Local government tends to have a much bigger impact on the individual than the federal government. Zoning, ordinances, liquor laws, smoking bans and other local governmental decisions tend to only make newspapers and other news outlets when it's too late for an average citizen to get up to date and have a chance to affect change in their communities.
I got the idea for this website awhile ago when I was checking to make sure a particular part of my beat was represented by the same Texas State Senator as the rest of the area. It's possible to search by address to see exactly which State Representative, State Senator, US Senators, US Representative, city council member etc... represents persons registered to vote at that specific address. Why not make it easy for people to search for what ordinances and laws are being discussed that will affect them based on their address?
The site would allow visitors to pull up both the official version of the legislation when available and a plainly worded summary that would simply explain the impact of the bill, ordinance, variance etc...We would not include federal legislation, but eventually we would also be able to pull up earmarks that would bring money into our communities, though that may not be possible at first. This type of service is not currently available in a searchable database that users can search by address.
To start, we'd start with a small geographic area to test the site and get feedback before a larger launch. We'd have a team that consisted of web designers, engineers, researchers, writers, multimedia specialists and editors.
Depending on feedback from engineers and the like, I'd hope to get the site up and running right after a local election like a city council election. I'd also like to allow visitors to sign up for email updates. We'd have multimedia reporters at planning and zoning to create videos for the site and also to create podcasts as advocates for and against more controversial laws and ordinances.
When I was reporting on local politics and government I got tons of requests for these types of articles, but my papers simply did not have enough room. I do think there is a demand out there, but, like I said before, it would be important to test in a small area before any large launch to determine the real demand.
The ultimate goal would be to sell the technology to a larger site so that they would have to maintain and moderate the site. It would take a large backer to keep the site running up to its full potential
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Translating legislation into plain English would be invaluable! It's hard to find that type of service unless you have a lawyer sometimes to help out. But this site may be a good answer for the general public.
ReplyDeleteGreat pitch. I think linking people to political information by address is great idea. One potential difficulty would be translating legislative language into lay-language--it seems like it could be easy to get into hot water or be seen as biased.
ReplyDeleteI like how this is very focused on legislation. This is a much-needed tool for citizens and journalists. The plain language section is key! I'm interested to hear what ideas you have for the site's design.
ReplyDeleteI like it, too. Is there public demand for such info (or is everybody like me and too complacent to look into local laws, regs, ordinances?) What about financial support?
ReplyDeleteNice idea. Oftentimes, people want to know how things are going to directly impact them but unfortunately get disheartened by the idea of having to sift through a bunch of "terms" just to get what they want. After all, these matters affect the public so it needs to be delivered to them in the way that is appealing and understandable.
ReplyDeleteSo much legislation these days is crafted by lawyers, and use a lot of legaleze. Laws need to be laws of the people, by the people and for the people. This is a traditional duty of journalism - to help translate these things to people-language. great prospect.
ReplyDelete1. Is someone already doing this? Almost everybody has a website now..so how would you make it different from what's already out there? Clarify.
ReplyDelete2. Public interest...is it really there? Will you have enough people with drive to actually visit the site and look up these matters. A lot of people will just want this information fed to them because in general...it may not be in high enough demand to seek this information out. The site's traffic is dependent on some external action happening that will drive people to the site.
3. Perhaps having some type of "blog tv" where people can have a debate. These issues always bring out the people who take a side. Also, there are opportunities for more user-generated content.
-Ja'Mein, Fernando, Maitetxu