DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711230016

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   43 lines

VA. ASSEMBLY EXPERIMENT PUTS DRAFT BILL ON INTERNET

A legislative committee on science and technology has posted a draft bill on the World Wide Web, a move designed to let the public see and comment on a bill even before it is formally proposed.

Web surfers can look up the first draft bill - proposing a revision to the state electronic signatures law - on the Joint Commission on Technology and Science Web site. It was posted Wednesday at 6 p.m.

The Internet idea is to allow citizens to review the text and then pass their feelings about it to appropriate committee or subcommittee members.

The committee did not include technology with the site to record the number of times the bill is accessed, or ``hit,'' by Web surfers.

Diane Horvath, the legislative staff director of the committee, said the experiment already is drawing criticism from legislators who fear that asking for comments on drafts before they are proposed is asking for trouble.

``Hopefully, it will ferret out the sandbaggers,'' she said, referring to special interest groups that quietly stalk a bill through committee, then attack when it finally comes before the House of Delegates or Senate.

Bills that have been formally introduced are available on the General Assembly's home page, but that Web site doesn't provide for public comment.

Science and technology commission members predict that it won't be long before other committees consider posting draft bills on the Internet.

The science and technology commission also plans to hold many of its upcoming meetings by video teleconference, pending approval by the General Assembly whether to fund the project.

A ``server,'' or master computer to feed video to Internet users, would cost about $8,000. The high-speed connection to the Internet would cost about $2,200 a month.

Although the proposed electronic meetings seem to promise user-friendly government, some special interest groups are wary.

John Edwards with the Virginia Press Association said he doesn't believe a video conference will ``have the same give-and-take as you do eyeball-to-eyeball.'' MEMO: The URL for the Joint Commission on Technology and Science is

(http://legis.state.va.us/jcots/jcots.htm)

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