The public hasn’t exactly jumped at the chance to talk to lawmakers by standing outside of the Capitol and speaking into a camera. According to the Legislative Policy and Research Office, the kiosk has been used just four times since it was installed last year.
But what Oregonians have taken to is the chance to testify from their living rooms. So far this session, with committee hearings held entirely on virtual platforms, people have signed up to address legislative committees more than 14,000 times. That’s already well over the number who sought to testify in person in 2019, with more than six weeks remaining in this year’s session.
Microsoft Teams is the Legislature’s video meeting platform of choice. It has similar functions to Zoom and other video conferencing systems that many Americans have learned how to use over the past 14 months.
“Most of the changes to our lives that we’ve seen during COVID are ones that we would prefer to leave behind, but this is not one of them,” said Mary Kyle McCurdy, the Deputy Director of 1000 Friends of Oregon. “It really has opened up meetings and hearings and public decision-making to so many Oregonians.”
More than 1,200 committee hearings have been conducted using videoconference technology since the beginning of this year’s session. According to the Legislature’s Information Services Department, roughly 98% have been free of technical problems that have resulted in an interruption of the meeting.
“Ninety-eight percent is ‘okay,’ but we want it to get as high as possible,” said Dan Rapoza, the customer engagement leader for Information Services. “In no way are we minimizing that when this does happen, it’s not disruptive.”
Lawmakers are considering a bill that would require both the legislature and local governments to offer remote testimony as an option, even when the pandemic is in the rearview mirror. House Bill 2560 has already been approved in the House and awaits a vote on the Senate floor. The measure would allow testifying via telephone to count as remote testimony.
While videoconferencing means Oregonians don’t have to drive, in some cases, hundreds of miles to speak to lawmakers for three or four minutes, it has also meant a major adjustment for professional lobbyists, who’ve lost their access to lawmakers in Capitol hallways, offices and its basement cafeteria.
Legislative staff “deserve huge kudos for effectively building the plane as they fly it,” said long-time lobbyist Dale Penn II, who serves as the technology committee chair for the Capitol Club, which is an organization of professional lobbyists in Oregon. “Allowing citizens more access to the public process is a good thing.”
Even so, Penn said the current system has its drawbacks.
For instance, while you might think that holding a committee virtually would mean the meetings could run as long as needed, Penn said the opposite seems to be the case.
“I’ve seen repeatedly where the meeting effectively has to get cut off at a certain time,” he said. “And so that puts pressure on (committee) chairs. There is some general concern around being able to have everyone’s voices heard in the process.”
In the past, lobbyists and citizens alike could try to chat up a lawmaker in the hallway after a meeting. That’s not the case while the Capitol is closed and meetings are held virtually.
Still, no one is publicly suggesting that once COVID-19 protocols are relaxed, lawmakers continue to use remote hearings exclusively. There are more than a dozen hearing rooms sitting unused at the Capitol, and lawmakers are just as eager as everyone else to see people in-person again. (Floor sessions are held in-person, but without any members of the press or public in attendance.)
But the horse is out of the barn when it comes to allowing people to have their say from the comfort of their home.
“There have been fewer trips over the Cascades in dangerous weather conditions,” said Misty Mason Freeman, the director of the Legislative Policy and Research Office. “It’s given folks the opportunity to testify from a space that’s comfortable to them, including being able to testify with kiddos at home.”
And while the pandemic has driven most public and private entities to innovate quickly, the idea of allowing remote testimony isn’t new in Salem.
In 2017, lawmakers considered a measure that would have required the Legislature to allow testimony “via videoconferencing.” The idea was approved in the House, but the proposal died in the Legislature’s budget committee after fiscal analysts hung a $433,000 price tag on the cost of outfitting hearing rooms with the appropriate technology.
In another sign that few people anticipated how quickly life would change during the pandemic, a legislative analysis of the 2017 resolution suggested that remote testimony would involve “identifying and securing remote locations with trained staff where people can go to connect and testify.”
© 2021 Advance Local Media LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
