How open is your government?

A minority of local bodies are following the ACLU’s recommended best practices for good government in 2023

By Scott Pickering
Posted 6/7/23

With executive orders expired, Rhode Island government agencies are now operating under the same Open Meetings law that was in place pre-Covid. They have no obligation to continue with any of the pandemic-induced adaptations, yet many are doing some of the new best practices, while few are doing all of them.

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How open is your government?

A minority of local bodies are following the ACLU’s recommended best practices for good government in 2023

Posted

In the early days of Covid, everything changed. From mild adaptions to radical reinventions, schools, restaurants, retailers and medical facilities all changed.

Government did too.

The immediate shift away from public gatherings put all levels of government into a state of flux. Unable to meet in person, and certainly not with an audience, they quickly reconvened online. Zoom became the dominant host of all things government, as town councils, school committees, zoning boards and more all continued “virtually,” barely skipping a beat.

There were bumps along the way, with an array of Zoom “bombers” and embarrassingly open mics, not to mention the stumbling spectacle of people learning for the first time how to turn their cameras on or off, or aim it somewhere other than their foreheads or private parts. Plus, everyone got to see what vases the school committee chairwoman had in her hutch, and which lounge chair the town councilor preferred while fighting to stay awake during a long discussion.

See what your council and school committee are doing (below)

All these virtual meetings were made possible by state executive orders overriding standard operating procedures codified in state law, which requires that public bodies meet in person, in public. The executive orders have expired, and Rhode Island government agencies are now operating under the same law that was in place pre-Covid. They have no obligation to continue with any of the pandemic-induced adaptations — but many are.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Rhode Island recently completed an audit of the current practices of all city or town councils and all school committees in the Ocean State. They assessed four key areas of what they consider to be good government practices in 2023:

1. Does the public body post the backup materials, such as consultant reports, memos, presentations, etc., that accompany its agenda?

2. Are they livestreaming their meetings, so people can watch from home or elsewhere?

3. Are they allowing the public to actually participate in the meeting remotely, for example commenting during a public forum while watching from home?

4. Are they posting and archiving their meetings, so people can watch them after they’ve happened?

Few local government bodies are doing all four. On the municipal side, nine out of 39 cities and towns are posting their materials ahead of time, livestreaming their meetings, letting the public join virtually, and archiving footage of the meetings. In the East Bay, only Portsmouth and Middletown are doing all of the above.

A perfect score in Barrington

On the school side, only one school committee in the state is doing all four of the best practices — Barrington. Many groups are livestreaming and posting their meeting footage, but the Barrington School Committee is one of only two in Rhode Island allowing remote participation (Portsmouth is the other), and it is the only one also posting its backup materials before the meeting (Portsmouth is not). Watching via Zoom, Barrington parents, taxpayers and others can view all the backup reports and memos while the meeting is taking place, click in to the Zoom feed, join the public comment portion of the meeting, and then continue on with their evenings.

They have those options because of a deliberate choice made by leadership and members of the Barrington School Committee, which seems to have had surprising consequences.

“Before November, we would get 10 to 20 emails a week. Since November, I’ve received 20 emails total from the public,” said Patrick McCrann, chairman of the committee. McCrann became chairman in November, after he and two newly elected board members formed a new majority and immediately began making small changes to how the committee operates. Barrington now emails to its entire community notices of every public meeting, with a link to the agenda. The agenda itself has links to the backup materials. They include the live-streaming and Zoom links. And the committee placed its Public Comment session at the lead of every meeting, giving the public certainty of when they will have a chance to speak.

“It has fundamentally changed how we operate as a committee, because everything is happening in the way it should be, in front of the committee,” McCrann said.

The changes are deliberate, part of a philosophy aimed at being accommodating to the public. “There are a healthy percentage of people in our community who cannot attend meetings when we hold meetings,” McCrann said. “We moved public comment to the beginning of our agenda, so you know there is always a public comment at 6:30 p.m. You know you can show up at 6:30, or you can log in at 6:30, and you can say your peace.”

McCrann strongly believes that making things easier for the public has made things easier for the committee. “Giving people the space to talk is actually disarming,” he said. “And the public comment we get now is better. People know exactly what we’re talking about — it’s so much better.”

He said volunteering on the school committee has become easier since the changes.

”Before the election, we had tons of contentious issues. We got lots of emails. I spent a couple hours a week answering emails … Now, I actually got to the point where I thought I had done something to my email. I thought it wasn’t working. It’s just not the same energy,” McCrann said. “This has been a massive positive for me.”

Commenting from home

To be clear, none of the government bodies are required by law to do any of the four activities assessed in the ACLU study. If they are doing so, they are choosing to do so.

