Sunshine Coalition President wants to see legislative hearings via video

The President of the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government would like to have seen more efforts toward transparency taken up this session.

“There was legislation introduced and there’s a pretty good segment of the Legislature who would favor it, that would require video and audio streaming of committee meetings at the Statehouse, during the Legislature,” said Ron Keefover. “That bill was not given a hearing.”

It’s not that the process would be that difficult.

“In this day and age of technology, it’s a very simple, straightforward thing to video stream meetings,” said Keefover.
“Right now, citizens are in the dark about what exactly happens at the committee meetings at the legislature, which is where the lion’s share of the work is done.”

The Kansas Sunshine Coalition also supports the idea of publicly recorded committee votes.

“The Kansas City Star a couple or three years ago did a story on Dark Kansas,” said Keefover. “That legislative process was a main feature of that series on how dark Kansas government is compared to other states. We need to know.”

Keefover notes that the Kansas Supreme Court has had live video streaming of its arguments since 2012.