AFTER DEADLINE
March is time for legislative balancing act
By Anne Harpham
The 2002 Legislature is now at the midway point of its regular session, reaching the time when issues start to come into better focus.
Today, for example, The Advertiser's Capitol Bureau takes a look at what bills are still alive and what bills probably are dead this session. That kind of project epitomizes our philosophy on legislative coverage.
We try to look at the major issues that emerge each year, focusing our regular coverage on them.
At major junctures during the legislative session, we expand that coverage to list more of the bills and how they are faring.
With thousands of bills introduced each session (1,163 House bills and 1,087 Senate bills this year) there is no way to cover all of them. In addition to this year's bills, a couple thousand that were introduced last year are still active.
This year, the issues we have chosen to devote most of our attention to are traffic cameras, education reform, balancing the budget, new regulation for the health insurance and gasoline industries, the long-term care tax, campaign spending and other government reform proposals, and assisted-suicide bills.
Is that enough? Probably not. Most years, an issue emerges in mid-session that surprises even our experienced reporting team. And every year, there are readers who disagree with our choice of issues, either saying we are missing opportunities or are fixated on the wrong issues.
It is, quite frankly, a balancing act, trying to cover the issues that are the most important, that strike a chord with the community or affect the most people. The same story that one set of readers finds of little interest, another set can't get enough of.
How we cover this body, which meets for 60 days in a session that stretches from mid-January to early May, is something we take seriously.
Each year before the session begins, editors and the reporters in our Capitol Bureau meet to discuss the hows and whats of coverage. How will we track bills and issues? How do we keep our fingers on the pulse of the Legislature, where political strength and issues can change in a flash? How do we keep up with the political and personal nuances of the legislative process and in what level of detail? And which issues will we focus on?
And every year after the session ends, we hold a post-mortem to evaluate how we did and to try to learn from what we did right and what we did wrong. Each year, we try to apply the lessons learned from the previous year.
The Capitol Bureau is headed by Kevin Dayton, who has worked at newspapers in Arizona and Hawai'i and has more than 10 years' experience covering government. He has a master's degree in political science and ended his military stint as an Army Ranger. He specializes in budget and tax issues, prisons and political analysis.
Lynda Arakawa is a University of Hawai'i graduate who has worked at The Advertiser for four years and has developed expertise in covering social-services issues.
The two other reporters who make up the Capitol Bureau team do not cover the Legislature regularly but help out and also bring lots of experience to the job.
Robbie Dingeman has worked in television as well as print journalism and has a strong background in government coverage. She covers city government. And Johnny Brannon, who joined The Advertiser a year ago, works on stories on public money and how it is spent. He has worked as a reporter in San Francisco and in the Philippines.
Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033.
