 Welcome to the Ruderman Roundtable. I'm Senator Russell Ruderman from the Puna and Ka'u Districts on the Big Island, and we host the Ruderman Roundtable on various good governments and environmental issues here on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock. My guest today is Virginia Beck. Thank you for joining us, Virginia. Thank you, Senator, for having me. Virginia Beck is the Legislature's Public Access Coordinator at the State Capitol Public Access Room, or PAR. A division of the Nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, she's worked with PAR over the last 10 years in other positions and has additional experience with a variety of government, educational, and nonprofit organizations. Virginia has a Master's Degree in Public Administration, has been in Hawaii since 97, and enjoys her role assisting people to effectively add their voices to the legislative process. Virginia, let's start from the beginning. Tell me what is the Public Access Room. Well, the Public Access Room is really one of the first stops for citizens wanting to participate in the state legislative process. You know, in a democracy power is vested in the people, and the legislature decided that in order for people to use that power, they needed the resources to do so. So we provide physical resources. We actually have an office, Room 401, with computers and workspace and all kinds of handouts for people to use, as well as the intellectual resources people need. They need to understand how the process works in order to add their voice to that process. So we're happy to help people with those resources. So your office is a good place for someone to start if they don't know how to begin. Exactly, exactly. We help people who are very new to the process, don't even understand how government is structured. We also help seasoned advocates and lobbyists who have been at the legislature year after year, who have more complicated questions. Interesting. Does every state have a public access room or equivalent? No, we're lucky we live Hawaii. Yeah, yeah it is. Alaska also has a public access office that serves their people, but most states have just some of the functions that we provide and not such a full service office. Nice. Yeah. How can the interested public use those services? How do they reach you? Well, they can pick up the phone and call 587-0478. That's our phone number and they can email us at par at capital.hawaii.gov and they can also go to our website. But when they contact us, we're happy to help in whatever way we can. People sometimes start off with us even if we're not the right office. We do have access to the other resources in the state government. So we're happy to help people even if it's not directly tied to the legislative process. So we're a very good place for people to start and we will walk them through understanding who their legislators are or if they're interested in a certain issue that's going on at the legislature. We can help them identify specifically what bills are currently active and alive that they might want to add their voice to. Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out who has power over a certain piece of legislation at the moment and so we can help people find that out, give them the contact information and help them, you know, to really make their message nice short and simple really wins the day at the legislature. So really encouraging them to figure out what it is they're trying to say and then who to say it to. It's nice for me to hear you say short and simple because I think that's very true. A lot of times people think well I can't write to my legislator unless I have a term paper to back it up or something. Right. Really that's not what we need at all. We want a very short concise sense of what what the opinion is. Exactly. Exactly. What's the most important piece of advice you can give someone who wants to get involved in trying to influence a bill or a law? Well number one to do it, speak up and if you feel like you've hit a wall say you go to the the capitals website capital.Hawaii.gov and you go there and you don't find what you're looking for. Don't give up. Call the public access room. We'll help you find what you're looking for. So number one don't give up. Don't give up. Yes. And then and along the same lines be persistent because changing state law does not happen overnight usually anyway. It usually takes years to educate legislators about an issue and really get the momentum going for change. So you do have to be persistent and if you're you know one of the things that people sometimes do is is they they get all excited and are able to testify on a measure and think okay that's it I'm done. Well if they're lucky and their legislation is moving forward they're going to be asked to testify on that at least one more time. So it's important for someone not just to testify but to follow that bill through its process. Exactly, exactly and one of the things I want to mention too is is that sometimes people think of advocacy for bills being all about testimony and they skip the one of the one of the important steps you know you can talk to a legislator to have a bill introduced which is great but then you need to ask the committee chair who has control over the bill to actually hear your bill because if your bill doesn't come forward for a hearing you don't get the opportunity to testify. It's so frustrating when people call in February and say I'm waiting to testify on my bill and we have to break the news to them that unfortunately because of legislative deadlines they're a little bit too late and they should have spoken to the chair and asked for that bill to be heard. So you can help people with understanding those deadlines and processes as well. Yes absolutely, absolutely. It's not obvious. And things happen quickly as you know. Tommy why do you think more people are not involved in the testifying or advocating at the legislature? Well I think there are a couple of reasons you know one is lack of knowledge of how easy it is to do it you know I think once people have their eyes opened to how they can add their voice and how easy it is to do so they really wake