I hope this article and discussion can serve as a local resource for keeping track of what our legislature is doing this year. I also hope we can somewhat keep score of how southeast Idaho is doing in the legislature, and how our local Idaho Falls representatives and senators are working for us.
Unfortunately, paying attention to our legislature this year will be more difficult than ever. They are meeting in cramped quarters, and some sessions last only ten minutes. Obviously most of the real work is happening away from public view, and Idaho’s open meetings law is hopefully being observed?
The first obstacle is this “live streaming” deal that our legislature created in partnership with Idaho Public Television. It sounds awesome and tech-savvy, hey your legislative session is being broadcast on public TV, radio, and online! Wow, they must want to be open and upfront with Idaho’s taxpayers to do that, right?
Actually, the key phrase is “live streaming”, because I cannot find any video archives. I write this on Sunday morning, and at this moment the only video options are high and low resolution live streams for the House, Senate, and JFAC. The low bandwidth stream is so ridiculously tiny that it was a waste for anyone to create. The high bandwidth stream features a beautiful video loop proclaiming their stream, but not providing actual legislative video. Of course the legislature is not meeting on a Sunday morning, but there is no warning from IPTV about this. There is no information on when the next live stream might become available. IPTV could improve this by posting the date and time when each legislative body is expected to convene again.
There are no links to previously captured videos. “Live streaming” means live, not what has already happened. So if you want to watch what our legislature is doing you must tune in during normal work hours and watch then. Who can realistically do this? Why doesn’t IPTV cut some of those videos into logical files (such as JFAC 1st meeting, House Education Committee 3rd Meeting, etc.), and make those available to watch? Upload them to YouTube or Google Video for free. Live streaming video is much more difficult technologically than posting video files, but IPTV seems to have done the difficult and forgotten the simple.
Since most taxpayers cannot watch during the workday, doesn’t it make more sense to post videos of specific meetings for Idaho taxpayers to watch in the evenings or weekends? What are we really getting for the $340,000 we paid for this live streaming garbage?
The second obstacle I encounter is that I cannot find bills or what they are about. I go to Idaho legislature’s web site, see the “2008 Bill Search” box in the left column, and I cannot find a single bill! I use their examples, S*, h*, hjm*, etc. Every search finds me zero results. Nice. Either I am not smart enough to use their search box or our legislative web site is broken.
When I try to browse the legislation page for current bills, I do not get any sense of currency. I cannot see what has been introduced, or by whom, or when. I cannot see when bills are scheduled for votes, I cannot get any information that could be useful to taxpayers. I found a page featuring 2008 calendar items but they are all labeled 2007, which causes me to wonder more about our legislature’s commitment to taxpayer access.
If our Idaho Legislature does not make videos of their meetings available in a realistically accessible manner and their website is broken, how are Idaho taxpayers supposed to stay involved?
Please comment on what news you hear coming from our 2008 Idaho Legislature, especially in terms of what our Idaho Falls lawmakers are doing. Bill introductions, defeats, and votes are especially helpful for us to keep tabs on them.
Popularity: 17%
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Gato got runned over by Marcus many moons ago. Be ye daft, 2486? 
Let's have a new poll, alright, Joe?
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Faith in the Idaho Legistlature? thats a joke. First of all those clods in Boise are out for themselves. All one hears from an Idaho Republican Politician is the standard party line…”Cut Taxes”. I have news for you folks cutting taxes isn’t going to get roads built, its not going to educate our kids. Otter came up with a briliant idea…”Lets cut the retirement of stae employees”. Tom Lunatic came up with another bright one…his iSTARS proposal aka “Union Buster”. And whats scary is that the legislature will go along with this and we haven’t even got into the rest of the state government. Anyone notice that the Republicans got there “Closed Party” legislation in already?. It will be interesting to see how local Reps. & Senators act in Boise.
Sadly I believe that Lisa’s post will begin a very hateful and personal debate that will have many people angry at the site, because when I read this, I didn’t see anything about parties in it. Yes, we live in a one partied state. I’m a republican but even if this was a democratic state, I’d do the same thing I do now. I don’t focus on parties as much as I focus on which candidate’s goals match mine best (which isn’t always a republican). Anyway, please don’t turn this into a political debate, because everyone has their own views and their own opinions
Anyway back to the article. I have been studying government this year, so we have been reading the bills from the senate and such. i’m able to understand those just find, and provided I haven’t been searching the Idaho Legislature website for bills, if someone like Joe can’t understand the bills I believe that maybe they aren’t quite as simple as the US Senates. Perhaps the best solution would be to notify our Idaho Legislatures through the mail and ask for a format that would be more user friendly for citizens who aren’t the most knowledgeable in politics?
What did she say?
Which she dumbfounded?
