Speakers: Shanna Pearson, Kelsey Vangelov and Sydney Frost, SPP
Abstract: Open hearings in state legislatures were designed to enhance the public’s ability to participate in the legislative process. The goal is to ensure that citizens can do more than just cast votes for candidates for office. With hearings and other open meetings the public could directly speak to those legislators tasked with reviewing and considering a bill and let them know how it would affect them and why they support or oppose legislation. However, research on political participation and the hearing process has raised questions about the extent to which these hearings deliver on the democratic promise for which they were designed. In this paper, we analyze the body of participants in environmental policy hearings in the 2021 state legislative session for the Maryland General Assembly. The data includes all 194 bills and the public testimony of all public participants in the legislative session environmental policy hearings. We analyzed the testimony for a host of information including the race, gender and age of the person testifying and if they testified on behalf of an organization such as a business, nonprofit or government agency. We also analyze position taking (e.g. opposition or support for bills) and formal changes offered to bills (e.g. offering a suggested amendment). We find that the population of those who testified was 83 percent white, less than 11 percent Black and 60 percent male. This is significantly misrepresentative of the general public which is only 57% white and 48.5% male. Moreover 89% of those who testified did so on behalf of an organized interest. The findings raise important questions about the role of hearings in improving the information legislators receive.