Newsgroups: alt.etext From: dell@wiretap.spies.com (Thomas Dell) Subject: [ca.politics] California Online Access #6-AB1624 Update Message-ID: Organization: The Internet Wiretap Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 01:48:28 GMT Newsgroups: ca.politics From: Jim Warren Subject: UDPATE #6-AB1624: BATTLE LINES DRAWN; BUREAUCRATS DON'T WANT IT Message-ID: Originator: eggert@bi Organization: Twin Sun Inc, El Segundo, CA, USA Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 08:03:10 GMT Lines: 197 Well, that cuts it! At 7:43 p.m. on May 19th, I *finally* received the official "neutral" analysis of AB1624 that was to be heard May 20th. Some of us working on the bill had suspected this -- now it's obvious: The Legislature's most powerful bureaucrats are apparently using their positions to delay or halt public access to public legislative information via the public, nonprofit, non-proprietary computer networks, notably the Internet (by which you receive this). It involves money and power -- and control of public access to government. At the bill-author's invitation, I had proposed that statewide (and global) distribution could be done immediately at at little or no cost to the State or the citizens by using the public Internet -- without excluding later services. Here is the full text [hand re-typed, of course, since it's not economically available online] of the arrogantly inaccurate, "neutral" analysis drafted by no less than the Assembly Rules Committee's Chief Administrative Officer, Bob Connelly (the same one that kept talking to Committee Chair John Burton while the bill's author was attempting to present AB1624 on Apr.19th; whom, I am told, *rarely* drafts these bill analyses). My comments are in [] brackets. CHECK CONNELLY'S BILL-KILLER "RECOMMENDATION" AT THE END. === FULL TEXT [with bracketed annotations] === Date of Hearing: May 20, 1993 [was changed to May 24th about 4 p.m. on May 19th] ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON RULES John Burton, Chair AB 1624 (Bowen) - As Amended: May 18, 1993 SUBJECT Legislature: legislative information: access by computer modem. DIGEST Existing law explicitly requires the Legislature to provide notice of meetings and to open proceedings to the public. The Legislative Open Records Act (Govt. Code Sec. 9070, et seq.) and the Open Meetings Act of 1989 (Govt. Code Sec. 9027, et seq.) both serve to provide the public with extensive knowledge of the process. [Like meetings that didn't happen when scheduled on the 3rd, 6th, 13th at 7:45 a.m. and on the 20th. Like this analysis that wasn't available to the public until the day before the meeting that was later rescheduled to the 24th.] Currently, the public has access to all bills and legislative documents through the Capitol bill room. Bill texts, amendments, analyses and related information are also available for a fee through several computer information services, various law book companies, and newspapers. [The bill room is in Sacramento. Example fees for the online services are $175/hour (Legi-Tech) and $4,200 for 2880 minutes under a 2-year contract (State Net). How many of the Legislature's 5,000-or-so bills have you seen in your newspaper?] This bill: 1. Requires the Legislative Counsel, with the advice of the Joint Rules Committee, to make available to the public specified legislative data in electronic form. [It's my understanding that the Joint Rules Committee can give Legislative Counsel (its attorney) such advice in private and without public hearings.] 2. Reserves to the Legislative Counsel the right to charge a fee to any user who subsequently sells the data. [Currently, it's 50-cents per 1,000 characters of information, on tape or disk.] 3. Appropriates to the Legislative Counsel any moneys/funds received from the above fees. FISCAL EFFECT [***Check this one out!***] All costs of creating the information are now borne by the Legislature. Cost of preparing the data for release to the public electronic networks will involve acquisition of gateways and servers plus some software creation. Legislative Counsel estimates costs at approximately $50,000. [!!!!] [On May 14th, Legislative Counsel finished installing a T-1, 1.544-megabit Internet connection and Cisco router for the Legislative Data Center. The line is only a few city blocks long, costing perhaps $2,000 to install and probably under $200/month to operate. Their top-of-the-line router costs about $4,000. A more-than-adequate file-server would cost about $7,000. They don't need any gateways when thousands of free-to-use gateways already exist between their newly-installed Internet connection and most of the other public and proprietary wide-area computer networks.] COMMENTS The Legislature presently makes hard copies of all documents available to all libraries and colleges that request these documents (currently, 98 libraries and 61 colleges and universities statewide). Additionally, 1,718 subscribers receive various levels of bill service ranging from $140 for the Index to $2,545 for the full service (pick-up). [From their Sacramento bill room.] [Clearly priced for citizen use. Can be read, but not computer-searched, etc.] A large body of potential users of legislative information in electronic form exist. The appropriate format needed to serve the greatest number of users and the actual number of users is currently unknown. Without this information, the difficulty of identifying a general format is greatly increased. [This totally ignores that it's possible to transmit more than one format and serve different groups with different services. It pretends that one format or service would