Let’s move into the 21st century

Posted 8/21/12

A lot of politicians like to talk about open and transparent government, especially when they are on the campaign trail, but at a last week’s meeting of the Sullivan County Legislature, a couple of …

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Let’s move into the 21st century

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A lot of politicians like to talk about open and transparent government, especially when they are on the campaign trail, but at a last week’s meeting of the Sullivan County Legislature, a couple of its members suggested that openness can be taken too far.

The topic at hand was the installation of a camera in the legislative hearing room that would allow the live streaming and video recording of the monthly legislative meeting. Lorne Greene, the director of the county’s management information system (MIS), explained the system (as he had at a previous meeting), which will cost the county $700 per month. He said it will accommodate cameras on the legislature, but not the audience, which would require a more expensive system. At the previous meeting, all legislators seemed on board with the idea, but this time there were objections.

Legislator Mark McCarthy said the move would amount to “the tip of the wedge in the door,” and would lead to “cameras in the audience and cameras in the rest room.” The remark was clearly not serious, but the sentiment was: he is opposed to the county paying for video recordings of meetings, which members of the public could watch live, or watch later. He wasn’t the only one: legislators Joe Perrello and Catherine Owens also voted against allowing the process to go forward.

But the legislators are elected by and work for the people of the county, and as such the voters and other residents should be afforded as much access to the workings of the legislature as possible. In some other counties the cameras have been rolling on lawmakers for several years, and the results have been beneficial.

Jeremy Ellenbogen, one of the owners of the Ellenbogen Group, which provides video streaming services for the Ulster County Legislature, says the legislators there like the set-up, and there have been no complaints about it. Further, he says, the public makes good use of the videos. The local newspapers run links to them. The system doesn’t tell him exactly how many views the videos get, but at a recent meeting with a topic people were interested in, the link to the video was shared 230 times over two days, which could translate into thousands of views. But even if it’s only a few people who take advantage of the recordings, it’s a lasting record which, because it’s video, can provide more context to future viewers than a recording that is only text or audio.

It also allows news reporters to cover county meetings without actually attending the meeting, which is another way for people to keep tabs on what their elected officials are doing.

And it’s not as if the county would be stepping into uncharted territory by providing video records of their meetings. Thousands of municipalities around the country are already providing videos to their constituents. It is true that many of these municipalities have far greater resources than Sullivan County, but some small ones also provide them, such as rural Lee County in North Carolina, which has a population of about 57,000 compared to Sullivan’s 76,000.

In the case of Sullivan County, the technology used to record the video would also help the legislative clerk manage the agendas and minutes of the meetings, which are mandated by law.

Fortunately, six of the legislators who have a say in the matter voted to go ahead with the project. It will start small, just recording the main monthly legislative meeting that the county holds on the third Thursday of the month. Once the system is up and running, and the public and legislators have been able to test the system, the legislators will take up the matter again and decide whether to expand the program and record legislative committee meetings as well.

We hope that eventually the legislature does decide to cover the committees meetings, because those are often where important policy decisions are discussed; very often by the time a sensitive issue comes before the full legislature, the issue has already been hashed out, and the final vote is just a formality.

In our democracy, government at all levels, federal, state, county and town, as Abraham Lincoln said, is supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Allowing the people to view county meetings at their convenience is one small way of helping to ensure that this form of government doesn’t fade from the planet.

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