The Los Angeles City Council is finally moving into the 21st Century. At today's City Council Transportation Committee, Mike Bonin will accept testimony from speakers through video chat.
“People shouldn’t need to take time off work and fight traffic in order to make their voices heard at City Hall,” said Bonin. “Simple video chat technology will allow people to be more engaged in local government and we are going to take the first step toward improving access at the Transportation Committee meeting on Wednesday.”
It's not just good policy to get people more involved in their government. It's also good transportation policy. If just 20 people a day take advantage of video testifying, if and when it's adopted by the full Council, it would still be a reduction of hundreds of thousands of vehicle miles traveled.
But today is just a test run, and only big important celebrities such as Bob Blumenfield, the newly minted Chair of the Council’s Information, Technology and General Services Committee and myself will have the opportunity to be among the first to testify remotely in a Council Committee. For the record, I'll be providing information on the Englander/Cedillo motion and the LADOT's response discussed in this article.
Bonin and Blumenfield are currently working with the City’s Information Technology Agency to upgrade the technology available in the Council’s Committee room in order to allow for online video testimony to be more readily available.
Assuming everything goes well, we will post full details of how to testify remotely before the next hearing.
Providing online video testimony is part of Bonin’s Access 11 program, which seeks to improve transparency and access to City Hall.
