An eager Sturgis reader passes along the agenda for Tuesday's regular meeting of the Meade County Commission. My neighbor cocks an eyebrow at Commissioner Alan Aker's agenda item to put the bare minimum of information from county commission meetings on the public record:
Consider changing county commission minutes so that only motions and votes are published.
Proposal: County commission minutes would consist only of motions and votes.
- Motions which are not seconded would be in the minutes.
- Motions which are withdrawn would not be in the minutes.
- When motions are modified with the consent of the maker and seconder, only the modified motion will be published.
- Informational agenda items where no motion is made will not be published.
- Comments from the audience will not be published.
- Commissioners cannot request that editorial or informational statements be read into the minutes.
- Comments from other county officials will not be published.
- Veteran of the month will be published.
- Deferrals by the chair or by motion will be published when the matter is a hearing, reading, or decision requiring notice to the public.
Commissioner Aker just can't do without the Veteran of the Month commendations, but he figures the public doesn't need any record of things actually said at commission meetings that shape the debate and decisions of their elected officials.
I glance at Meade County's February minutes and find that Commissioner Aker's proposal would deprive the public of the pleasure and wisdom gained from reading Commissioner Linda Rausch's declaration with respect to Exit 52 landscaping that "I love trees and I love the beauty and I hope this is going to be more beautiful. We are going to grow a lot of trees and it is not a lot of money, although $2500.00 is still a lot of money if it is in my pocket."
Perhaps Commissioner Aker is simply trying to live up to that tree-love by saving paper. But come on, Alan! Publishing doesn't cost that much. If anything, we should have more in the minutes, not less. If printing the minutes in the local paper is really draining the coffers, how about two versions of minutes: put the bare-bones minutes in the paper, but require detailed minutes online, where publication is almost free.
An accurate set of minutes are wonderful things. Along with broadcasting all government meetings in full, they tend to serve as a truth checking devises. No wonder Aker is trying to change how minutes are published. Without full accounts of meetings, Aker can get away with lying about what actually happened.
This used to be the normal operation at the Rapid City Common Council meetings. I'm not sure what's going on now, but it used to be that mayors would edit the tapes of meetings to take out parts of discussions they did not want the public to see. I know the Common Council passed a resolution to stop that practice in the 1990s, but I have to wonder who checks up on these things.
One of the advantages of printing thorough minutes in a newspaper, despite it being cheap, is the permanence of the record. Ever wonder what Commissioner Aker said about a certain issue a year ago? You can go to the library, find a past issue of the newspaper, and find out what the record says. There's no guarantee that such permanence will exist electronically. PP at Dakota War College showed everyone how easy it is to make anything published in cyberspace simply disappear.
I won't pretend the primary reason for my proposal is saving money on printing; that's just a bonus. Before I give you that reasoning, though, please ponder the fact that my proposal would make Meade County's minutes pretty much the same as our legislature's minutes. In legislative committees and floor action, its just motions, not the speeches or testimony. The reason for my county proposal is the same reason the legislature doesn't have more detailed minutes: as soon as a body assigns anyone to do more than report the facts, the person doing the reporting either has to report everything, or has to make editorial decisions about what to leave in and what to leave out and how to summarize. So, I ask you: if you went to Pierre and testified on a controversial bill, would you want a partisan elected official to have the power to make others' comments a part of the record, and not yours? Would you want that person to have the power to condense or summarize your remarks? Some of our minutes in Meade County have not been fair to all the participants.
Recently, the official celebrator of earth hatred, NASCAR, wanted exclusive ownership of the highlight of a recent failure of a track-side barrier.
Native Sun News wants to be the dead tree archive for Rapid City Council minutes and legislation has been introduced that would offer traditional newspapers broadcast of sports events.
That government would want to interfere in public access to their own working reeks of prior restraint and a chilling effect on my right to know that Alan Aker is a complete nutcase.
You're right, Commissioner Aker: I would be unhappy if editorial decisions placed an opponent's public testimony on the record but not mine. But I would argue that the proper solution is to put it all on the record, not none of it. The more we record about the discussion surrounding our public decisions, the better. Why follow the Legislature? Why not show the Legislature a better way of doing things? Transcribing meetings for the public record isn't that hard: speech-to-text software is getting better, so court reporters may soon become proofreaders rather than transcriptionists.
I always felt the SD Legislature's committee minutes and the House and Senate Journals were examples of how not to operate. They present no information about the arguments made for and against proposed legislation.
It leaves the impression that what you say before the legislative committee doesn't matter; only your lobbyist affiliation matters. Interim legislative committee meeting minutes at least have decent summaries of public testimony (or used to). I understand the time crunch issue during the session, but technology could solve this. Most or all committee meetings are recorded now. Why not make the recordings party of the official record?
Some, er,ah, unique reasoning. Minutes of public bodies are, in the case of local governments, the only record of what is done, why it is done, what issues are raised, and who voted which way Congress sets the standard for how such records are kept. The rules of order also require that after the reading of the minutes, corrections and additions be entertained. Any participants in meetings who feel their contributions to a meeting are not correctly or sufficiently recorded have a chance to correct the record. South Dakota does not have any laws or administrative rules that I know of setting the standards for maintaining the public records of local deliberative agencies. That may need to be added to the open meeting provisions.