up to this whole new realm and it's quite wonderful to see. I think there's also some cynicism as to you know I'm one voice what am I gonna do is it really gonna make a difference and what I can say to them is that because so few people do speak up your voice is all the more valuable and listened to and you know I know that in working in the building one of the things that I've noticed is you know that the legislators do pay attention to what people say it does not mean that they'll do what people say but they do pay attention to the voices that are raised. Do you think what do you think about when the testimony can be either written or oral in person do you think one's better than the other are they both important or is one more effective? Well I think they're both important the written testimony the nice thing is it becomes part of the written record so when people are looking at the legislative history of a bill or of an issue that's you know attempted to become law we've got that in writing so we know what you your thoughts were and people can refer to that. On the other hand oral testimony is has quite a bit of impact you know just showing up at a hearing there's something undeniable about that impact with a legislator yeah in either case you know if one of the things that can help you with testimony is if people can make it personal and put a small story in there that can really grab some attention the trick is to have the story but still be short and simple you know so not to go into a long saga of your experience but just short and simple who you are where you're coming from how this legislation would affect you. What do you think could be done that would to encourage more people to be involved what could we do differently? Well it's it's hard for me to say because I do have to be very careful I'm in a nonpartisan office and so I am not affiliated with any political party and I don't take a stance on any issues but there are you know some some people who say well maybe a longer legislative session would give people more time to actually offer the testimony because the deadlines are very very short for offering the testimony so I think you know getting the word out on how easy it is to testify would be helpful as you know I think we were talking about earlier the the effort to have remote testimony video testimony would be helpful for our neighbor island residents certainly. It's something that being from the big island we hear about that all the time you can actually do video test if testimony even at our county council right and you're telling me the same thing's true in Maui and yet we can't do it at a state level when the obstacles are much much greater to being their person. So I hope one day that my fellow legislators will value out-of-island testimony and make that easier to happen. There has been a trial you know little thing going on one hearing room right and a certain committee but do you think people know that that's available? I don't know that they really do because when I go to the neighbor islands it's one of the things that I hear people asking for and so. What do you think it would take to make that happen? Well I guess I guess it would take you know legislative leadership to get behind the idea to really make it happen. You mentioned going out into the communities I know you're coming over to the big island next week I believe for a series of public access room workshops. Right we'll actually be over in Kailua this week yeah this week we'll be in Kailua Kona and Waimea Wednesday and Thursday the 12th and the 13th and then next week we'll be on the other side of the island volcano. Can you do this around the state? Is that correct? You do these workshops around the state? Right. Is that on your website? Can people find out? It is and our website is LRB we're a part of the Legislative Reference Bureau which is a nonpartisan office at the legislature so it's LRBHawaii.org and then slash P-A-R and just go to the workshops page and there'll be all the information you need or just give us a call. You know I am I'm so happy that you do those workshops I attended one of them when I was a freshman legislator and I must say I learned more from your predecessor Susan Maranelli doing one of these community workshops I learned more in that hour and a half than in my whole life's education up to that point combined and I still I go back to them usually at least once each year because I like to encourage my constituents to attend and also to just to be a voice to say you're learning something really valuable here and this is the key between being able to influence the state legislature versus not there's so informative I remember one example you gave of a bicycle helmet bill I don't know if you still use that one it was humorous and educational very very reality-based I loved it so I may show up at one of your workshops but wherever you are around the state you might want to attend one of the public access rooms workshops when they come to your neighborhood I highly encourage it I think of the public access room as being like the librarian for the state legislature a place where people go and their loss and don't know where to begin you think that's a fair analogy or well yeah we're we're it works as far as being the first stop and being like going to the reference librarian to say where do I start but we do also sometimes we'll direct people to the actual library we have in the state Capitol we have the level legislative reference bureau library so sometimes if somebody called today and was asking very complicated questions about it Hawaii administrative rules and all sorts of history lessons on that and got beyond me so I referred them down to the library so there's somebody down there to help also library just yeah we've got research librarians down there yeah so they really help a lot with people who are researching legislative history okay we're going to take a short break I'm here with Virginia Beck from the state legislature public access room here on think tech Hawaii I'll be back in a moment thank you hello ha my name is Josh Green I serve a senator from the big island on the Kona side and I'm also an