Not to be rude or discredit her post, but from what posts that I’ve read of “music_girls”, she’s still in high school. So obviously you’re not even old enough to vote yet. Saying you’re “Republican” and actually BEING & VOTING Republican are two different things. We all know that most high school/college & younger adults all vote the same party as their parents to start with. Until they’ve actually learned to think on their own and follow politics enough to make their own educated decision as to what political party they’d like to be affiliated with.
I would suggest you come back & talk to us when you’re old enough to vote & have been alive for more than two Presidential terms.
Joe, I am with you. I have been trying for 2 weeks to get a copy of the new dogfighting legislation. I also tried to “search” for the bill and haven’t had any luck. I have also e-mailed 3 different legislators and have heard nothing. I would like to see more changes than just making it a felony and have shared this concern with several different legislators. Evidently they don’t care or don’t have time. Anyway, the legislative website has been down all day and I can’t even e-mail anybody. How are those of us who wish our feelings to be known supposed to contact these individuals? I am getting quite frustrated.
I just checked myself and indeed the Idaho Legislature’s website is down, completely unavailable.
I tried the live stream again. Someone must have read my article yesterday because today the video feed has added a box stating “The House/Senate will tentatively convene January 15th … 11:30 am Mtn…”
That message is a little more helpful than the no message displayed before. However, that “will next convene at” message should be on the website page immediately above the live feed links, not just inside the video. Since it costs them money every time someone loads the feed, why not save time and money by giving that information before folks click the feed link?
I’ve been thinking about this issue more, and the fact that someone in our legislature decided a live web feed would be better than video files after the fact illustrates an older mentality. Somebody didn’t think folks would go see videos afterwards and watch selected shorter clips that most interested them. Somebody thought the best way to do this was to do it like the old television days, throw up a live feed and anyone interested can “tune in”.
So we have this live feed which costs more money and is much less accessible than posting videos afterwards. Who made this decision? Who has the old goat mentality over there?
I would also like to see the numbers on how many people watched the live video feed. I think Idaho taxpayers are getting taken for a ride with this.
News from Boise. Butch Otter was a few million to re-seed the area in southern Idaho that was hit by the Murphy Complex fire last summer. Interesting note here; Simplots has several ranches in that area, Gay Simplot’s cows, but the ranch forman down there said Otter didn’t put any unjust influence in getting the money to the area after all those Simplot Ranches go to Butch’s kids…Who Knew? lol
Anon:: Yes, I am in high school, a senior in high school to tell the truth, and I am old enough to vote, I turned 18 months ago I just barely missed that darned deadline to be in the upper grade. Also, I have my own view, in fact, my parents and I conflict on MANY of the political aspects. I have my own mind and the ability to decide what i think is right or wrong without the assistance of my parents. If I were still relying on my parents, I wouldn’t have a 4.0 and I would really suck at my job, and I work hard to make MYSELF exceed in as many areas as I can.
Joe:: Do they not keep minutes? Personally I think a video feed could be quite lengthy and boring and it would be much easier to skim a few pages then watch two hours of people bickering and not really sure of the conclusion.
If Music girl is in High School, then I’m the Queen of England.
I guess we have the Queen of England in our presence!
I remember one time at band camp…
Are any of us easily known by others? Since I can’t tell who any of you are, all I can do is trust (or not) and look at the opinion presented and respond to it, rather than the person’s portrayal of themselves.
So it doesn’t matter that she (he?) says she’s (he’s) a highschool age girl, does it? Her (his) young (old) opinions are as valid as my own, if you don’t know who we are, right? She could be the queen of england, why would that make her opinion less interesting?
What happens with the portrayal of self is that others begin to formulate opinions of the opinion giver, rather than the opinion itself, solely based upon their perception of the person presenting. You’re a high school girl, so you can’t possibly know as much as me, etc etc etc.
I always liked the internet for its anonymity in that area. It may be a caution if you’re looking for a relationship, but why should the unknown demographics cloud our appreciation of the expressed political opinion?
For this thread, I appreciate music_girl’s viewpoint. I see it as valid as my own. And I, too, had a different opinion than my parents at that age.
I do agree with Joe that the current legislative session lacks serious forethought or effort in communication issues.
music_girl just started visiting recently, and probably hasn’t read our debates about online anonymity. There’s quite a difference of opinion on that subject, I encourage you to read and comment on the discussion at
http://idahofallz.com/2006/08/09/our-anonymous-community/
That’s a great point about reading the minutes. I don’t know if they do keep the minutes, I bet they do keep them but I bet they do not upload them so as to make them accessible to taxpayers. Another suggestion for the legislature to improve their access!
I don’t know how many folks would tune in for a one or two hour committee meeting. I think more folks would download that meeting video in the week after than would watch it live midday, though.
I think it depends on your interests. Teachers would probably like to watch the education committee and JFAC meetings because those affect them most. Farmers would probably want to tune in to the ag committee meetings, etc.
