The Pocahontas Building in Richmond, VA Friday, August 18, 2017. The building will house committee rooms and offices of the members and staff of the General Assembly for four years while a new General Assembly Building is being constructed.
The commonwealth is making a significant move this year to livestream and archive committee hearings of the General Assembly, which open government advocates have been pushing for years.
The videos will begin Wednesday on the opening day of the General Assembly session. Last year, a majority of lawmakers signed a letter to Senate Clerk Susan Clarke Schaar and House Clerk G. Paul Nardo asking for broadcasting of committee hearings in the Pocahontas Building, where lawmakers are working for four years while a new General Assembly building is constructed.
Nardo said the move will represent a cultural change in Virginia’s politics, also coming at a time when lawmakers — including many new faces — are moving into the temporary building.
Until this year, there was no audio or video recording of such hearings unless someone made their own. For Virginians who live hours from the capital, getting to Richmond and attending a committee hearing is difficult or impossible. The live broadcasts and online archive will allow the public, lobbyists and anyone with an interest in committee hearings to watch from their home or office, and go back and review hearings indefinitely.
That could reduce the number of people who cram into the packed hearing rooms.
On the House side, staff operating cameras will work in two committee rooms and the speaker’s conference room in the Pocahontas Building and two committee rooms in the Capitol to record all full committee hearings. The cost for equipment and staff to start the program in the House was $511,000, Nardo said.
For the Senate, committee hearings will be broadcast and archived from the three rooms where full committees will meet — two in the Pocahontas Building and one in the Capitol. The Senate is using automated video equipment and the cost to start the program in that chamber is about $225,000, according to Schaar, the Senate clerk.
The videos will be closed-captioned.
Subcommittee hearings in each chamber will not be broadcast.
Virginia lagged behind many other states in broadcasting and archiving state legislative business.
A private citizen, Waldo Jaquith of Albemarle County, obtained the recordings of General Assembly floor sessions on discs and archived them on his website, RichmondSunlight.com.
Last year, the commonwealth began archiving floor sessions of the House and Senate.
A liberal advocacy group, ProgressVA, paid people to make video from major committee hearings last year. Although the ProgressVA video was made by iPhones and the sound and quality were sometimes mediocre, the move reinforced how Virginia was behind the curve.
ProgressVA will soon announce details of its plans for this year, which include broadcast of subcommittee hearings.
The letter lawmakers signed last year was done through the bipartisan Transparency Caucus, created in 2016 by Del. Mark H. Levine, D-Alexandria, and Sen. Amanda F. Chase, R-Chesterfield. Recordings were among the caucus goals, and some members posted video of hearings on their bills to their social media accounts.
Since the legislature will be operating in a smaller building next week, video access starts at an opportune time, Chase said.
“I’m very encouraged because you hear so many times that politicians can’t get things done, but we were able to work in a bipartisan fashion to benefit the public and to make it so government is more accessible to the people,” she said.
She thanked Senate Republican Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, for his support for broadcast of committee hearings.
