Editorial: COVID experience has shown the value of online government meetings
A lot of us could have lived without our COVID-19-imposed new familiarity with Zoom, Facebook Live and other group meeting apps.
But now that we're here, we can see reasons to keep the “virtual” version of local government meetings going. Even after we're free to slowly return to our regularly scheduled lives, they will be a good addition to, not a replacement for, in-person government meetings.
Online meetings are adding a new audience to the governmental process, with the potential to loop in those with health, mobility or scheduling problems.
While many village, county and school boards have moved in recent years toward video-recording meetings to be posted later, they by necessity made the sudden, big jump in March to conducting the public's business in rooms without walls.
It hasn't been seamless, our reporters note. Unintended overheard comments, unexpected blank screens and unidentified avatars standing in for public officials who don't want to be seen online have all been part of the experience.
At least one school district holds online meetings in which a graphic fills the screen, nobody is on video and viewers have to guess who is speaking.
Yet, some have been pretty innovative and transparent.
In the Zoom world occupied by many of us in the initial weeks of at-home lockdown, some boards and councils took the egalitarian step of giving members of the public their own little squares on the screen. Some refreshingly unfettered public commenting took place, along with a lot of confusion over the mute button.
Now that some size-restricted in-person meetings have returned, Facebook livestreaming is the choice of some boards and councils that need little more than a cellphone and a tripod to meet the mission of openness.
About that transparency — nothing about COVID-19 changed the mandate for government openness, as was made clear in a memo from the Illinois attorney general's public access counselor, the office that reviews and mediates disputes over access to government meetings and materials.
Lawmakers amended the Open Meetings Act to allow for electronic meetings, but reiterated “the public body should ensure that the public has a means to both observe and comment during these meetings.”
The devil is in the details — the same as it is for in-person meetings, where some boards have generous rules for public comments and others slot brief allotments late in their meetings.
Online, reading pre-emailed public comments is OK; adding in real-time responsiveness to live comments is better. How it's done bears watching as online meetings are refined over time.