Have a tough time tracking legislation on the official Web site of the General Assembly? Can’t find out much about the lawmakers who represent you, what bills they proposed, what laws they supported, how many votes they missed?
You are not alone.
But now, as if in answer to the unspoken prayers of thousands of political junkies in Rhode Island, there is a new Web site where you can obtain, in seconds, information on the most recent state legislation. The site is searchable by legislator, keyword and 50 categories covering legislative subjects such as taxes, business, food and financial institutions.
The site, www.transparencytrain.org, won’t be formally announced until later this month. It is sponsored by the Ocean State Policy Research Institute (OSPRI), a nonprofit government watchdog group formed in Providence last year, as part of its Transparency Project.
Besides information on the General Assembly available by clicking on a link labeled RI Votes, the site also includes hard-to-find data on state, city, town and school district financial information (RI Data); a searchable database of political donations (RI Donors); comparison of school districts using interactive graphs (RI Schools); and information on how citizens can make their government more accountable (Get Involved).
Up and running for about seven weeks, the site isn’t quite finished yet, according to William Felkner, president and founder of OSPRI. He said OSPRI began the Web site to help busy state residents keep better track of their government. What with all the demands on our time, “it’s really hard to be involved today, so this is just a step to make it easier,” he said.
Felkner is a member of the Chariho Regional School Committee in the southern part of the state and is running for town council in his hometown of Hopkinton. As a school board member, he began a blog to let townsfolk know about various school committee votes, and it proved so popular that he decided he should do the same for the state as a whole.
Felkner, who describes himself as a libertarian, stressed that OSPRI and the Transparency Train Web site are strictly nonpartisan. The group began fundraising in March and now has about 100 individual donors, as well as support from organizations such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a think tank in Arlington, Va., which promotes freedom through limited government.
He said OSPRI worked with USA Votes and its affiliate, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., to set up the Web site for Rhode Island, similar to sites that USA Votes has helped establish in other states. Much of the data for the Rhode Island site comes from a Michigan outfit that essentially mines the Internet for it, Felkner said. Some descriptions of legislation are drawn verbatim from bill analyses created for the General Assembly, the Web site said, and “many other organizations are often consulted to provide background and context for particular bills or votes.”
The segment focusing on the General Assembly is not finished because descriptions of individual pieces of legislation are still being uploaded, according to Felkner, work he said should be finished by mid-October.
Here’s how the Web site about the General Assembly works?
Let’s say you heard about a plan to cap the tax on cigars and need to find out more. On the Rhode Island Votes site, you do a keyword search for “cigars” and you’ll quickly find 2008 House Bill 7350, which caps the maximum tax for cigars at 50 cents each. You’ll find the bill was introduced by South Kingstown Democrat Rep. John P. Shanley Jr. on Feb. 5, passed in the House on June 4 and the Senate on June 21 and, after technical changes in the House, the governor signed it into law June 27.
Ever wonder how many votes your legislator has missed? The Rhode Island Votes Web page can tell you easily when you click on the “missed votes” report on the home page, which lists the number of missed votes for all lawmakers. Sen. Daniel DaPonte, D-East Providence, led in the Senate in 2008 with 350 missed votes, and Rep. Rick Singleton, a Cumberland independent not seeking re-election, was first in the House with 650. (Missed votes do not reflect attendance; a legislator could be present, but miss a vote.)
Harvey Waxman, founder of Rhode Island Gets Honorable Taxation (RIGHT) at www.righttax.org, is among those who have criticized the official General Assembly Web site, claiming it is not user-friendly and needs an overhaul. (House Speaker William Murphy, D-West Warwick, did not immediately return a call seeking comment).
Waxman called the OSPRI Web site a “fabulous resource” and said he already has linked the RIGHT site to it. He pointed out that some of the same information may indeed be available on the official General Assembly site, but “you need someone to take you by the hand” to find it.
Waxman had one major criticism: information on a bill’s fate once it goes to committee is not available.
“He is absolutely right,” said Felkner, who explained that the only way to obtain such data is for OSPRI to station a person at the legislature, a “time-consuming” and “very costly” step. The General Assembly’s official Web site, however, does track committee action in “legislative status reports,” accessible by searching the bill number or the name of a bill’s sponsor. •