I was wondering, David, if there was any definition of the "full and complete report of the proceedings" called for by SDCL 7-18-5. Given the low cost of data storage, would it be unreasonable to update statute to require complete transcripts, text or audio, of all public meetings?
Despite attempts to further "open" government in South Dakota, efforts are deceptive. As long as there is no freedom of information law in the state, there is no opportunity to examine the proceedings. Consequently, there are few full and complete proceedings kept to examine. However, if Roberts' Rules of Order are designated as the official procedural manual, as is usual in local government, it is very specific about what the contents of published minutes are to contain, including a summary of all points of discussion.
You are right in regard to keeping full record of some kind. I recently helped out in a case where a state's attorney in Illinois
was removed by the county board for supplying alcohol to a high school girl, who had been a victim in a sexual abuse case from a teacher. The minutes on record summarized the proceedings, but we were able to purchase a CD of the board proceedings and make a printed transcript at our own expense. I understand that such is the general custom in most states that have freedom of information laws. (Damned computer is unstable and prematurely signaled the publish command.)
To Heidelberger: Meade County does record its meetings, and those recordings are available to the public. It's not fool-proof, though. The commission recently asked the auditor to play back a recording of a meeting which occurred about a year ago, and the disk which was labeled with that date was a recording of a meeting on a different date. We were never able to retrieve the meeting we wanted. As for making that recording part of our "public record", I think statute would require publishing of whatever that public record is, and it would be costly. Publishing a full transcript to the web would not be costly, but publishing in the newspaper would. I don't know exactly, but a full transcript would probably be 50-100 times longer than our current minutes.
To Pay: Same as above.
To Newquist: Since our meetings are a month apart, the minutes of the prior meeting have already been published by the time we officially adopt them, so a participant whose comments have been misrepresented or left out is still treated unfairly. Even if that weren't the case, the participant would have to come to a second commission meeting to be on hand for the approval of the minutes, and then persuade a commissioner to make a motion changing the minutes as desired, and that would have to be approved by majority vote. No guarantee any of that would happen. Meade County has not adopted Roberts Rules. It is not true that South Dakota has no freedom of information law. All our county documents and recordings are available to the public, except for those with individuals' medical and job performance information, proprietary business information, and attorney-client privilege content.
To all: I think you'd be surprised at how much full publication of the entire transcript would reduce, rather than increase, public awareness and accountability. The public would have to wade through a lot of informational and mundane content to find out what happened that's important to them. You wouldn't believe how often our board spends 1-2 hours discussing a $10,000 item, and then 1-2 minutes on a $1 million item. Finally, publication of everything said in the meeting would have a chilling effect on the public and on commissioners. Remember, every member of the public and every other county official has a choice between convincing me of something in the open meeting or in private before the meeting starts, or even in the hallway during a break. Which would you prefer?
In 2011, Bear Butte was successfully listed as one of the most endangered places in the US after threats were made on its life by the likes of Alan Aker.
Some white people should not be allowed to govern.
Nothing is foolproof. But if we declare that recording the public record, I bet the auditor will make sure a couple back-up copies are made and labeled and safely stored. You can post audio or video to the cloud (YouTube!) and not have to worry about maintaining it. If YouTube/Google ever disappears, we've got bigger problems to worry about than county commission minutes.
Cost: indeed, per word costs in the paper can add up. Just one more reason we should lobby harder to allow governments to use the Web to serve the public with official meeting records.
Chilling effect: malarkey. Folks should understand that when they come to a public meeting, their words are public. If they're willing to come in the door and talk after you've gaveled into session, they're not going to be deterred by detailed minutes any more than they are currently deterred by a dutiful journalist or blogger sitting right next to them transcribing every word.
Indeed, a full transcript could be daunting to read. There are ways around. Keep minutes as the executive summary, with hyperlinks to the relevant sections of the full transcript and video clips. That's not hard to do (it's essentially the kind of thing I do here on the blog every morning). It keeps the basic information for most visitors, but it offers the full nitty-gritty instantly for folks who want to dig deeper.
Nothing is foolproof. But if we declare that recording the public record, I bet the auditor will make sure a couple back-up copies are made and labeled and safely stored. You can post audio or video to the cloud (YouTube!) and not have to worry about maintaining it. If YouTube/Google ever disappears, we've got bigger problems to worry about than county commission minutes.
Cost: indeed, per word costs in the paper can add up. Just one more reason we should lobby harder to allow governments to use the Web to serve the public with official meeting records.
Chilling effect: malarkey. Folks should understand that when they come to a public meeting, their words are public. If they're willing to come in the door and talk after you've gaveled into session, they're not going to be deterred by detailed minutes any more than they are currently deterred by a dutiful journalist or blogger sitting right next to them transcribing every word.
Indeed, a full transcript could be daunting to read. There are ways around that. Keep minutes as the executive summary, with hyperlinks to the relevant sections of the full transcript and video clips. That's not hard to do (it's essentially the kind of thing I do here on the blog every morning). It keeps the basic information for most visitors, but it offers the full nitty-gritty instantly for folks who want to dig deeper.
Make duplicate backup copies of the transcriptions too.