A few notes on transparency in government.
Last night, Senator Roger Picard graciously opened his house for a joint open-house / constituent night. We had about a dozen people show up, which I was pleased with. The concerns that were voiced last night are the same that I hear through the district—fixing our state’s economic mess, bringing jobs to RI, and ensuring that the pension reforms that everyone sees as inevitable aren’t too draconian.
The best question of the night though, was “what else are you working on?” A fair question to say the least. Here is a link to the section of the General Assembly’s website that lists bills by sponsor. You can click on my name and see all of the bills on which I appear as a sponsor.
While we’ve made progress with online disclosure, I’d like to see this general listing of bills include a more generic and “user friendly” description of what the bills intend to do. Additionally, that description should be on the main page, rather than buried at the end of a PDF file for each bill.
That’s great, now you know what bills I’ve put my name on as a sponsor. But how have I voted on a given issue? Unfortunately, that is not available from the general assembly. I am proud to have co-sponsored Rep. Ed Pacheco’s bill to publish individual votes on the assembly web site. Hopefully that will be just a step on the voyage to better disclosure.
In the meantime, you can look at the Rhode Island Votes website to see how I, or any other member of the General Assembly, have voted on a given issue. (It is not entirely up-to date, which is a good argument for automatically linking the voting machines to the GA website and self-disclosing.)
You can search by legislator’s name or by bill. It will also tell you how many votes a given legislator has missed. Go ahead, take a peek.
