As I’d written about on the 15th, the new legislative information system from the Legislative Research council is receiving a lot of unhappiness from Legislators and lobbyists.
The Argus Leader gets around to writing about it today, with examples of a committee meeting that was a broken down mess because no one could do anything, or even see who was proposing amendments to a measure:
“Are we working against people now, or are we working with people?” questioned Sen. Deb Soholt, R-Sioux Falls.
Soholt said she wasn’t comfortable passing an amendment that the bill sponsor couldn’t see. Sen. Jordan Youngberg, R-Madison, suggested they pass SB 22 without the amendments and then add the amendments when they consider the bill on the Senate floor to give the Department of Agriculture time to review the amendments. Soholt replied that that would be worse because then there would 35 confused senators instead of the nine senators on the committee.
Should the Legislative Research Council have worked these bugs out before session, as opposed to on the spot? What a disaster.
I’d expect they’re a couple of more failed meetings away from having to switch back to a paper system.
The LRC… They’re on it.
I think the LRC deserves credit. Every rollout of a new system takes getting used to by everyone. Legislators and the public. This system is good and will get better as time goes on.
I’ve heard positive also.
There are some nice things about this new system and overall, eventually, I think it will be a success.
In my opinion they made two mistakes in implementation. First, there didn’t seem to be much beta-testing or involvement of people who work in the legislative process regularly. Second, they probably should have first switched to a new system and then, once that was working, started to roll out new features over time. It seems like it was maybe too much change all at once.