February 9, 2007 - Open Government Bill Pays Off
by Jennifer Garrison
Feb. 18, 2007
For immediate release: Friday, Feb. 9, 2007
CONTACT: Danielle Nelson at (614) 644-8728
or John Kohlstrand at (614) 466-9036
Garrison’s open government bill pays
off
General Assembly’s Web site to now detail lawmakers’
votes
State
Representative Jennifer Garrison announced today she will not be reintroducing legislation to require the Ohio General
Assembly to make it simple for citizens to check on their legislators’ voting
records – because her earlier bills on the matter have helped make it happen.
Starting
with the Jan. 2 opening of the 127th General Assembly, the
legislature’s official Web site will now include a member-by-member record of
the final vote on each bill or resolution that reaches the floor of the House
or Senate.
No bills
have been voted on by either chamber yet this year, but member-by-member votes
of procedural resolutions are already recorded online.
“Open
government is good government, and this is a big step in the right direction,” said
Garrison, D-Marietta. “Citizens ought to be able to know what their legislators
are up to at the Statehouse, and these changes will make that much easier.”
Previously,
citizens trying to figure out how their representative or senator voted on a
particular bill had to deduce which day the vote occurred, and then locate the
summary of that vote on the appropriate page or pages of the House or Senate Journal. This was a tricky process.
The improvements
to the General Assembly’s Web site are the result of meetings between Garrison
and House Speaker Jon Husted as well as meetings between Garrison and the Legislative
Information Systems office, which maintains the House and Senate Web sites.
Garrison
was the lead sponsor of House Bill 323 and House Bill 629, two legislative
efforts to require the changes. Neither bill was enacted, but they sparked the discussions
on how to make legislators’ votes easier to track.
“Speaker
Husted appreciated where I was coming from with this legislation. He was
receptive to the concept,” Garrison said.
Openness
and transparency are concepts Garrison has taken very seriously as a state
lawmaker. She routinely reviews each of her votes in weekly columns that appear
in local newspapers in her southeast
“The
people deserve to know what goes in at the Statehouse. For me, that’s been the bottom
line from Day One,” Garrison said.
To test
the vote-tracking portion of the General Assembly’s Web site for yourself,
follow these steps:
Open
up the General Assembly’s Web site at www.legislature.state.oh.us.
Locate
the “Find resolutions by number” form* and click the “Go” button to reveal all resolutions
that have been introduced during the 127th General Assembly.
Choose
a resolution that has passed (for example, H.R. 2, naming
Once
the text of the resolution appears, choose the “votes” link in the left hand
column.
Choose
“details” to show how each member voted.
* Votes
on bills will also be tracked once bills reach the floor of the House and
Senate. So far this year, the only floor votes have been on resolutions.
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