Open Meetings & E-democracy

At last night's Chapel Hill Information Technology Committee meeting, the Town Manager informed us that use of a committee listserv was a violation of the state's Open Meeting Law. He used David Lawrence from UNC-Chapel Hill's Institute of Government as a reference. I have a booklet written by David Lawrence and published by the Institute of Government in 2002 on Open Meetings in North Carolina. In the author's opinion, and reiterated by the Department of Justice, conference calls and electronic meetings are legal as long as they are available to the public. If conference calls are legal, then email should be also as long as this list is available to anyone who wants to subscribe. Rather than banning the use of the listserv, I would recommend opening up subscription to anyone who is interested.

The impact of discontinuing use of email for all future advisory board communications is to limit access, an outcome that is counter to the intent of the open meetings law. Experience in the e-democracy world is that more people participate electronically than they do in face to face meetings. I hope we can take this opportunity to educate staff and council on how the use of electronic communications will expand citizen access to governmental communications rather further restricting it.

The other option is to sponsor an Issues Forum for Chapel Hill but that doesn't address the fact that advisory boards typically meet once a month for 1-2 hours. That is simply not enough time to complete any substantive work. Using electronic communications can help boards be more productive and make better use of individual volunteers time and expertise. While I am frustrated, this is the type of interaction and challenge I was hoping for when we began talking about e-democracy more than a year ago. E-democracy is all about getting more citizen input into government and opening the doors for citizen-official communication. While this recent development may seem to some as having our wings clipped, I hope it is the beginning of e-democracy in Chapel Hill.

I'm not sure how the group is going to respond to this. At least one member has already asked to be unsubscribed from the list. Personally, I see this as an opportunity. Before changes occur there is often a setback such as this. I hope the outcome of last nights meeting is that we clarify the intent of the law (I've emailed the Attorney General's office) and develop sound policies on what constitutes 'access,' and 'substantive discussion,' in such a way as to move forward the town's adoption of e-democracy.