TX House Bill 772 would REQUIRE a web cast of the State Board of Education's regular open meetings...STRS, take a hint!

Sen. Teresa Fedor to John Curry, May 10, 2009
Subject: RE: Sen. Fedor...a request to you.............

John,

I like the idea.

Teresa

Senator Teresa Fedor
District 11, Toledo, Ohio

From John Curry, May 10, 2009

We, at CORE, have requested webcasts of open STRS board meetings and have met with deaf ears. Compared to other expenses and in the interest of transparency and member communications, THIS is a great idea for webcasting Ohio STRS's regular meetings AND would be at minimal cost. Is there a legislator out there who is listening and who sees the wisdom of Texas's proposed HB 772??

This could be accomplished by OSU's or other nearby college Media classes by students working on graduate degrees for little or no additional expense and, at the same time, using the respective college's equipment. What a small price to pay for transparency!

John

Star-Telegram.com
Posted on Fri, May. 08, 2009

Editorial: Texas Legislature can shine a brighter light on government

Good government isn’t always complicated. Sometimes, it’s mostly about making it easier for people to know what’s going on. Here are some proposals in the Texas Legislature that would bring the public closer to the institutions working on its behalf.

State Board of Education online

HB 772 would require the Texas Education Agency to provide a Web cast of the State Board of Education’s regular open meetings and maintain video and audio archives online.

The video requirement would supplement board meeting audio files that are already available.

Listening to board meetings is helpful to those who can’t attend in person or who, after the fact, want to review exactly what was said. But it’s not as good as watching.

Video helps viewers identify speakers as well as gauge facial expressions and body language. Knowing what board members look like is important given that they are elected officials whose races often are obscured when attention focuses on candidates higher up the ballot.

The House approved the bill, by Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, on March 31, and it’s now in the Senate, where it’s sponsored by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.

The Legislative Budget Board reported that the proposal would have "no significant fiscal implication to the State." TEA spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said the agency estimates it would cost $144,000 annually to broadcast multi-day board and committee meetings.

That’s not a prohibitive expense to shine brighter light on a board that merits it.

Scrutinizing public pension overseers

SB 1071, by Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, would provide information about salaries, benefits and bonuses paid to employees and trustees in charge of public pension systems.

Stock market woes have rocked the funds that pay the retirement of teachers as well as city, county and state workers. It didn’t help public confidence that some of the funds had guaranteed performance bonuses to certain employees despite shrinking investment returns. Backlash forced delays and serious second thoughts on those windfalls.

That was just the latest bad news for pension plans. Some of them, including the one for Fort Worth city workers, ran into trouble years earlier because of underfunding, inadequate oversight and questionable decision-making.

Making more information available about who’s running those shows won’t guarantee sound judgment. But it will help hold accountable managers who have operated too much in the shadows for too long.

The bill, which was sponsored in the House by Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, passed both houses without opposition. Gov. Rick Perry should sign it.

Aggregating state reports online

Texas law requires state agencies to produce more than 1,600 reports — for other agencies, local governments and the public. Not that you’d want to read them all, but how would you even know what’s available? You probably wouldn’t, because there’s no aggregator.

SB 1270, by Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, would require agencies to shoot an electronic copy of their report to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, which would post an index and documents on the Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) Web site.

http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1366151.html