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Californians should be able to watch and participate in government meetings from home.
Elected officials should be expected to show up.
Seems simple.
Yet it’s a standard state legislators – who themselves stream a host of public meetings – have yet to adopt for their colleagues in the trenches of local government.
This national Sunshine Week, as Sacramento legislators consider overhauling California’s open meeting laws at a Wednesday informational hearing, there’s increased focus on getting the public an ability to view meetings remotely.
It’s a standard that Orange County residents have increasingly come to expect.
The State Senate’s Local Government Committee is led by two elected officials – Chairwoman Maria Elena Durazo and OC’s own Senator Steven Choi, as vice chair – who are well acquainted with local governance issues.
Senator Durazo has legislation – SB 707 – that would seek to mandate live-streaming at the local level of city council and county supervisors meetings.
Wednesday’s informational hearing is just the start of legislators looking into this issue.
Next month, they are expected to take up legislation like Durazo’s bill, as well as a host of other bills that could allow remote attendance by elected officials – a troubling side twist that could create worrisome tendencies for elected officials to phone it in.
One of the most profound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic – this month marking the fifth anniversary since official shutdowns hit the Golden State in 2020 – was the heightened need to watchdog government remotely when it came to public meetings.
Californians set up an ambitious transparency standard when lawmakers approved the 1953 Brown Act – legislation that sought to quash official secrecy. Our own legendary Voice of OC Civic Editor Tracy Wood penned a wonderful story years back noting the hard-edged reporting that triggered that standard.
Yet here in Orange County, we still see dangerous tendencies for elected leaders to rush proposals they see as necessary.
Especially when there’s opposing viewpoints.
Over the past year, we saw the perils of not placing more public guardrails on federal COVID spending steered through the county, revealed by the guilty plea from former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do.
[Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme]
In 2021, Do publicly railed against the wave of public records requests on the spending – eventually landing himself in the middle of a federal probe for steering federal COVID bailout money to a nonprofit his daughter helped run.
[Read: FBI Executes Searches on OC Supervisor, His Daughter & Others in Missing COVID Money Case]
And just this week, former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu gave OC residents a stunning admission of guilt in trying to ram through a deal to sell off Angel Stadium.
Sidhu’s city council majority steamrolled the stadium sale and silenced any opposition from their elected colleagues, until an FBI probe surfaced.
In federal court records filed last week, the disgraced former mayor admitted he handed over critical information and destroyed records about it.
[Read: Will Disgraced Former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu Serve Prison Time?]
Do and Sidhu illuminate the problems that can arise when transparency is skirted.
In those types of situations, more sunlight, transparency – not less – is the key to protecting the public.
And the politician.
Establishing a fair playing field – meaning people can watch live deliberations or research past decisions through archived footage – is key to good governance.
Visibility keeps everyone honest.
Here in Orange County, Voice of OC has particularly focused reporting since 2020 on live-streaming of government meetings and keeping video archives for the public through a unique partnership with journalism students at Chapman University.
[Read: Virtual OC Government Meetings Come at a Price, What the Lockdown Can Teach Us]
While the reporting got blowback from some local officials at the start, residents clearly see the importance and have pushed one city after another to keep perfecting video broadcasts – now increasingly on YouTube.
In addition to getting cities to adopt video, the student collaboration also has expanded to lesser-seen areas of local government, like local school boards – a focus state legislators should remember in terms of getting all types of local government bodies on video.
[Read: How Easy is it to Tune Into Your School Board Meeting?]
Today, only two OC cities – La Palma and Rancho Santa Margarita – don’t stream city council meetings, despite calls from residents to do so.
[Read: Why Won’t Officials in Two OC Cities Video Livestream Their Public Meetings?]
That kind of resistance raises the specter that a statewide mandate may be necessary to get all agencies spending taxpayer dollars to make their deliberations accessible.
Indeed, Voice of OC got major blowback when I suggested in a column that the massive, multi-billion dollar local transit agency should put their deliberations on video.
[Read: Santana: Orange County’s Transportation Officials Don’t Want Anyone Watching]
Yet after the local elected leaders heard from their residents, they themselves voted to start live-streaming their meetings.
[Read: OC’s Transportation Agency Begins Video Streaming Public Meetings]
And guess what?
The world didn’t come to an end. Live streaming the transportation authority didn’t bust the budget.
What it has done is spur more reporting on agency meetings than ever before.
Forcing more public debate, more public participation and more transparency defends our democracy better than just about anything.
That’s why Voice of OC and Chapman journalism students have put so much focus on the issue since 2020.
Residents tell us it’s making a difference.
In the coming months, it will be telling to see what kind of legacy this generation of state legislators leaves California when it comes to strengthening transparency and public participation.
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