Fortunately for me the National Court Reporters Association has summed this up quite nicely.
They’re looking to do away with stenographers in yet another state. I provided what I feel is a most unusual spin on the situation, and hopefully it helps win the day.
You can make your voice heard this December, if you so choose.
What I wrote:
Regarding the termination of court reporters in North Dakota:
To Sally A. Holewa, State Court Administrator, and
Petra H. Mandigo, Clerk of the Supreme Court
My name is Christopher Day. I’m a long-time advocate for stenographic reporting all over the country. I’m not going to hang my hat on the efficiency of stenographic reporting over digital. What I am going to do is talk plainly in dollars and cents so that policymakers may come to understand why it is a bad idea to replace stenographic reporters with digital reporting wholesale.
Most notably, with the presence of both methods on the market, page rates and salaries are at an all-time low. Factually, when looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics median wage for court reporters over the last few years, I found that despite the private sector’s insistence that there was whopping demand, our median wages were falling.
It comes down to a very simple calculation of supply and demand. If the supply of court reporters continues to rise as it is forecasted to by anyone that is not using the former Speech-to-Text Institute’s debunked and fraudulent materials, and the demand remains roughly the same, prices will freeze or fall. Indeed, in my own hometown of New York City, this is precisely what has happened. Adjusted for inflation, rates are the lowest they’ve been in over 30 years. Notably, after the Speech-to-Text Institute was called out for fraud, it got sued and shut down its website.
Succinctly, the elimination of stenographic reporters from your pool of choices leaves a sort of monopoly to the digital recording and digital reporting sellers. They will be able to, through actual collusion or tacit parallelism, raise prices on your court system. And there will be basically no going back, because the elimination of stenographers will have indicated to the public that the demand for stenographers doesn’t exist. This is in stark contrast, again, to the claims of many courts around the country claiming that they want and need stenographic court reporters.
We can point to digital solutions from other parts of the world to see that they are bad for business. Take VIQ Solutions, for example, a stock price hovering around 20 cents, with net losses of millions upon millions of dollars every quarter. Though I can’t speak to VIQ specifically, I can say that companies like this have a very specific playbook. Drive the price through the floor on the backs of investors, kill the competition that doesn’t have such cash reserves, and then once the competition is killed, jack up the price as high as it’ll go. This is the future of North Dakota if it allows the complete replacement of stenographers.
Truly it is in the best financial interests of the taxpayer to maintain a state of competition. Lean to one side or the other, and the so-called “winner” has no reason not to take advantage of their newfound dominance in the marketplace.
Thank you for your consideration.
Addendum:
My comment was rejected because it didn’t follow the notice. I’ll be reworking it to follow the notice, which I’m making available for download below.