Camden: Keeping up with the Legislature from afar gets easier

But senators sponsoring a bill with high local interest often push for a hookup when it comes up for a hearing. The locations and times for remote hearings will be listed on the web.

Here are some other ways to keep up with the Legislature:

TVW offers video coverage of all House and Senate committee hearings and floor debates. Its cable channel — Channel 22 on Xfinity in Vancouver — will select a hearing to broadcast live when lawmakers aren’t on the floor. There can be as many as nine committees holding hearings at the same time, and all are live-streamed on the website tvw.org.

If you don’t catch it live, you can find a hearing by a particular committee or floor debate archived on another section of the TVW website, where things are arranged by day and the committee or chamber, and list at least some of the bills discussed. Video of a hearing usually shows up on the site a few hours after it concludes and a new transcription system makes the videos easier to search.

Get your money’s worth

Don’t be afraid to use state resources. After all, you pay for them, so get your money’s worth. The Legislature’s website, leg.wa.gov, offers a wealth of information beyond phone numbers and addresses for lawmakers.

The home page has a link on the left side for the bill information page, which is great for tracking legislation. If you know the bill number, enter it into the search window. You’ll get the legislative history, including vote counts, and links to the original bill and its changes.

If you don’t know the number, click on “search the full text of a bill,” which goes to a search engine that allows you to find bills or statutes by topic for this and several past sessions.

To get lists of hearings, click on “Sign Up for Updates” from the Legislature’s home page. The lists also show which sessions are expected to be broadcast live.

To find out how much money is being spent and where it goes, use the site maintained by the Legislative Evaluation and Accountability Program at leap.leg.wa.gov. It shows the current budgets for state operations, capital projects and transportation, as well as budgets since 1979. When new budgets are proposed, they go on the LEAP site.

The caucuses in each chamber have their own blogs that tout the wonderful things their members are doing, with news releases and video clips. Each can be reached from the Senate or House link on the main legislative page; then go to the caucus of your choice.

There’s a fair amount of fluff, and for a balanced view on a controversial topic you’ll want to check all sides.

You can find running commentary from lawmakers, the caucus staffs, the press corps and other elected officials or their staffs on what’s happening in and around the Legislature on Twitter by searching #WaLeg.

All this could keep you on top of the Legislature for the next 105 days — or longer if they need a special session — and protect you from the warning of Gideon Tucker, a New York judge who opined in 1866: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe when the Legislature is in session.”

While some people might argue that things have improved significantly in the last century and a half, do you really want to take the chance?