Welcome to my online constituent office. We hope you will find this website to be a useful one-stop portal for any needs you might have from the Virginia state government. We have included information to help you better understand how our government works.
You can also keep up with the policy-making process in the General Assembly during the weeks that I am working in Richmond by reading my blogs and Twitter updates.
As your State Delegate, I’m here to serve you so please contact me with any questions or services you need. I am particularly interested in hearing about ways to make our laws work better for all of us so please do not hesitate to send me policy ideas that I may be able to propose in Richmond. I am honored to represent you and I look forward to meeting you in person.
Thank you,
- DelegateKeam: Presented another Richmond report to civic group: Sully District Council. 35th Dist has only 1 precinct in Sully - called Vale - out of 18.
- DelegateKeam: Witnessing the investiture of new Fairfax Couny Circuit Court Judge Brett Kassabian whom we voted in this session. Congrats, Your Honor!
- DelegateKeam: At NoVA Asian American community town hall hosted by Virginia Asian American Advisory Board. I served on this Governor's board in 2001-09.
- DelegateKeam: Attending "Unlock Gridlock" forum in Tysons hosted by www.TeleworkVA.org and www.TeleworkExchange.com to find solutions for NoVA traffic.
- DelegateKeam: Providing another Richmond report to constituents; this time Providence District Council in Dunn Loring. Most active civic leaders I know.
Posts Tagged ‘transparency’
Delegate Keam quoted in Richmond Times Dispatch
Delegate Keam talks about House Bill 778, the bill he and Del. Jim LeMunyon (R-67th District) tried to push through the General Assembly this year to require all votes be published online under the Member’s name. The House passed the bill overwhelmingly but the Senate killed it in committee.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/state_regional/article/SLAW15_20100314-220004/330410/
FOI council helps public with open government act
By Michael Martz
Published: March 15, 2010
It won’t get any easier this year for the public to scrutinize the voting records of General Assembly members, but that’s not because Del. Mark L. Keam, D-Fairfax, and 19 other new legislators didn’t try.
Keam was part of the “Freshman Initiative,” an effort by first-year leg-islators to make the assembly’s Web site easier to use to track votes from subcommittees to the chamber floor. The proposal was carried over a year by a Senate committee, but the new legislators say they are laying down a bipartisan marker to help the public hold elected officials accountable.
“We made a pact that on anything involving transparency, government efficiency or accountability, we will vote together,” he told Maria J.K. Everett during a reception Thursday to kick off Sunshine Week at the General Assembly.
Keam was preaching to the choir. Everett is executive director of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, a 10-year-old panel that helps people understand, apply and obey state laws that make government records and actions open to the people.
Richmond Sunlight is a great resource
While the LeMunyon-Keam billl failed to be enacted this year that would have allowed the VA General Assembly’s own website to provide members’ voting records online, there is a great resource that already provides this and lots of other useful information. Richmond Sunlight, for example, already provides voting records of all legislators as House Bill 778 would have required.
Here is the link to my own voting record from this session: http://www.richmondsunlight.com/legislator/mlkeam/votes/2010/
If you have some time, please check out Richmond Sunlight and look up what your elected official has done in this session (or in previous sessions if he or she has been in office longer than me!): http://www.richmondsunlight.com/
This photo is from this event hosted by the Virginia Coalition for Open Government: http://www.opengovva.org/component/content/article/25-sunshine-week/1338-sunshine-reception-2010-photos
LeMunyon-Keam bill killed by Senate Rules Committee
Today was a sad day for open government and transparency. The Senate Rules Committee killed House Bill 778, a bipartisan bill that would require the General Assembly to revise its website so that every recorded Committee and Floor vote can be accessed by a member’s name.
This is a bill that I wrote about in a previous entry on this website. Currently, information about how we vote in Richmond can be found online only if a member of the public knows the bill number or some other information about that legislation, and then goes to the website to search by that piece of information. HB 778, which was introduced by Delegate Jim LeMunyon, would make this process easier for the public by having our votes listed by our names. We believe this is a logical way that constituents might want to know how their elected officials vote.
Keam-LeMunyon Letter to Editor in Washington Post
The Washington Post today published a letter from Delegates Keam and LeMunyon, who are leading the bipartsian effort to bring more transparency and accountability to Richmond by requiring all votes to be searched online by members’ names. Details about HB 778 are found at http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?101+sum+HB778
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions/2010/02/let_virginians_see_how_their_l.html
Posted at 7:05 PM ET, 02/22/2010
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Let Virginians see how their legislators are voting
By Jim LeMunyon and Mark Keam
Richmond
In recent years, Internet technology has provided greater government transparency and accessibility. Virginia maintains an excellent Web site that enables the public to track legislation, follow committee and floor schedules and view video of proceedings. The history of every bill introduced in Virginia since 1994, including recorded votes, also can be easily retrieved.
But one feature is lacking. While recorded votes can be retrieved by bill number, they cannot be compiled using a member’s name. To assemble a member’s voting record, a user would have to know all of the bills that received votes (many die in committee) and type in each number, one by one, to view the “yeas” and “nays.”
Such an exercise would take days, if not weeks. The public deserves an easier way. That is why we introduced House Bill 778 — to require voting records to be organized by member name as well as bill number. On Feb. 16, the House bill passed 86 to 13. No member spoke against the bill on the floor, although some noted privately that this tool might help candidates challenging incumbents by making it easier to retrieve incumbents’ voting records. That may be so, but this bill would also help citizens hold their leaders accountable.
H.B. 778 is pending before the Senate Rules Committee. A former member of the Virginia House, Thomas Jefferson, once remarked, “If the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” Virginia’s delegates have affirmed their confidence in Mr. Jefferson’s words. Now it’s up to the Senate.
The writers are, respectively, first-term Republican and Democratic members of the Virginia House of Delegates from Fairfax County.
Transparency, Accountability, Efficiency
Delegate Keam is proud to be the Chief Co-Patron of House Resolution 2, a strong bipartisan measure introduced by Republican Delegate Jim LeMunuyon from the neighboring 67th District, which would require the Clerk of the House of Delegates to make all Committee and Floor votes easily accessible online if a constituent searches under a Delegate’s name.
Currently, the information about who voted which way on any legislation can be found only if a constituent happens to know the bill number or some other obscure information about legislation. The LeMunyon-Keam effort would make it easy for anyone to go online and find this information by looking up their state representative’s name — which is the most obvious piece of information most constituents would have!
Delegate Keam believes that transparency and accountability are the hallmarks of democracy and also that our government needs to be efficient and effective in dealing with its citizens. House Resolution 2 would accomplish all these goals — at least at the House of Delegates.
To keep track of the status of this legislation, check back at http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?101+sum+HR2