NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A conservative political advocacy group says it expected more transparency from an online dashboard that state lawmakers said they created to let the public keep a closer eye on all the goings-on at the statehouse.
Months after it was unveiled by Tennessee's Republican-led legislature, the conservative-leaning group Americans for Prosperity told NewsChannel 5 they've noticed several problems with the site.
"We just don't have the transparency at all that we expected we would have with this," said Tori Venable, the group's Tennessee state director.
Venable says contrary to the dashboards intent, oftentimes amendments to bills aren't posted to the site with ample time before they are heard in committee.
"It's been very difficult to utilize, even for someone pretty experienced," Venable said.
Perhaps nowhere is the difficulty seen more clearly than in the controversial "life of the mother" abortion bill that would create a narrow exception in the state's restrictive abortion law.
As of now, the dashboard doesn't allow people to search bills by their names or numbers.
Instead, you have to go to a different site to find out what day and committee the bill was last heard in.
Armed with that information, you can then look for the bill on the amendment tracking dashboard. But the amendments aren't easy to spot — links to the amendments are oftentimes hidden behind a "View More" button.
Amendments on the site are coded by multi-digit draft numbers. To figure out which amendment on the dashboard site a committee is debating, you have to go back to another website to watch a video of the committee meeting, actively listening for a specific number.
Venable says many state bills, including the "life of the mother" bill, are also missing what's called a "red-line" document on the amendment tracking website, which is a document that shows how a bill or amendment has been changed or edited — another feature house lawmakers promised.
The dashboard was created following an award-winning series of reports from NewsChannel 5 Investigates, shining a light on how Capitol Hill really works.
