12/9/2005
Texas Rulemonger Alert #456,283!!!
Well, if I was looking for a little more fodder for the blog, leave it to the rule-happy bureaucrats in Austin to fill me with piss and vinegar yet again. The new e-mail circulating, at least around the Houston area, is that reporters will now either have to put quill pen to paper or use an encrypted electronic signature on all transcripts... no more signature stamps, no more powers of attorney, no more faxing in sig pages. Now, if you go to the Court Reporter Certification Board website, there's a disclaimer posted this morning explaining that this isn't quite law just yet, that it was merely discussed at the September 2005 meeting.
Now, while we get to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we haven't been transgressing some double-secret mandate that was kept under wraps for the last three months (similar to the amount of time it took for word of the 9- or 10-pitch resolution to trickle down), it just irks the ever-living crap outta me that, yet again, in their feeble attempt to hop in the Way-Back Machine and take us to 1985, before the time of national consolidated firms, marketing plans and boundless technology, I'm now gonna have to change my streamlined high-tech system in favor of either a method that was outdated when I was in grade school or go to an encrypted signature so I get to spend a little more time troubleshooting tech issues for folks that can't quite unencrypt it.
I understand the impetus behind all this nonsense, that if we make it impossible for out-of-state firms to easily conduct business in Texas, they'll all go away and leave us be with all the toys. Hasn't worked yet, and it ain't gonna, so please stop trying. The other argument is this will protect reporters by not allowing firms to repaginate transcripts and pocket the difference. Hey, if you need protection from the court reporting firm for which you're working, GO FIND ANOTHER ONE!!!
If we've got all this collective time on our hands to consider this inane kind of rulemaking, how about we get some statutes on the books that protect copying of our work product instead?
"In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work." - Milton Friedman
Well, if I was looking for a little more fodder for the blog, leave it to the rule-happy bureaucrats in Austin to fill me with piss and vinegar yet again. The new e-mail circulating, at least around the Houston area, is that reporters will now either have to put quill pen to paper or use an encrypted electronic signature on all transcripts... no more signature stamps, no more powers of attorney, no more faxing in sig pages. Now, if you go to the Court Reporter Certification Board website, there's a disclaimer posted this morning explaining that this isn't quite law just yet, that it was merely discussed at the September 2005 meeting.Now, while we get to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we haven't been transgressing some double-secret mandate that was kept under wraps for the last three months (similar to the amount of time it took for word of the 9- or 10-pitch resolution to trickle down), it just irks the ever-living crap outta me that, yet again, in their feeble attempt to hop in the Way-Back Machine and take us to 1985, before the time of national consolidated firms, marketing plans and boundless technology, I'm now gonna have to change my streamlined high-tech system in favor of either a method that was outdated when I was in grade school or go to an encrypted signature so I get to spend a little more time troubleshooting tech issues for folks that can't quite unencrypt it.
I understand the impetus behind all this nonsense, that if we make it impossible for out-of-state firms to easily conduct business in Texas, they'll all go away and leave us be with all the toys. Hasn't worked yet, and it ain't gonna, so please stop trying. The other argument is this will protect reporters by not allowing firms to repaginate transcripts and pocket the difference. Hey, if you need protection from the court reporting firm for which you're working, GO FIND ANOTHER ONE!!!
If we've got all this collective time on our hands to consider this inane kind of rulemaking, how about we get some statutes on the books that protect copying of our work product instead?
"In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work." - Milton Friedman
