With many daunting tasks facing the Legislature in its upcoming session, remote testimony does not rank among the most pressing issues — but it might be the easiest to fix.
The Senate last year began offering some remote testimony for citizens on the east side of the state who wished to weigh in on legislative matters. Residents near Spokane, Pasco, Wenatchee, Kennewick or Yakima could go to a designated conference center and speak to legislators via Skype. A total of six Senate committees employed video-conferencing on 19 occasions, drawing testimony from 44 people.
For those in places that are far-removed from Olympia, the benefits are obvious. For residents of Spokane, a round-trip drive to Olympia is more than 600 miles and requires more than 10 hours on the road. Add in the hazardous winter weather that can exacerbate the trip during the early weeks of the legislative session, and three minutes worth of testimony before lawmakers is hardly worth the effort.
For this year’s session, all five meeting and hearing rooms in the Senate’s John A. Cherberg building will be equipped for two-way video-conferencing. While that represents an improvement over last year’s single room with access, the system still allows for only one meeting room to be used at a time.
Lawmakers should act quickly to improve remote access for all the state’s citizens. To far too great of an extent, Olympia is an insular club filled with insiders and lobbyists who dominate the process. Without video-conferencing, a citizen who wishes to testify often is left with no option for providing input to decision-makers hundreds of miles away — decision-makers who might be determining what happens in the citizen’s backyard.
In addition to being logical and responsive, the issue of remote testimony appears to have widespread support. In 2014, a survey conducted by Washington State University found that 72 percent of lawmakers supported the process; it also found that 72 percent of lobbyists were in favor of hearing testimony from afar.
Providing remote conferencing could be viewed as a manner of clogging up the legislative machinery by unnecessarily increasing the amount of testimony. But, as with in-person testimony, it would be at the discretion of the committee chair. As Jason Mercier of the Washington Policy Center, a longtime advocate of remote testimony, has spelled out in the past: “As is the case with those attending in person, being in the remote testimony queue would not be a guarantee of being able to testify — time dependent.”
The issue is that lawmakers should do all within their power to improve access to government, and remote testimony could offer a cost-effective way of providing that access. In an age when face-to-face communication can take place instantaneously across continents, there is no logical reason for people on one side of the state to feel distant and disconnected from their Legislature; even for residents in Vancouver, a round-trip to the Capitol and back is a 3 1/2 -hour drive. Meanwhile, as the Senate has taken steps to improve citizen access to elected leaders, the House of Representatives has been slow to follow suit and should join the push.
Providing remote testimony would enhance Washington’s adherence to open government, an issue in which the state takes pride but has demonstrated mixed results. Working to generate improved access would allow for more voices to be heard by lawmakers, which is one of the most important measuring sticks of a responsive government.
