Pittsylvania County leaders erred two ways in a recent vote.

Rural Pittsylvania County has received plenty of unwanted press of late. Between a fight over uranium mining and a lawsuit over sectarian prayers before public meetings, the county has some image rehabilitation to do. Supervisors did not help the cause last week when they eliminated the county Economic Development Office on a 4-3 vote.

Maybe that department needed to go as a cost-saving measure. Other county staff might be able to pick up the slack. It does seem odd, however, that a remote county that has fallen on tough economic times would choose to forgo one of the best tools to attract employers that can turn things around.

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If Mark Twain had faced government censors, Huck Finn would be blacked out.

The Freedom of Information Act gives citizens the right to review government documents.

It has enabled curious researchers to discover terrible government abuses and wonderful government successes.

Yet too many elected officials prefer secrecy. They whittle away at the public’s right to know, exempting this or that sort of information from FOIA. Virginia law includes more than 100 exemptions, and their number and scope seem to increase every time the General Assembly is in session.

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Chapter 1, Paragraph 2 of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain:

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece — all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round — more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

Should local councils, school boards and county supervisors be permitted to hold electronic meetings?

Electronic participation recognizes technologies relevance to government

By Mark K. Flynn

Flynn is general counsel for the Virginia Municipal League.

To remove any confusion, neither HB 2026 nor the existing state law allows a meeting to be held unless a quorum of the public body is in the room the entire time.

When the legislation was debated, no one argued that the current law, which already allows electronic participation in the case of an emergency, discouraged citizen involvement in government meetings. The new law simply adds a provision that allows a member of a public body to participate electronically if a “personal matter” arises, and that under limited circumstances I explained last week. Whether it’s an emergency or personal matter, to participate electronically, the law requires that
“(t)he public body make arrangements for the voice of the remote participant to be heard by all persons at the primary or central meeting location.”

Yes, it’s preferable to have face-to-face meetings and not just voices on a telephone line deciding the public’s business, but the law has safeguards against abusing the new privilege. Reader comments effectively captured the issues the General Assembly considered with HB 2026: “If you can’t do the time (make it to meetings) don’t do the crime (volunteer)” is valid. The legislature, however, sided with the reader who stated matter-of-factly that “remote meetings, teleconferences, etc., are standard everywhere.” Even Megan Rhyne’s own description of Skyping with her niece in Uruguay demonstrates how we readily adopt new technology. Most readers didn’t need an explanation of what Skype or FaceTime are. It’s how we roll.

HB 2026 doesn’t wipe out public interaction with boards, councils and commissions. It only takes us one small step toward recognizing that modern technology is relevant to government, just as it is to other aspects of our lives. I’m confident that electronic participation in public meetings will remain the exception and not the rule under the provisions of HB 2026.

The public meeting is a cornerstone of public service

By Megan Rhyne

Rhyne is executive director of Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

The world has changed a great deal since the “Leave It to Beaver” depiction of work and family life portrayed in the ’50s and ’60s. But that TV world never really existed in the first place.

Despite the show’s assumption that everyone lived and worked in the same small town, America’s economy, geography and economics have probably not been that static and homogenous since the Industrial Revolution.

Men — and more women since the days of The Beave — have been working night shifts or two jobs, in different towns, with different and frustrating commutes. They’ve always had family obligations, personal challenges and other commitments.

Our choices in one area of our lives impact other areas. For some, that impact is prohibitive. For others, they find a way to absorb it.

Those who seek public office are no different. They have always had to weigh these demands on their time against the responsibilities public office would add to them. Many a potential candidate has either passed up seeking office or has stepped down because the strain on his or her family was too great.

Every person who assumes office should assume that public service will take a significant amount of time and will include conducting the public’s business in public. The public meeting is a cornerstone of public service. E-meetings would undoubtedly be easier, but if expanded too far, the meetings stop being the public’s business.

Meeting in person is a part of the process. The advancement of technology doesn’t change that. As it says in Ecclesiastes, “What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Public meetings. Under the sun. I like that.

Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of open government, starts today. In past years, I have marked this occasion with investigations into public records and meetings. I shared information the government owes the people under the Freedom of Information Act.

This year, instead of looking at what FOIA means to the people, I want to share what it looks like from the perspective of the gatekeepers, the public servants who must abide by it.

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Christian Trejbal was an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times and was based in the New River Valley. This is his last column. You can reach him on Twitter at @ctrejbal.

By Maria J.K. Everett

Now in its 13th year, the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council is a testament to the foresight, dedication and legislative acumen of former Del. Clifton A. “Chip” Woodrum. As we mourn the loss of Chip Woodrum, who died on Feb. 19, we are heartened by his living legacy of open government to ensure the people’s right to know.

Acting on his long-held belief that “the access of citizens to information concerning their government and its process is crucial to a free society,” Woodrum played the leading role in the revision of Virginia’s Freedom in Information Act in 1998 when he introduced and secured passage of House Joint Resolution 187, creating a legislative joint subcommittee to study the FOIA.

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Everett is executive director and senior attorney of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.

89Hoo is surprised that this debate is even happening.

Remote meeting, teleconferences, etc. are standard everywhere. As long as the mechanism to provide direct interaction with the audience, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Do you use teleconferences for work, and do you think there should be different requirements for elected government officials? Join the discussion.