Yet most of the groups, including the majority in the East Bay, are following three of the identified best practices. The most common exception is “remote participation.” Whether because of the fresh scars from disruptive Zoomers, a technology barrier, or a philosophical choice, only 13 of the 73 government bodies in the ACLU study, or 18 percent, are allowing people to join the conversation from home.

The Portsmouth Town Council is one of them. Its chairman, Kevin Aguiar, said he and his colleagues believe it’s the best form of government today. “This is the evolution, in my opinion, of how government should be run,” Aguiar said.

He believes that remote participation (Portsmouth uses Zoom) creates the greatest flexibility for the public. “It opens up opportunities for citizens who couldn’t physically be at town hall, or for people who can’t be there in the room for three hours when they’re really interested in only 10 or 15 minutes of the meeting,” Aguiar said.

He acknowledges the potential negatives of allowing people to sit home in their pajamas, or on the couch with a second glass of wine, and join the public discussions of the top administrative body in town. Of the potential for disruptive speakers, Aguiar said: “You just have to deal with it. It’s going to happen. But having said that, it really hasn’t been an issue for us. I can’t think of any incidents where a remote participant got far off tropic or off track.”

Aguiar touted one other advantage that is unique to Portsmouth. Because the municipality includes residents living year-round on Prudence Island, livestreaming and remote participation create great new opportunities for the public. Instead of hopping on a boat to attend their council meetings, Prudence residents can click a mouse and join within seconds.

Resistance to remote access

The Bristol Town Council is one of many that is doing all-of-the-above good government strategies except remote participation. To join the discussion, a resident must still go to Town Hall and wait in the audience to be called upon. Call him “old school,” but council Chairman Nathan Calouro believes there are intangible benefits to in-person communication. “I don’t know the exact percentage cited in research studies,” Calouro said, “but let’s say that 80% of human communication is through body language.” The way someone positions their body, their facial expressions, their hand gestures — all deliver information during spoken communication.

“You do not get those things through a remote format. You miss the body movements, the visual cues, that we’re all not able to see when someone is remote … I think those are invaluable,” Calouro said.

Cautious to point out that he was expressing only his own opinions, not necessarily those of his colleagues, Calouro also said he has experienced the negative sides of remote participation. “Everyone has been part of a meeting when a verbal grenade has been thrown that probably would not have been part of the meeting if that speaker was there with you in-person,” he said. “I think people feel more emboldened when they’re at home, or when they have their camera off … and maybe they express an opinion that they might not if they were in public.”

Calouro made sure to say that he and his fellow councilors are as welcoming to the public as they can be in their current format. “I can’t think of a time when we haven’t allowed the public to speak. We are open. We are engaging,” he said. In Bristol, they just believe that participation should be in-person. “You miss so much when it’s online.”

A few miles away, in Portsmouth, they seem committed to the new format.

“Remote participation gives them the flexibility to attend a meeting that they wouldn’t otherwise attend,” said council president Aguiar. “They can multitask and pay attention when they want to … I think it’s the right thing to do, to allow for greater participation from citizens.”

Open Government (or not) in the East Bay

Municipality

Packet Online

Livestream

Remote participation

Video archived

SCORE

COUNCILS

Portsmouth Town Council

Y

Y

Y

Y

4

Middletown Town Council

Y

Y

Y

Y

4

East Providence City Council

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Bristol Town Council

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Warren Town Council

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Little Compton Town Council

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Barrington Town Council

Y

N

N

Y

2

Tiverton Town Council

N

Y

N

Y

2

Westport Town Council

N

Y*

N

Y

2

SCHOOL COMMITTEES

Barrington School Committee

Y

Y

Y

Y

4

Bristol-Warren School Committee

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Little Compton School Committee

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Portsmouth School Committee

N

Y

Y

Y

3

Tiverton School Committee

Y

Y

N

Y

3

Westport School Committee

Y

Y*

N

Y

3

East Providence School Committee

N

Y

N

Y

2

Middletown School Committee

Y**

N

N

N

1

The ACLU of Rhode Island audited every town or city council and every school committee in Rhode Island to see how they are handling public meetings in 2023. The study reveals whether the government body is (left to right) making its backup materials available to the public at the time of the meeting, live-streaming its meetings, allowing remote participation in the meetings and archiving and posting the recordings of the meetings. A few are doing all four, such as the Portsmouth Town Council and Barrington School Committee. East Bay Media Group added the Westport bodies to this study.

* Meetings are broadcast on local cable access TV.

** Supporting documents are not available at the school website but can be found through the Town Council website after some searching.

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