General Assembly Puts Witness Slips On-Line

Monitoring who supports and opposes bills is about to get even easier, thanks to an upgrade to the General Assembly's website.

Several years ago, in the course of outlining improvements to the Illinois Lobbyist Registration Act, ICPR urged that witness slips be posted to the internet. When legislative committees take public testimony on legislation, they collect witness slips indicating who supports and who opposes aspects of the proposals. For years, these have been kept on paper, in file cabinets, in the state house.

We were excited to hear that the General Assembly website now gives the option of submitting witness slips on-line. Slips are also still collected on paper, but we understand legislative staff will manually enter paper forms into the new on-line system. Soon, supporters and opponents of legislation will be listed together with other aspects of the bill status on the General Assembly's website.

This is a boon to the public, who will be more readily able to determine which interest groups support or oppose particular bills, and even parts of bills.

What's on-line now is a form of beta testing, rolled out in Veto precisely because there are fewer bills moving now than in regular session. Look for the system to expand next Spring.