Blog reader George Krutz, III suggests that elected officials should know what they are signing on for when they run for office:

On subject: I am of the opinion that all public officials should attend necessary meetings in person. Life’s happenstance certainly precludes one sometimes from attending. But that happens in the private and public sector. And at that point, one would simply be absent.

If you cant do the time (make it to meetings)
Don’t do the crime (volunteer for or run for office)

What do you think? Should it be easier for government bodies to meet electronically? Join the discussion.

Should local councils, school boards and county supervisors be permitted to hold electronic meetings?

Electronic meetings will allow for broader participation

By Mark K. Flynn

Flynn is general counsel for the Virginia Municipal League.

The General Assembly took a sensible step this session when it changed the law to allow members of a public body to participate in meetings electronically.

HB 2026 recognizes modern-day realities. It’s not uncommon for a public official to travel out of town or even out of the country for work. Inexpensive technology exists today that allows a person to participate in a meeting thousands of miles away. The new law offers a common-sense way for citizens to participate in their community’s government and hold down a job that might routinely require travel. In short, it recognizes that the world in which we live has changed dramatically.

In the “Leave it to Beaver” TV show of the 1950s and 1960s, the Beaver’s dad, Ward Cleaver, his teacher, Miss Landers, and everyone else lived and worked in the town of Mayfield. Fast forward to today. A planning commission member works on international business matters that regularly take her abroad. A library board member works in the Library of Congress in Washington and faces a brutal daily commute. Both want to give back to their communities by serving on a board or commission. New technologies such as Skype, Internet conferencing and smart phones make participation by such people possible.

Before unanimous passage of HB 2026 by the General Assembly, those technologies didn’t help. That’s because the Virginia Freedom of Information Act allowed a member of a public body to participate in a meeting electronically only in emergencies. Because “emergency” is not defined in the act, public bodies were reluctant to allow members to participate electronically. Is being caught in traffic an emergency? Is a business trip to Mumbai an emergency? To resolve this dilemma, HB 2026 allows a member of a public body to participate in a meeting electronically for a personal matter, not just in an emergency. Because the term “personal matter” is inherently broad, defining it will not be an issue.

The code section amended by the bill contains safeguards to limit possible abuses: The official must identify the personal matter; the rest of the public body must agree to the remote participation; the member may only participate electronically the lesser of two times a year or 25 percent of the annual meetings; and a quorum must be maintained in the meeting room.

Thanks to modern technology, everyone involved, including the public, will hear or see all of the proceedings. The new law should prove a useful tool in helping more citizens serve their communities in our modern world.

Local government bodies are not hampered by distance

By Megan Rhyne

Rhyne is executive director of Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

I Skyped with my niece yesterday. She was on vacation in Uruguay. Tomorrow, I have a conference call with people from Missouri, Louisiana and California. On my way to D.C. last week on the train, I used “FaceTime” on my iPhone to say good night to my son back home.

Technology is amazing. But do I think local governments should be using that technology to conduct their meetings? No.

Representative government is best served when public officials meet in person in regularly scheduled public meetings. The quality of a face-to-face meeting is richer than when tinny voices crackle through the telephone or when isolated heads float on video screens. Interaction is more authentic, conversations more fluid, body language more articulate when people are in the same place at the same time.

Members of a public body are reading each others’ cues. The public is reading those cues, too. The public is also seeing who is paying attention, who rolls his eyes, who is taking notes and who is whispering to whom.

The in-person public meeting serves another important function: It requires government to face its public.

Public body members see who shows up to speak in favor of or against proposals. And by gathering together in one place, the public can identify potential allies or opponents, too.

Modern meeting technology is most useful when it brings together people from far-flung places. But local government public bodies are by their very definition local. They are not hampered by distance to the same extent as even state public bodies, which may have members in Accomack and Abingdon.

Many in local government insist that long commutes, family obligations and business trips make in-person meetings inconvenient. Current law recognizes that life sometimes gets in the way of public service. Individuals can participate electronically under certain, limited circumstances. But in-person meetings of the whole body — a tradition that has evolved from our republic’s earliest days — should not be sacrificed for the sake of convenience.

Public service is a difficult mantle to bear. Those elected or appointed to a local governing body should be commended for their willingness to serve. No doubt technology would make service easier. Its use in place of in-person meetings, however, would attenuate the members themselves and the bodies as a whole from the very public they serve. And then it would no longer be public service.

Taxpayer-funded research belongs in the open.

Americans finally will get to see the scientific research their taxes pay for. The Obama administration a week ago quietly issued an executive order that publicly funded scientific journal articles, reports and data must be made public within 12 months of original publication.

The federal government spends billions of dollars every year on scientific research, but the fruits of that research often wind up hidden behind the cost-prohibitive firewalls of academic journals.

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A proposed bill would make it harder for the public to know if the state is prepared for the next big storm.

One lesson Hurricane Katrina taught coastal states like Virginia is to think about the unthinkable and prepare to deal with worst-case scenarios.

When the best the commonwealth has to offer is not good enough to protect huge swaths of the population, the public should know. Then those in harm’s way can pressure state and local officials to improve preparedness when it matters — before disaster strikes.

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