exclude all other alternatives.] The proposal to have volunteer programmers write access systems may have the effect of limiting the usefulness of the data since no central information retrieval plan would prevail. [I proposed this only to avoid the programming-cost bill-killer. Would government programmers develop more extensive and useful access tools more quickly than a net-world of independent and cooperating programmers?] The Internet (a worldwide network) is one of many systems which could receive the raw data. A format which enables Internet users to receive the data may exclude users of other networks. [Bull! Just put out the data in the form in which it's been sold for years.] A study of the potential user groups and the most useful, efficient data distribution mode would clarify many of the ambiguities present in the bill as drafted. [A "study" is the classic technique for halting or slowing a project with broad public support that some bureaucrats or politicians want to delay or kill.] RECOMMENDATION [*** Here it comes! ***] Request the Assembly Office of Research to undertake a two-month study designed to identify the user groups and a format most likely to satisfy public information needs. [User groups? Computer-using citizens. Format? Digital. Study finished.] [And, if the first recommendation wouldn't kill it for years, try this one:] In the absence of a study to provide insights into the public's computer needs and abilities, it is not known what format will best serve the public. Before this information is distributed, a means must be devised to organize it in a useful manner. Further, the legislature must ensure that substansive changes to the information derived from our data do not occur. [They have been profitably distributing the information in an obviously- useful manner for years. Last year, alone, seven major "clients" paid the Legislative Counsel $554,186 for data on magtape and diskettes that was obviously in a "useful" form -- though hardly an optimal distribution medium. As to protecting the information's integrity, one wonders what they do about the possibilty of someone with a copying machine changing printed copies of the same information. The U.S. Supreme Court has been putting it's decisions out via the Internet for some time, now.] Bob Connelly 445-2131 05/18/93:arul [END OF OBJECTIVE, INFORMED, NEUTRAL "ANALYSIS"] YOU *CAN* DO SOMETHING -- SPEAK UP -- WHERE IT COUNTS *Don't* complain to me about these outageous bull-droppings. Flame *productively*. Call and fax Rules Committee Chairman John Burton, and your own elected representative with copies to the bill's supporters -- *especially* including copies to bill's author, Debra Bowen. (Don't waste time calling her; *Bowen* doesn't need convincing.) Bob Connelly and Legislative Counsel Bion Gregory *appear* to be the major nay-sayers on this, though Burton *may* be a hidden negative. Gregory's office has provided both inaccurate and misleadingly-incomplete information to Bowen and to me as I sought to draft an implementation memo requested by Burton on Apr. 19th (good way to burn up a volunteer's time; keeps him busy). Gregory -- a good friend of Connelly's -- is in a clear conflict-of-interest. He is both the exclusive vendor of these valuable public records (that were computerized to meet the Legislature's needs; not to sell to the public), and is also the legal counsel for the legislators who might harm his revenue stream. UPDATED LIST FOR BURTON, AND OF *OUR* REPRESENTATIVES (NEEDING ENCOURAGEMENT) Address to "The Honorable XX" State Capitol, Room XX Sacramento CA 95814 Salutation can be "Mr." or "Ms." or "Assembly Member" or "Senator". area: Room: voice: fax: Party: *John Burton, Chair Assembly Rules Committee..San Francisco..3152..916-445-8253..916-324-4899...D Other Rules Committee members needing calls, faxes and letters: [plus Johnson & Polanco, below] *=Assembly Rules Committee member *Deirdre "Dede" Alpert......Coronado.......3173..916-445-2112..916-445-4001...D *Trice Harvey...............Bakersfield....4162..916-445-8498..916-324-4696...R *Barbara Lee..Oakland........2179..916-445-7442..916-327-1941...D *Richard L. Mountjoy........Monrovia.......2175..916-445-7234..818-445-3591...R *Willard H. Murray, Jr......Paramount......3091..916-445-7486..916-447-3079...D *Patrick Nolan..............Glendale.......4164..916-445-8364..916-322-4398...R Supportive Assembly Members: Debra Bowen, AB1624 AUTHOR..Torrance.......3126..916-445-8528..916-327-2201...D Rusty Areias, Co-author.....San Jose.......5136..916-445-7380..916-327-7105...D Julie Bornstein, Co-author..Palm Desert....4167..916-445-5416..916-323-5190...D Jan Goldsmith[male],Co-auth.Poway..........2002..916-445-2484..916-324-2782...R Phillip Isenberg, Co-author.Sacramento... 6005..916-445-1611........D *Ross Johnson, Co-author....Fullerton......3151..916-445-7448..916-324-6870...R Betty Karnette, Co-author...Long Beach.....5158..916-445-9234..916-324-6861...D Richard Katz, Co-author.....Panorama City..3146..916-445-1616..916-324-6860...D *Richard Polanco, Co-author.Los Angeles....2188..916-445-7587..916-324-4657...D Supportive Senate Members: Art Torres, PRINCIPAL Co-auth.Los Angeles..2080..916-445-3456..916-444-0581...D Tom Hayden, Co-author.......Los Angeles....2048..916-445-1353..916-324-4823...D Lucy L. Killea, Co-author...San Diego......4061..916-445-3952..916-327-2188...I Becky Morgan, Co-author.....Menlo Park.....5066..916-445-6747 916-323-4529...R Herschel Rosenthal, Co-auth..Los Angeles...4070..916-445-7928........D --jim, 415-851-7075, with no power other than freedom of [electronic] speech and assembly [so far].