Proposed Changes To Open Government Laws In Massachusetts

I found this interesting op-ed by William B. Ketter, Editor-in-Chief of Eagle-Tribune Newspapers. It was written back in November 2004, but it still applies to today. There is more information about the proposed legislation discussed in the article on the website for the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association. Unfortunately, there is not much information about the status of the proposed bills on the General Court's own website.

The General Court not only needs to strengthen the open government laws in Massachusetts, it also needs to be more open itself. For example, it is possible to track pending legislation in Virginia online. Anyone should be able to do that for legislation in Massachusetts as well, particularly since we like to think of ourselves as a high tech center. If an outsider were to use our legislature's use of the internet as a guide, they might get the sense that the technology revolution has passed us by.