It is much more difficult to stream live web video than to make the files available, though. Reports are that we spent $340k + for this live web video stream that I bet few people watch. They could have put the live video feed up for FREE on ustream or stickam, and Idaho could have saved a few hundred thousand dollars.
I just checked and the legislature’s website is finally back up, but the search for bills box still does not work.
I tried again today and the legislature’s website search box appears to FINALLY be working.
I found this bill when I searched for dog fighting:
http://www3.idaho.gov/oasis/S1260.html
Looks like they want to change it from misdemeanor to felony, and expand the related illegal activities associated with dog fighting.
I cannot quite tell what the status is of this bill, the only note is that on the 15th the bill was “Rpt prt – to Jud” so I guess that means report sent to judicial committee?
Hopefully this gets passed this year, and quickly!
It’s nice that we can now search for the bills, but I would also like to see one page where I can clearly see all the bills introduced so far, passed so far, and what the status is on the bills (like what committee they are in or what reading, etc. A simple table with this information on their homepage would be much more user friendly than just searching for bills.
Joe, there is such a page: http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/minidata.html
The Journals of the House and Senate posted each day http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2008/Journals/journals.htm
The Journal is not minutes as such but rather a record of actions. The minutes of each committee are posted here: http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2008/StandingCommittees/committeeminutes.htm
Cool, thanks for finding those. The first link is exactly what I wanted, a nice linked list of all the bills introduced so far.
The second link was the one that last week listed 2007 dates. Nice to see it is fixed now.
The third link I found only 1/3 had actual minutes posted, 2/3 were simply a single cover sheet pdf. I’ll check that again in a few days to see if they’ve updated it. The minutes are great for anyone interested in what a particular committee discussed and passed.
Thanks again for the links.
Joe, The committee minutes link is never complete until the end of the session. That’s because it’s a function of the committee secretary writing the minutes then waiting for the committee to approve them before they are published. The secretary will get busy and not be able to complete the minutes in time for the next meeting so the minutes are held over until the next meeting. Sometimes they get behind several weeks, but they are all published at the end of the session.
If you read the Journal, it is approved each day for publication.
Anyone read the PR’s story this morning about the Center for Advanced Energy Studies Building?. Interesting that Butch Otter can ask for a few million bucks to re-seed private land (Simplot Ranches)that was burned over last summer but his decision to pull funding for the AES project slipped his feeble mind…maybe too much vodka & viagra?. Coincidently Bart Davis, Janice McGeachin and Mel Richardson didn’t even have a clue the funding was yank. Yep they’re really looking out for Easten Idaho.
Who says that the State should be funding the CAES project anyways? Is it written in stone somewhere? Seems to me that if the users who will benefit from the facility want furniture, they can furnish it?
This is another example of some people in government believing that government (meaning all of us) will just take care of the situation. The business’ and agencies using the building should pony up some funds. The taxpayers can’t continue to take more hits. We all want lower taxes, right? How do we get there? SLASH spending. Simple. We can’t keep handing out free lunch.
KIDK News 3 reports a northern Idaho lawmaker wants to add another $75 to the school zone speeder fines.
http://www.kidk.com/news/local/13896332.html
Sounds good to me, anyone know if this has chance of passing?
I see the legislature is talking about several sexual offender issues: 1) sexual offenders not living within 500 ft. of schools, and 2) electronic tracking devices. Both of these measures are ridiculous. Neither will reduce recidivism or prevent assault in many cases. Additionally, the electronic bracelet will add more cost to an already overburdened system. We definitely will not get the bang for our buck. Meaningful reforms like mandatory sentencing and mandating psychosexual evaluation criteria (standardizing evaluations) for sentencing purposes would go a very long way to seperating the serious offenders from the opportunistic offenders. In this manner it would allow us to concentrate more resources on the truly dangerous predators. Unfortunately, the legislature is more interested in politics rather than public safety.
Serious offenders vs. opportunistic offenders? When is the distinction made between the two? If a child is involved, then it is a serious offense. No sentence is too harsh for any type of sexual offender in my opinion.
Perhaps a better way to say it is statutory offenders that are involved in consentual sex with persons unable to give consent due to age…you know…the 17 year old girl and 20 year old guy kind of thing…..vs. the pedophile types that we all loathe and would like to bury somewhere.
Gotcha. Sorry I misunderstood what you were saying. I admit, when people start talking sexual offenders, I immediately see red and get very limited tunnel vision. The consentual statutory occurrences should be treated differently than the pedophile types. I was always told that the definition of statutory rape is when the girl is willing, but her father isn’t.
This is about the closest contemporary article to embed these.
This is apparently Rex Rammell’s Super Bowl 2008 ad supporting his campaign for Senator against Jim Risch, to replace Larry Craig. That’s a mouthful.
and my favorite
I still don’t think I’ll vote for him but I liked it, and I can agree with the contempt with our politicians.
I think he should have run the second ad in the Super Bowl, what do you think?