LEGISLATORS ON-LINE: How lawmakers are working the net.

To many Oregonians, the daily goings-on in Salem are as baffling as the Y2K problem.

A bill may get a splash of media attention when introduced, and then again when it reaches the governor's desk. But what happens in between? How do you trace a bill through the labyrinth of hearings and floor votes? In the olden days, tracking bills required a lot of time and patience. You either had to go to Salem and look things up yourself or put yourself at the mercy of a legislative aide who may or may not return your phone calls sine die.

Not anymore. For the first time, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, the Oregon Legislature and all it produces are completely on-line.

True, the Legislature has had a Web site since 1995. But that's like saying there was coffee before Starbucks. The old site was pretty sketchy. The search engines didn't work well, and information was limited.

But this year, the Legislature's site is a political junkie's dream and a great introduction to the inner-workings of Salem, even for the novice.

On the home page, there are links to information on everything from what bills your local rep is sponsoring to what the state constitution says about dogs in pickup trucks.

The site works pretty well, but there are flaws. If, for example, you don't know who your legislator is, you have to use a link (in the Frequently Asked Questions section) that takes you to a separate site, hosted by the
nonprofit group Project Vote Smart.

The main irritation, though, is that the site uses a mix of old and new technology, much of it redundant, making navigation of the site confusing. Plus, information is not cross-referenced. Bills, bill status and committee schedules are all in separate files. Still, there are some cool features, here's a quick tour:

Home Page
The home page comes up fast and is well-organized. You can do everything from look for state jobs to view the floor plan of the capitol. It's also the starting point for tracking legislation.

SEARCH Link
One of 12 slate-gray option boxes on the home page, this is the foundation of the Legislature's page. Here you can find the full text of bills introduced since 1995 by using key words. Let's say you heard something about the effort to regulate dogs riding in the back of pickup trucks but don't know the bill number, who sponsored it or if it's getting any attention in Salem. Here's what you do:

1. From the Legislature's home page, click on SEARCH.

2. Choose 1999 Legislative Measures.

3. Type in "dogs" and click on Seek.

4. This will bring up links to the full texts of bills introduced this session that contain the key word "dog." You'll have to read them to learn that the bill you're looking for is House Bill 2472, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Ross.

5. Unfortunately, to find the status of Ross's bill you have to go back to the home page and select the BILLS and LAWS link.

BILLS and LAWS Link
Much of this page is redundant--you can find the same information on the SEARCH link. Still, it gives you the same updated information that Salem insiders are carrying around every day, including the status of bills, committee schedules and what's coming up for a vote.

This page includes a great glossary of legislative terms and answers to frequently asked questions about the Legislature. You can also scan the entire Oregon Revised Statutes and Constitution by key words. You'll find that, amazingly, dogs currently have no protection against open-truck riding. Also available are the staff summaries from the bills that passed in 1997.

To find out the status of HB 2472:

1. Click on the first link: 1999 Session--Legislative Measures & Related Publications. (Warning: Under this heading there is a link to search measures by key words. It's based on old, inefficient text-based "gopher" browsing technology. You're better off using the SEARCH function from the main page.)

2. Click on House Measure History. (There is a similar link for the Senate.)

Because this is a graphic file, it takes a minute to load the bills, which are listed in numerical order. Once it's up, scroll down or use your browser's "find" feature to locate HB 2472. You'll learn the bill was referred to the House Transportation Committee and a public hearing was held March 3. This tells you what has happened, not what will happen, to the bill you are tracking. To get the list of pending hearings:

1. Go back to the Legislature home page and select the COMMITTEES link.

2. Under the heading of Committee Information, click on Legislative Schedule.

3. This brings up another list. Again, click on Legislative Schedule.

4. This pulls up a list of all the upcoming committee hearings scheduled. Use your browser's "find" feature to see if anything's pending on HB 2472. As of Willamette Week's deadlines nothing was.

New Bills
This is a fun site (linked through BILLS and LAWS) if you want to keep updated on the daily happenings. It's not a searchable database, just links to bills that are new or have been amended. Still, it's a fascinating first peek at the bills people will be talking about in the weeks to come.

LEGISLATORS ON-LINE

Lawmakers, of course, don't want to be left in the technological dust. Last session some launched their own Web sites. As you might expect, the results were mixed. This year the state computer pros in the Information Systems Department created a template for each of the lawmakers to use. While House Democrats had their pages up weeks ago, the rest of the Legislature has been a bit slower to get on board. Still, most lawmakers now have at least a skeleton site.

Although the uniformity is a plus, the templates give surfers little more than a lukewarm welcome, biographical information and committee assignments. Only a few lawmakers use their pages to post town meetings or news coverage of pet bills. That's a shame given the immediacy and affordability of the medium.

One reason lawmakers are neglecting their Web sites is that for them, as for the rest of us, e-mail is the real Internet workhorse.

Legislative aide Jennifer Nelson says her boss, Rep. Deborah Kafoury, receives nearly a dozen messages a day. Instead of updating their Web sites some lawmakers, including Kafoury, are using bulk e-mailing to send out monthly updates. "It's the absolute best way to communicate with people," says state Rep. Chris Beck.

To test the system, WW e-mailed queries to metro-area lawmakers last week asking where to find information about a specific bill they each had sponsored.

State Sen. Verne Duncan won the promptness award. His office responded in just a few hours. Unfortunately, he directed us to a database that isn't available to Internet users--it's only for internal use in the capitol.

Many, like state Sen. Frank Shields, provided a helpful explanation of how to get a copy of the bill via the Web and offered to send it snail mail. Others, like Sen. Charles Starr, were less clear on the concept. Starr's office requested our address and offered to pop the bill in the mail, apparently unaware that it was available immediately (and at no taxpayer expense) on-line. --PW

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Willamette Week | originally published March 10, 1999