Letter to the Editor 
       A friend of mine, a senior Citizen, Janet Aldrich, and one with a disability, enough to get her one of those parking spaces close to the State House, is trying to get on videotape important hearings at the State House. She has been videotaping quite a few of these types of meetings and hearings. We have the latest Death Penalty hearing all on DVD. She has tried to get permission to videotape this meeting on the Children (held yesterday 7-28-05). She, I believe did the first one. Now she is being stopped by State Rep Karen Spilka from videotaping these important meetings. It seems Miss Spilka is taking this State Rep job a little to seriously when she tries to stop a good hearted wonderful senior citizen from tying to get this information to the public all on her free time as a volunteer. Janet gives me the hours and hours of testimony and I convert these to DVD so she can provide the committees with a video of the sessions. I think it's pretty rotten that State Rep Spilka is getting away with this in view of the good that comes from the PUBLIC and the participants themselves from seeing these Committee hearings.

Joseph Rizoli
Framingham

Editor: Janet Aldrich has been a great source of information for us at MassNews, and we appreciate the incredible work she has done documenting what has been going on at the State House. One must wonder what it is that Rep. Spilka is hoping to conceal by barring Ms. Aldrich. We are looking into what can be done in the future to help keep her access to public hearings unfettered. Perhaps we need to start by sending Rep. Spilka a primer on the Constitution.