Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1995 18:00:39 -0800 From: Jim Warren Subject: GovAccess.087: US House, TX, CA, VA, MD, online pubs, poorlaps I thought I was gonna get this out on Monday, but the Califoonia storm trashed my rural data transmissions, and then my email-host hickupped. First Rule of Computing: Never Trust a Machine! I want this nationally circulated and promoted on all the television networks. Therefore, please whisper it to Connie Chung, after having her assure you that it will remain, "just between you and me." (And then *reputable* journalists wonder why the public bashes the media for unethical behavior! :-) --jim &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Source of Congressional Contact Eaddrs & Information (many have asked) 06 Jan 1995 15:26:15 EST To obtain a current list of Representatives available via email send an email message to the following address: congress@hr.house.gov Or, you can also peruse our gopher service in the House Email Addresses category at: gopher.house.gov To learn the e-mail addresses of your Senators you will need to contact them directly at 202-224-3121. House Web and Mosaic access is at: WWW = www.house.gov &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& THOMAS [Jefferson] to Increase Online Access to Congress Thu, 5 Jan 1995 20:39:20 -0500 >From farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber) Washington (Reuter) - Congress moved further into the computer age Thursday when House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Librarian of Congress James Billington announced that a new information system called Thomas, after Thomas Jefferson, was now available to people around the world. The database of congressional information, including the full texts of House bills, will be available through Internet. It will vastly expand online information available when it becomes fully operational, the Library of Congress said. farber also reported: There is a good link via the Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& THOMAS' Background Press-Advisory of Late December December 29, 1994 Media Advisory SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE AND THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS ANNOUNCE ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS TO CONGRESSIONAL INFORMATION When: Thursday, January 5, 1995, 11 a.m. Where: Library of Congress Digital Library Visitors' Center Atrium, First Floor, James Madison Building First Street and Independence Avenue S.E. Who: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich Minority Leader Richard Gephardt House Oversight Committee Chairman William Thomas Librarian of Congress James H. Billington What: The Speaker of the House will introduce the congressional online public access information system, called THOMAS in honor of Thomas Jefferson. Citizens across the country and the world will soon have access, via the Internet, to congressional information, such as the full text of House bills beginning with the 103rd Congress, the Congressional Record, and the House calendar and summaries of floor proceedings. The gateway to THOMAS will be the Library's World Wide Web server. Background: Since 1993, the Library has been providing online information about the U.S. Congress through LC MARVEL. THOMAS will vastly expand that information when it becomes fully operational. On Oct. 13, 1994, the Library opened its Digital Library Visitors' Center, which demonstrates how the Library supports Congress and the nation through technology. The center contains 15 workstations that feature: LOCIS, the Library's online catalog of more than 30 million records; World Wide Web, which offers digitized text and images from the Library's major exhibitions and collections; American Memory, which offers unique collections of the Library on disk and on the Internet; LC MARVEL, which gives users access to the vast amount of information available about the Library and access to other databases around the world; the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database of foreign statutes at LC's Law Library that provides electronic access to the international community; and the Copyright Imaging System, which allows automated copyright registration. The initiatives are also accessible to persons with disabilities. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Texas: Legislature Opens Online Internet Access Sat, 07 Jan 1995 22:20:28 -0600 (CST) >From SSTEVENS@ocs.dir.texas.gov What follows is the transcript of the memorandum which Texas House-of- Representatives Speaker James E. "Pete" Laney sent to Texas state House Members, concerning the legislative server that will begin operation on 1/10/95: In the past year, many of you have requested access to the Internet for both your staff and your constituents. We are pleased to announce that Internet access is available to you and your staff and that the Legislative Council will provide training on the use of the Internet each Friday beginning January 20. Beginning with the 74th Legislative Session, access to information in the legislative environment will be provided to your constituents through the Internet. That information will be from the public information portion of the data bases which are maintained on the Texas Legislative Systems mainframe and will include the following items: 1. information from the Legislative Information System (LIS) 2. the text of House and Senate bills 3. House and Senate committee membership 4. daily House and Senate calendars 5. House and Senate membership information 6. information on how a bill becomes law 7. information on House and Senate districts from the Census Bureau, as well as precincts within the district, 1994 general election analysis, and school districts within Senate districts. 8. House and Senate committee schedules 9. the Texas Constitution 10. information about the Texas Capitol, such as Capitol tours, Capitol restoration, Capitol visitor parking, and the Capitol cafeteria. I am sure you will agree with me that your constituents will benefit from having this information readily available to them. To which, Shawn Stevens (SStevens@ocs.dir.texas.gov) - a legislative staffer who has worked long and hard on this project - added: Representative Glen Maxey called me this afternoon to give me the good news, saying: "it's a done deal . . . starts Tuesday". (He also said "Congratulations for starting that debate . . . great victory", but he gives me too much credit. A crowd of people helped make this day possible.) First of all, thanks to Rep. Maxey for giving me the go-ahead to work on this, and to Rep. Hochberg for his input and help in pushing this forward. Though a legislative server for the Texas Capitol had been proposed by a a former Legislative Council staffer, I don't believe it was ever put forward to the membership of the House or Senate until this year. I was first was made aware of the possibility of putting LIS information on the Internet by reading Jim Warren's column about the California server in the Dec '93 issue of Boardwatch magazine. After I spoke with him by phone and e-mail, he posted on the