Ginger Gibson Finds the JFC Still Not Open

Last year’s hard won HB 1 victory was supposed to mean that legislature business was to be done in the light of day — with ample and good notice to the public of meetings and hearings as well as making sure that minutes or recordings of meetings were made and made public.

Reporter Ginger Gibson at the NJ catches the JFC in already working to find how far they can push the Open Government laws before they are even a good working part of the Legislative process yet:

But with little notice and no note-taking, the first meeting late last month seemed cloaked in as much secrecy as in prior years, when the committee met in private, say open-government advocates.

In what could be a violation of the law, no written minutes or audio recordings were taken during the Dec. 29 meeting. Even in the past, when the committee closed its meetings, minutes were recorded.

Apparently notice was made of this meeting where you’d have to look for it on the Legislature’s website and posted in hardcopy on a bulletin board someplace in Leg Hall. Rep Dennis P Williams was surprised to know there were no recordings (really?) and denied that he was trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. But the NJ is asking the AG’s office for an opinion on whether or not the JFC meeting was conducted lawfully.

In the meantime, it is clear that making sure that the Open Government rules are abided by is going to be a clear priority. But then, I am sure that the Legislators don’t want more stories like this one — by a reporter rightly peeved that info that she still had to do some work to break down a JFC door.

It looks like they have added a scrolling calendar on the home page of the Legislature, but I think that this would be more useful on a detailed calendar where you could click on an event to get its details. Sort of like Google Calendar. Or perhaps give meetings their own RSS feed so interested parties can update their own calendars for events that are of interest to them.