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On Monday, November 25, I started the day with my usual array of responsibilities: continuing to compile the spreadsheet of healthcare plans by county, and preparing more SB 75 postcards. 

In addition to these tasks that have been ongoing for the past while, later in the day I got to revisit another continuing project.  Over the summer I spent a few days going over copies of SB 75, annotating them with the proposed edits from a variety of different organizations and individuals.  These were all edits up for real consideration as amendments to the bill; but given that various amendments were objectionable to some groups, or that various amendments conflicted with each other, it was necessary to find some compromise.  First, though, we wanted clearer visuals of what each of those edits were, which made it easier to pick out what they meant and where they conflicted.

Those edited versions of SB 75 appeared regularly throughout the summer; and while the bill is now beyond that version and those edits and subsequent compromises have been incorporated, that same process is still underway.  Such it was that on Monday my supervisor asked me to look over her memo to a senator’s office regarding edits she was proposing to the bill.  Her edits were both grammatical and content-based, and she wanted me to make sure she had included all of the edits she had marked on the text of the bill in the body of the memo. 

Working again with the editing and amending process behind a piece of current legislation, I was confronted again with the lack of transparency.  I am not well-versed enough in constitutional or governmental law to be able to propose a workable solution to this; but as a citizen I absolutely have the legitimacy to propose that we examine this process, and consider how we can make it more accessible to the public.  Thinking about this, it seems to be a similar problem as that facing the balancing of feminist theory and practice (or any theory and practice, really).  On the one hand are the ideals of theory – or, in this case, the literals text of law and the ideals it embodies.  On the other are the restrictions of reality – obstacles like public interest in these processes, accessibility given specialized language and differing levels of education, and many more. 

As was proposed by Carolyn Dever in the reading I did last week, part of the solution to this problem must be the praxis and ongoing conversation of these two sides.  The ideals of republican democracy (even if I personally do not promote that as an optimal form of governance) need to be in conversation with the very real challenges that its application faces.  Which is in theory part of the democratic process, as we make laws that adjust governance to be more in line with what we as a populace need.  But in situations like this, it is that very process that needs to be considered and rectified. 

Furthermore, feminist praxis informs this situation with its emphasis on dialogue – not just dialogue between theory and praxis, but dialogue between government and people.  The problem inherent in a lack of transparency is that it cuts off opportunities and structures for government and the people to interact and engage with each other.