Internet my interest in getting the Texas Legislature to offer a public server. As he put it, "I hope your ready to drink from the firehose", and within 3 days I had received e-mail from all over the State of Texas. The contacts I made over the Internet in that space of time provided technical support, interagency cooperation, and personal contacts which proved critical to moving the idea forward. Special thanks to Wayne McDilda at the Texas Department of Information Resources for his well-placed assistance. Also thanks to Dr. Harvey Tucker at Texas A&M University, Dr. Susan Hadden at the UT LBJ School, and Eileen Knabbe at the Texas Workers' Compensation Commission. Additional thanks to the staff at the Texas Performance Review who included the idea of putting the Texas Legislature online in the latest round of recommendations from State Comptroller John Sharp. Suzy Woodford of Common Cause provided tons of enthusiasm and helped get legislative leaders interested in the concept, in addition to involving notables outside the Capitol. Further, I deeply appreciate all the legislative and agency staffers who attended the Internet demonstration in the Capitol Extension in May of last year, most especially Gregg Werkenthin of the Speaker's office. House Speaker Pete Laney and Lt. Governor Bob Bullock did a good thing in my book when they demonstrated the vision and leadership to implement what Legislative Council are hard at work bringing online by next Tuesday, after having been given the order a couple of days ago. I am pleased to have played a small part in this effort by a whole slew of folks. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Calif.: Online Campaign-finance Disclosures Bill Introduced Again (SB 68) Last year, Cal State Senator Tom Hayden authored SB 758, that would have mandated that required state campaign-finance disclosures exceeding a nominal amount would have to be filed in computerized form and would be made available immediately and without state fees via the public computer nets. It died an ignominious death in Diane Martinez's (D-East LA) Assembly Elections Committee - where numerous other campaign-reform bills have met the same fate. [Now that past-Speaker Willie Brown (D-SF) must share the Assembly throne with a Republican baron, I haven't heard if Martinez will again head that committee. Last year, her own, Democrat-appointee staff were so outraged by her often-bizarre and abusive behavior that they resigned, en masse.] As promised last fall, Hayden has again introduced the legislation - this time it's Senate Bill 68. He also has a new staffer honchaing the bill, who has already been in touch, online. She's online and I've asked permission to expose her identity and email addr. As the bill begins its trek through the legislative quagmire, I have hopes that we will receive timely status information - essential for effective net-based grassroots pressure to support this bill. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Virginia: Plans to Mandate Online Access to State Legislation Delegate Steve Newman has reportedly agreed to introduce legislation to place the Virginia General Assembly's Legislative information on the Internet. As I know more, you'll know more. :-) Virginoids: Find - or self-appoint - some open-govt fellow-zealot who: (a) has at-least nominal experience in navigating on the net, (b) can communicate effectively and efficiently in writing, (c) will reliably commit to devoting a ridiculous amount of time to developing and maintaining a statewide distrib list and producing timely updates and action-alerts, (d) can get along with with the bill-author and his aide who will be handling the bill, and (e) is at-least no-more inflamatory than I am. If [s]he will call, I'll be happy to detail the hidden gotchas I discovered, and how net-activism helped Californica's Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) push this kind of legislation through our Legislature. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Maryland: Hint that Maryland Legislature's Examining Online Public Access According to an ewriter, there is a Maryland Legislature sub-committee discussing online access to their legislative info, and one of its members requrested through the ewriter that I forward the generic implementation proposal and other documents that supported the successful 1993 effort to get the California Legislature on the Internet (forwarded by snailmail, today). The MD politicos' name and address are: Delegate Tom Dewberry 1917 Tadcaster Road Catonsville, Maryland 21228 Now you know everything I know. Go get 'em. If a Merrylunder grasps the task of coordinating the online efforts to elicit grassroots support/pressure for such MD legislation, send me name and contact vectors, and I'll post 'em in a future GovAccess. --jim &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& A list of Online Publications (spotted in a journalists' listserv) >From ktrimble@capcon.net Kathleen Trimble, Director of Library & Information Services U.S. News & World Report Steve Outing has a list [of "online newspapers"] on the web: http://marketplace.com/e-papers.list.www/e-papers.home.page.html If you don't have web access, you can send a msg to: majordomo@marketplace.com with this in the body: get online-news online-newspapers.list &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Laptops for the Poor - NewtMan Dares to Voice an Innovative Idea On Jan. 5th, the second day of the 104th Congress, House Speaker Newt Gingrich mentioned to the House Ways and Means Committee what he called "a nutty idea," to get members "thinking beyond the norm." [Some media reported this but omitted the "nutty idea" and "thinking beyond the norm" context - which made it appear to be a serious policy proposal. However, if you watched it on C-Span, it was obvious that (a) this was an off-hand side-comment for exactly the purpose he stated, and (b) it was certainly not a formal policy proposal by the Speaker.] Sed Newt, "Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop. ... Now, maybe that's wrong. Maybe it's expensive. Maybe we can't do it. But I'll tell you, any signal we can send to the poorest Americans that says, 'We're going into a 21st century, third wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us,' begins to change the game." [Note: In 1990, the Census Bureau reported that, in 1989, 15% of all homes had computers, including 5% of those households with less than $15,000 income.] &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& --------------------> what it is ----->is------>up to us -- sig-line of Howard Rheingold Mo' as it Is. --jim GovAccess is a series of irregular postings & a distrib-list maintained by Jim Warren, GovAccess moderator; columnist, MicroTimes/Govt.Tech/BoardWatch 345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/<# upon request> jwarren@well.com (well.com = well.sf.ca.us; also at jwarren@autodesk.com) & To add or drop the GovAccess list, email to jwarren@well.com . & & Permission herewith granted for unlimited reposting and recirculation. & & Past postings are at ftp.cpsr.org: /cpsr/states/california/govaccess &