The ACLU of Rhode Island released a report today detailing the virtual meeting policies of every city and town council and school committee across the state, and notes the failure of many to provide maximum public access to their meetings. The ACLU report, an update of one published in 2023, includes data about how council and committee policies have changed over the past three years and concludes that there has been insufficient progress in increasing virtual accessibility over that time period.
As a means of measuring accessibility, the report looked at four aspects of remote access to municipal council and school committee meetings:
- Do they livestream their meetings?
- Do they record their meetings and provide a video archive of them for future reference?
- Do they provide links to agenda item documents online?
- Do they allow remote participation by the public?
Some of the highlights from the report include the following:
- Only eleven city and town councils and two school committees meet all four standards of remote accessibility based on the report’s criteria. However, the councils that are fully remotely accessible include municipalities large and small, urban and rural. No councils or school committees improved their policies to reach this threshold since 2023.
- The vast majority of councils and school committees livestream their meetings and record them for later viewing. However, a handful of public bodies still fail to make these two basic accommodations to their constituents.
- Most city and town councils, but only slightly more than half of the school committees, post their agenda packets online for members of the public to view before meetings.
- Two town councils and three school committees meet none of the four standards of accessibility reviewed by the report.
- Only one-third of the state’s city and town councils, and a meager 12% of school committees, allow for remote participation in public comment periods during meetings.
The ACLU of RI report urges all municipalities and school districts to take steps to ensure their meetings are fully remotely accessible. The report, including a searchable table summarizing which remote access criteria each council and school committee meets, is available on the ACLU of RI’s website, www.riaclu.org/OpenMeetingsReport
ACLU of Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown said today: “The decisions that are regularly made by city and town councils and school committees markedly affect residents’ lives every day. At the very least, there is simply no excuse in this day and age for any of these public bodies to fail to livestream or record their meetings or post their agenda packets online. We encourage constituents in those communities that fail to meet these standards to demand them from their elected representatives.”
Zoe Chakoian, ACLU of RI communications associate and drafter of the report, added: “The importance of allowing residents to follow what’s happening in their communities, and have a voice even if they cannot physically be at meetings, cannot be overstated. If we have learned anything since 2020, it’s that virtual access is possible for every council and committee to offer should they choose to.”
The report concluded with comments made in the organization’s 2023 report:
Access to the democratic process should no longer hinge on a person’s physical mobility or their ability to afford a car, get time off work, or find a childcare provider. If municipal councils and school committees positively address the access issues analyzed in this report, they will be taking important steps in further promoting the Open Meetings Act’s goal of having “public business be performed in an open and public manner.”
A copy of the report can be found here.
