PROVIDENCE – A new report released Wednesday by Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union Inc. found that while most city and town councils and school committees across the state continue to livestream and archive meetings in a post-COVID-19 environment, some public bodies do not.
Additionally, the ACLU’s report also found that a few public governing bodies were continuing to make remote public participation available as it had occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 20-page report, titled “Remote Access to Public Meetings Post-Covid: A Review of Rhode Island City and Town Councils and School Committees,” the ACLU says it reviewed agendas from this month of all the noted public bodies and examined four facets regarding remote access. This review by the ACLU comes about a year after executive orders by Gov. Daniel J. McKee requiring remote access and participation in public meetings had lapsed.
The ACLU looked at whether members of the public could watch meetings remotely, participate in meetings remotely, access archived recordings of the meetings and review agenda packets remotely. The report’s findings were mostly positive.
While the report says there is “room for improvement,” 32 out of the 39 city and town councils across Rhode Island continue to make livestreaming of meetings available to the public. Barrington, Burrillville, Exeter, Foster, Johnston and West Greenwich do not, according to the report. In Central Falls, videos of recent meetings are available, but it is “unclear if they are livestreamed or posted after conclusion of the meeting,” the report said.
About 90% of the city and town councils archive their recorded meetings and 79% of them include links to their agenda packets or documents for public access, the report states.
On the school side, the numbers are not as strong. Twenty-five of 34 school committees make their meetings available via livestreaming and about 79% of them provide open public archived meeting recordings. Additionally, the report notes that only “half” of the school committees provided full or partial packets to the public at the time of their meetings during the ACLU’s review.
The ALCU’s report calls on every city and town to meet the four noted metrics for remote public access. Unfortunately, only 11 city and town councils – Coventry, Cranston, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Lincoln, Middletown, Pawtucket, Portsmouth, Richmond, Scituate and West Warwick – and the Barrington School Committee meet all four facets of this review. The Exeter, Foster and West Greenwich town councils, and the Foster-Glocester, Johnston, New Shoreham and West Warwick school committees met none of those facets.
In Providence, both the city council and the school committee provided livestreamed meetings, archived recordings and online agenda packets, but no remote participation.
“It is clear from our analysis that it is feasible for all municipalities and school committees to implement measures to increase transparency and attendance by constituents who do not have the time or means to attend meetings in-person,” ACLU of Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown said in a statement. “The continuation of hybrid tools is important to ensure public meetings are indeed open and accessible to all, and we urge these important public bodies that are not already doing so to put them into effect.”
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
