CA online legislative database access

["L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>]

Letter writers needed ASAP! This is the bill that will open up
legislative databases to the masses and serve as a model for other
states and even the country!

cypherfolks, do you have any idea what these efforts are the faint
glimmers of? Imagine a future society where *anyone* can propose laws,
not just the elite few called Legislators and identified in an
exceedingly time-consuming, tedious, and troublesome process. Imagine
that everyone has complete access and full understanding of all the
laws that affect one's life, and the ability to propose and *pass*
superior modifications. It would be a sort of Legislative Free
Enterprise, a competition in the marketplace of laws such that superior
ones would prosper and inferior, archaic, and absurd laws would be
rooted out and expunged by the citizenry itself, in a very dynamic,
interactive, and responsive process! Far from this bureacratic
nightmare we lumber in daily! Write that small letter to set in motion
this grandiose cyberspatial karma!

------- Forwarded Message

>Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 17:14:01 -0500
>Newsgroups: austin.eff
>From: jwarren@well.sf.ca.us (Jim Warren)
>Subject: UPDATE #21-AB1624: *ACTION ALERT*: END-GAME APPROACHING (& misc notes)
>
>[MODERATOR'S NOTE: This is a California bill, but its outcome could set
>a precedent which would help or hurt similar efforts in other states,
>including Texas.  If you've got friends in California, you might want
>to pass this along to them.  -- Prentiss Riddle, riddle@tic.com]
>
>August 9, 1993
>
>*** PLEASE WRITE, NOW!***      PLEASE, DON'T STOP NOW!
>
>  Assembly Bill 1624, mandating online public access to public legislative 
>information via the public networks (i.e., the Internet and all the nets 
>connected to it - including wherever you are receiving this msg), will either 
>pass the Legislature by Sept. 10th, or will die - and we have to re-fight the 
>whole battle, year after year.
>  LETTERS & FAXES ARE *NEEDED*!.  THEY *WILL* DETERMINE THE OUTCOME.
>
>REMAINING 1993 LEGISLATION SCHEDULE
>  Jul 16th, the Legislature went into remission - uh, recess.
>  Aug 16th, the Legislature reconvenes to diddle remaining 1993 business.
>  Sep 10th, the Legislature quits working in Sacramento for the year.
>  Oct 10th, the Governor must veto legislatively-approved bills he opposes.
>On AUGUST 18TH, the Senate Rules Committee run by Sen. Dave Roberti 
>(D-Van Nuys area) will hear AB1624.  If Roberti doesn't like it, he can and 
>will kill it.   If Roberti passes it, it will almost-certainly pass the 
>Senate. Then we need for the Assembly to "concur in amendments" and the 
>Governor to not veto it.
>
>
>  Address letters/faxes to "State Capitol, Sacremanto CA 95814."
>
>AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, send a one-page letter supporting AB1624 to the 
>Senate Rules Committee - who have seen essentially *no* support for it:
>Sen. David Roberti, Chair, Room 400; fax/916-323-7224; voice/916-445-8390.
> and to the other four members (tiny, *powerful* committee!):
>Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-Chino area), Room 5108; f/916-445-0128; v/916-445-6868.
>Sen. Robert Beverly (R-Long Bch), Room 5082; f/not avail.; v/916-445-6447.
>Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside), Room 3070; f/not avail.; v/916-445-3731.
>Sen. Nick Petris (D-Alameda), Room 5080; fax/916-327-1997; v/916-445-6577.
>
>Important:  Please send COPIES of ALL letters to the AB1624 author:
>Hon. Debra Bowen, Room 3126; voice/916-445-8528; fax/916-327-2201.
>
>
>CAN EMAIL VIA ME, IF YA CAN'T FIND TIME FOR SNAIL-MAIL
>  If you don't have time to send snail-mail, you can email your message via 
>jwarren@well.sf.ca.us.
>  Write it exactly as you would snail-mail, but be SURE TO INCLUDE your name, 
>address and phone #s for legislators' independent verification.  Upon receipt 
>by email, I will print and/or fax the entire message to Bowen and to the 
>legislator(s) to whom you address it.  (Please allow for that delay.)
>
>
>LEGI-TECH'S OLDER BROTHER DONE GOOD!
>  The McClatchy organization is the owner of Legi-Tech, one of the two 
>largest online distributors of California legislative information.  They are 
>also owner of a number of newspapers - their flagship being the powerful 
>Sacramento Bee.
>  On Jul 26th, the Bee ran an editorial *strongly* supportive of AB1624 - 
>laudible, principled action by The Bee, McClatchy, and presumably by 
>Legi-Tech in the face of a difficult trade-off between the public's 
>interests versus their business interests.
>  Applause!  Applause!
>
>
>CALIFORNIA LEGISPEAK: "AUTHOR" VS. "SPONSOR" VS. "SUPPORTER"
>  In California legislative circles:
>A bill's AUTHOR is a legislator who introduced the bill.
>A bill's SPONSOR(S) is a person or organization, if any, that requested that 
>the bill be introduced by the bill's author.
>A bill's SUPPORTER(S) is a person or organization that is officially listed 
>as being in favor of the bill, usually including its sponsor(s), if any.
>  All bills have one or more authors.  Some bills do NOT have sponsors.
>  AB1624's author was Assembly Member Debra Bowen.  It had no sponsors, but 
>has a growing number of supporters.
>
>
>PROGRAMMERS:  SAMPLE LEGISLATIVE DATA-FILES ALSO AVAILABLE AT CPSR.ORG
>  AB1624 Update #19 detailed a set of sample data-files for review and 
>test-programming, available from Tim Pozar's KUMR.LNS.COM by anonymous ftp.
>  As of Jul 22nd, those Legislative Data Center sample files were/are also 
>online at cpsr.org in  /ftp/cpsr/states/california/ab1624/sample_data  
>for binary ftp access.  For questions about accessing them there, contact:
>Al Whaley        al@sunnyside.com       +1-415 322-5411(Tel), -6481 (Fax)
>Sunnyside Computing, Inc., PO Box 60, Palo Alto, CA 94302
>
>
>We have a voice.  Use it or loose it.
>--jim
>Jim Warren, columnist for MicroTimes, Government Technology & BoardWatch
>jwarren@well.sf.ca.us  -or-  jwarren@autodesk.com
>345 Swett Rd., Woodside CA 94062; voice/415-851-7075; fax/415-851-2814
>
>
>



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