emergency room physician my program here on think tech is called health care in Hawaii I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month we'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii we hope you'll join us again thanks for supporting think tech hello ha my name is Danelia D A N E L I A and I'm the other half of the duo John Newman we are the co-host of keys to success which is live on think tech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha Aloha hi I'm Steven Philip Katz I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist here in Hawaii and I'm the host of shrink wrap Hawaii which is on Tuesdays at three o'clock have a great summit take care of your mental health hello welcome back to the ruderman roundtable on think tech Hawaii I'm here today with Virginia Beck from the public access to the organization that helps citizens navigate the legislative process so tell me Virginia now here we are in October the legislature gets started in January is this a good time to get involved in the legislative process or should somebody wait until January oh no don't wait until January yeah yeah well if you have an idea for a bill an idea for a law now would be a great time to be talking to legislators who will then turn to their research agencies and actually draft the idea into a bill so now through January is a great I time to be talking with folks nice tell me you do some broadcasting within led from the public access room you tell me about that sure yeah the legislative broadcast project is coordinated by the public access room so we're the office that tries to figure out which hearings and sessions to actually broadcast and those go out to the peg access channels so on the big island they would be on the Nileo station and that's a great way for you know they're all closed captioned and it's if you miss the live broadcast they're all accessible on the legislature's website website so you're broadcasting actual legislative hearings right right right and so if especially on the neighbor islands if there are hearings that are happening that are of great interest to neighbor island residents they can call the public access room and say hey you know we'd really like to see this one and we can go ahead and make arrangements I must admit I did not know about that I have to take advantage of it you'd mentioned before that the public access room is not partisan nonpartisan I should say tell me about that so who who pays for LRB in public access room well we are funded by your tax dollars I think we're one of the really good uses of your tax dollars and so we're funded each year we're in the statutes that there is the public access room that's available for citizens as a resource to the legislature and and it's it's really interesting to see people you know in our office we have computers that people can use in workspace and all kinds of things and and we will have even when things are very markedly divided on a popular issue we'll have people from both sides of an issue working side by side in the office and we kind of think of ourselves as a little bit of a place of refuge in the building because we're all about the process rather than the policy so we're all about how the bill becomes a law how you can access the power in the moment and not whether or not it's a good idea as far as the policy goes that's up to you guys is it hard sometimes you find it difficult to stay neutral do you find yourself wanting to advocate one side another well yes there there are days where where you you feel like you've got a bloody tongue but but but it actually I love it because you know if we really do encourage everyone to add their voices because I do think that's what makes the best laws you know if we can have people from a variety of viewpoints offer their their their you take on things that's when we can really make the best laws that we've really thought it through and and looked at it from a number of different perspectives so I think that's important interesting I want to go back to something we talked about earlier you'd mentioned that one possible way to have more involvement would be if the session was longer that give people more time to submit this is the problem the length of the sessioners at the amount of notice before when hearing is noticed we have typically 30 72 or sometimes 48 hours right right that's the period in which we accept testimony right and usually they say we want your testimony 24 hours in advance of the hearing yeah so that would be another place that some people would say maybe if you made that longer now there are also people who say don't make the legislative session any longer you know they so all of these things can be looked at from a number of different points of view because I think I would think that the challenge is finding that very brief time slot during which you can submit useful legal testimony right and the whole year you can have your opinion and then there's a 24 hour or 48 hour window when that opinion can be testimony exactly and if you don't know if you don't know if you're not tuned in they have got a warning that this is happening now then it's like you said I've been waiting for this bill to come up and it didn't happen or my window of testimony is open is there anything the legislature could do to make that more well yeah well they have made some some great changes you know on the website you can sign up for for hearing notices so if there are bills that you want to make sure you don't miss a chance to offer testimony on it's very simple and we can guide people through the process to go in and sign up for hearing notices by email you can also do that for entire committees so say I was interested in education issues I could sign up so that I would receive a hearing all of the hearing notices that come out of the education committees and I could look with them over and see if there's anything that might interest me in offering my testimony so they've done that that makes things a lot easier they've also set up a web tracking measure tracking system so that you can make a list of bills and with just a couple clicks be able to see what the status of all of your bills