[LWVNM Action] Additional discussion piece for LWVNM Action Zoom - April 8th at 6 pm

[Akkana Peck]

I started my list for legislative transparency. I'm sure I've forgotten many of the issues we groused about during the session, but here's what I have so far:

Wishlist for Legislative Transparency

Committee Schedules:
  - There should only be one schedule for each committee, not three
    different schedules that don't agree.
  - Bills discussed in a committee should reflect what's on the
    committee schedule, approximately in order, not taken in random order
    or ignored entirely. (It's understood that sometimes bills will need
    to be postponed because a legislator or key speaker isn't available.)

Zoom meetings:
- should show which bill is currently being discussed: a few
  committees do this with a header at the top of the screen, but most don't,
  and even the ones that do sometimes don't keep it up to date.
- should show which legislator is speaking, so the public can get some idea
  what different legislators' positions are.

Website:
- Committees should have a page like the chambers do, showing which bill
  is being discussed, and, more important what the vote was on each bill
  and whether a bill was tabled, postponed or what.
- There should be a way to see if a bill has been tabled
- Quicker updates of bill status

Amendments:
  It should be required that amendments be published on the website
  before they can be discussed in a committee, preferably with a time
  constraint, like a minimum of 2 hours before the committee meets.

Dummy Bills:
  They continue to be a problem.
  In 2026, some dummy bills got discussed without their titles or text
  ever being changed, so there was no way for the public to know
  what was going to be discussed.

Minutes:
  Even inaccurate AI transcripts would be better than nothing, and are
  very cheap to implement. Of course, accurate minutes would be better.

        ...Akkana