DATE: Friday, November 21, 1997             TAG: 9711210672

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   75 lines

NEW, ONLINE SYSTEM MAY LET CITIZENS SEE, SOUND OFF ON BILLS WHILE SOME HOPE FOR ACTIVISM, OTHERS FEAR TRUANCY FROM LAZY LAWMAKERS.

Coming soon to a Web browser near you: lobbying online.

The General Assembly's Joint Commission on Technology and Science is experimenting with a system that would allow legislators, lobbyists and citizens to comment on bill drafts via the Internet.

The commission posted its first draft bill, a revision to an ``electronic signatures'' law, on the World Wide Web Thursday. Commission members say doing so will broaden public participation in politics beyond the purview of special interests and Richmond insiders.

And maybe, they say, it can alleviate some of the 11th-hour histrionics that result when bills go unnoticed for months and suddenly become hotbeds of controversy around voting time.

Some legislators worry that making drafts - in all their unpolished splendor - available to the public might be asking for trouble.

``It's kind of dicey,'' admitted JCOTS Director Diane Horvath. ``Everybody said, `You can't put bill drafts out there.' ''

But after weighing the costs and benefits, JCOTS members decided that because they were, after all, the ``technology commission,'' the move made sense.

``We ought to model what we're talking about,'' said commission chairman Del. Kenneth Plum, a Reston Democrat.

Commission members predict it won't be long before other committees are doing the same.

Horvath is quick to admit that the new system isn't compatible with all types of legislation. Take budgets, with their confusing, dizzying jumbles of numbers.

But putting drafts online has big implications for other types of policymaking, say commission members. A citizen can look up draft legislation on the JCOTS Website, copy and paste specific passages into an e-mail message - along with comments - and send it off to the appropriate member or subcommittee.

``Hopefully it will ferret out the sandbaggers,'' said Horvath, referring to special interest groups that quietly stalk objectionable bills and rip them apart right before a vote - and before potential supporters can muster a defense.

The commission also plans to hold many of its meetings by video teleconference and make the proceedings available over the Internet - pending approval by the full General Assembly, which will decide in December whether to fund the project.

Such meetings, held at community colleges in the nine committee members' districts, would allow greater public participation, cut down on travel time to Richmond and allow members to get more work done, according to JCOTS members.

A ``server,'' or master computer to feed encoded video to Internet users, would cost about $8,000. A high-speed T-1 connection to the Internet would cost about $2,200 a month.

``In the short term, we're not going to save a lot of money on this,'' said Horvath. ``Long term, it's a capital investment.''

The committee agreed that expanding citizen participation would make the effort worth the initial cost.

Electronic meetings may sound glamorous, but a few groups are wary.

``We understand the benefits of electronic communication,'' said John Edwards, chairman of the Virginia Press Association's Freedom of Information Committee.

But, he said, ``I don't believe you have the same give-and-take as you do eyeball-to-eyeball.''

Just as important, he said, is the opportunity for abuse - like for a legislator to fake ``emergencies'' in his home district and participate via video to avoid going to Richmond.

Or for lobbyists to wheel and deal with a politician during meetings - out of sight of the stationary Webcam.

Those are some of the reasons Virginia's open meetings law limits state employees' ability to conduct meetings by teleconference. MEMO: PILOT ONLINE: A link to the Joint Commission Technology and

Science site is on the News page at www.pilotonline.com

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