The way email testimony can be sent to Maine legislative joint standing committees is about to change. Beginning Monday, the committees will no longer accept email testimony sent directly to them. Instead, interested parties will have to use an online app.
Officials say the new system will automate the distribution of electronic testimony to committee members, analysts and clerks. Testimony will continue to be included in the public record.
Legislative Council Executive Director Grant Pennoyer says that emailed testimony has proven to be cumbersome and has created an extra administrative burden. He says the new app provides a more efficient process.
“The current process is done very manually,” Pennoyer says. “Usually the clerk has to hand write a form that goes with each of the emails that he or she has to process for scanning to make the testimony available online.”
Pennoyer acknowledges that part of the problem could be mass emails, which contain essentially the same message, and that has been copied and repackaged and sent by a number of people.
