping make the Roundhouse a friendlier place for webcasting. Some veterans were always comfortable with video, he said, but others feared the footage would be used against them politically.
In 2009, one member — thenRep. Ray Begaye, D-Shiprock — had this objection: “If I’m sleeping and it’s recorded, that could be used for gain by my opponent.”
The move to archiving, in any case, is already changing the Capitol, Steinborn said. Lawmakers know there’s a video record of their work, even in committee, so they’re taking more care to explain their policy positions, he said.
And being watched is always good for accountability, Steinborn added.
‘Better access’
There are, of course, more transparency battles to come, particularly over competing proposals aimed at investigations of ethical misconduct.
Besides archiving, some action has already taken place. House Minority Leader Nate Gentry, R-Albuquerque, won approval on the session’s first day for a House rule requiring that amendments and bill substitutions made on the House floor be posted online when they’re introduced.
Peter St. Cyr, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, commends the transparency and said he hopes the move to archiving is a sign of what’s ahead.
“Not all taxpayers can take the day off work to drive to Santa Fe and wait for a committee meeting,” he said, “so on-demand video gives everyone better access to state government and policy discussions that impact our lives. We hope this signals lawmakers’ commitment to protecting and strengthening all of New Mexico’s sunshine laws.”