“I’d like to call the Village Board meeting to order,” Tinley Park Mayor Michael Glotz said when the public body convened June 1.
“This meeting is being conducted pursuant to Gov. Pritzker’s disaster proclamation and Public Act 101-0640, which amends requirements of the Open Meetings Act due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Glotz continued. “Although remote attendance is an option, all are present.”
If they are not already, other elected officials should follow Tinley Park’s lead and resume meeting in person. Chicago and the rest of Illinois are set to move to phase five of their pandemic responses Friday. Phase five is described as a full reopening. That means no capacity limits at baseball games, restaurants and other destinations.
The lifting of restrictions is a big step toward returning to the way businesses and organizations operated before Pritzker first declared a state of emergency and issued stay-at-home guidance in March 2020.
“We’ve been giving board members the option to either attend in-person or attend remotely,” Richton Park Mayor Rick Reinbold told me Wednesday. “We’re looking forward to getting back together.”
Officials serving on village, school, park and library boards should be mindful of an important public participation consideration as they resume conducting business in person. When the pandemic forced public bodies to suspend in-person meetings, many used videoconferencing or similar technology to hold virtual meetings and conduct essential business such as approving payrolls and paying bills.
As the pandemic progressed, many elected officials grew more comfortable discussing policy during remote meetings. Village boards, city councils, school boards and other bodies had to comply with the Open Meetings Act and provide opportunities for public comment.
“I think the key word is transparency,” Reinbold said. “I don’t think anyone would say there’s too much transparency.”
The key consideration now is whether public bodies that resume meeting in person will continue offering opportunities for remote participation as a convenience for residents.
Before the pandemic, some towns broadcast municipal meetings live on local access cable TV channels. Residents of Blue Island, Orland Park, Tinley Park and other towns also could watch video recordings of meetings on YouTube channels.
The pandemic prompted many other government units to begin livestream their public meetings on social media. Citizens could watch proceedings in real time, though officials typically required people to register in advance if they wanted to participate in public comment.
Since videoconferencing technology is relatively affordable and convenient, why not continue using it as a supplemental option as public bodies resume meeting in person? The proverbial genie is out of the bottle.
“Remote meeting provisions are here to stay,” said Ben Silver of Elmhurst-based Citizen Advocacy Center.
The Illinois Open Meetings Act allowed provisions for remote participation before the pandemic. The former mayor of Merrionette Park often phoned in to monthly village board meetings from a residence in Arizona in 2018 and 2019.
Silver said during the pandemic, many public bodies adopted a hybrid solution. Some members were present at a meeting location and others phoned in or participated via videoconference.
Public bodies should continue offering remote options to their members and the public. Practices that encourage public participation in democratic governance should be encouraged.
“They discovered they can, in fact, provide better access to public meetings and more ability of the public to view and participate in meetings throughout all of this,” Silver said.
At the very least, public bodies should share video of their proceedings in real time.
“For a very long time we have promoted the idea of streaming meetings to the public,” Silver said. “We’ve also argued that is easy to do because of modern technology. We now know public bodies can absolutely do that.”
Then there is the matter of public participation. It’s one thing to be able to watch a static video of a meeting. Ideally, taxpayers participating remotely should also be able to speak during public comment portions of meetings.
Registration requirements for public comment are unnecessary, Silver said.
“We have never liked the registration requirements,” he said. “When people get to a meeting and something inspires them, they should be able to talk.”
It’s OK to have sign-up sheets as meetings get underway so that public comment participants may be called upon in an orderly manner, Silver said.
“The best practice we see is having sign-ups then also asking if anyone in the audience would like to speak,” he said.
As Illinois fully reopens, there is no good reason why some public bodies should resume practices that discourage members of the public from viewing or participating in public meetings.
It comes down to the integrity of local officials who either promote transparency or try to hide what they are doing.
Ted Slowik is a columnist with the Daily Southtown.