Have you ever been curious about just exactly what happens at Virginia’s annual General Assembly meetings? Nick Gilmore gives us details about an organization that is trying to give members of the public a look into the state’s lawmaking process.
Advocacy group Progress VA is planning to implement a program it calls “Eyes on Richmond” for the state’s General Assembly meetings scheduled to begin January 11th.
Anna Scholl is the organization’s executive director:
“This General Assembly session we are launching a new radical transparency program to put video cameras in General Assembly committee and sub-committee hearings," she explains. "Not only to record the proceedings but to broadcast them live on the Internet so that voters and citizens across the Commonwealth can see in real time what is going on at the General Assembly.”
Scholl says the program is much-needed, claiming that Virginia is only one of a handful of states across the country that does not already have some form of recording or live-stream of its lawmaking process already in place:
“They do provide live broadcasts of the floor proceedings for the House and the Senate. Unfortunately, they aren’t archived in a way that is accessible to the public and we think that that is a real deficiency," Scholl says. "We hope that this is a little bit of a kick in the pants to the General Assembly to move forward with plans to implement this sort of documentation and live-streaming themselves.”
If you would like to follow along with the proceedings, you can find live-streams of the process here.