are and what's most recently had some activity so we help people with getting those tools in their toolbox so what's that process called when someone signs up to get notification I mean do we have a name for that they want to follow a subject matter a committee or a subject or a specific bill we call that signing up for email emailers and then look at signing up for hearing notices yeah and there's actually a button on the website so sign up for hearing notices and you can sign up for to be notified on a specific bill on the committee's right well can you can you let's say I'm interested in you can sign up for all of them if you want to say interested in a subject matter and I don't know what bills might be introduced let's say I'm interested in knowing what happens with electric car legislation next day can I sign up for yeah unfortunately we can't we don't have it so that by keyword you could you could do that but we could help you find using the keywords we could help you find the legislation that you would be interested in oh I see and so so we do have people calling the public access room and saying I'm interested in electric car legislation help me find the bills and then you got your third class process of finding the bills by the keyword search and then they can sign up for the exact notices exactly for those bills yeah what what do you think about contacting legislators during the rest of the year versus testimony when a bill is in front of them when is it best to talk to legislature legislator during downtime let's say versus crunch time well you know senator this is one of the questions I was going to ask you about but I do think that a lot of what happens at the legislature is relationships and so building relationships with legislators you know having a conversation about the issue I think can certainly be helpful to lay that groundwork prior to sit is in building the relationship exactly relevant yeah yeah tell me how does somebody you mentioned the public access rooms website you've already mentioned it's open to anybody right I don't have to be a citizen I don't have to be a resident anybody can come and use your services yeah anybody can come and use the services we you know we we offer workshops as as we were talking about earlier and you know they go from the simple you know structure of government to understanding some of the odd things that happen at the legislature you know one of the odd things that comes to mind there's some odd things that happen frequently such as those defective effective dates that folks put in there where some someone's legis someone's bill is passed forward with changes and the changes that it's not affected until January 1 2099 and citizens will call us up and be freaked out a little bit saying I thought they said they were in favor what are they doing and and that's really to force the bill to go to conference committee and so that's the kind of thing that if you don't have someone to ask about that kind of thing you can really be at sea yeah do you think there are certain parts of the legislative process that are more accessible to the citizens and I guess the other side of that question are there some parts of the legislative process that are inaccessible to citizens well you know the the part of the legislative process that can be frustrating for citizens is the conference committee process so the bill has to go through the house and the Senate but then we've got to make sure that the exact same version of the bill is adopted by both chambers and so conference committee is set up and those meetings are open to the public but it's really for legislators to talk to one another so citizens are left trying to lobby different legislators that might have influence over a particular piece of legislation trying to be very pointed in what they consider acceptable or unacceptable as far as the versions of the bills things like that and that's when those relationships are really important having built those relationships during session so that you are a trusted advocate and people can really look at you and know that you know your business and that they should listen to what you're saying yeah you have any other advice to offer our listeners well I don't know you know there I would I would say you know we touched on it earlier of you know get involved and be persistent and I really think that that is so crucial because you know this is important business we're doing at the legislature I mean if these are laws that the entire state is going to have to abide by and it's such important business that we can't let legislators do it alone we really need people to to speak up it's really frustrating for me when I go to a party and people ask where I work and I say at the Capitol they moan and groan and say oh you know what are they doing why are they focused on this and they're not focused on that and then I get to ask them well have you contacted your representative or your senator and you know a little sheepish of no I haven't and you know I think it's really important for people to speak up and you know even if it's not to testify or ask for a particular bill even to call their legislators office and say this is what I think you need to be focused on I may not have the answers but I think this is an important area for you to look at so have you found the legislators are responsive when people do that generally speaking well I do think that they listen you know they listen it's doesn't mean as I said earlier that they'll always do what you want I mean this is complicated process and there are a lot of voices that are being raised and as you know you're being asked to consider such a wide variety of subjects so for those of you that want to be more effectively involved in the legislative process I urge you to take advantage of the many tools that the public access room has to offer you for free for any citizen of Hawaii and we've been talking with Virginia Beck the public access coordinator for our state capital public access room thank you once again for being with us Virginia this is a senator Russell ruderman with a ruderman round table on think tech Hawaii we'll see you in a couple weeks