EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Feb. 6

Technological sunshine

Sometimes the old way is the best way. Tried and true. Time tested. Trusty.

Not when it comes to transparency practices, and especially not in Michigan. At a moment when invention has kept pace with, if not advanced, necessity, it has become clear our state’s lawmakers haven’t evolved our sunshine laws with the times.

Probably the most obvious evidence of this late arrival to the public access party is Attorney General Dana Nessel’s opinion on the Open Meetings Act issued Friday. That written guidance, sought by a pair of state senators, including Sen. Wayne Schmidt, declared that boards and elected bodies should provide remote attendance options for public meetings when requested by people who qualify for such accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The guidance seems like a bit of a no-brainer, the kind of query we would be disappointed if any of our local governments even needed to posit.

But both the question and the answer raise an important – and conspicuously absent – discussion for our legislators.

Nessel was clear, her opinion only applies to those afflicted with an ADA-recognized disability, not more broadly to Michiganders who want to know what their elected representatives are doing, but who can’t or don’t want to attend in person.

That asterisk raises lots of questions about why such access to government wouldn’t be enshrined in state law to benefit all equally. Especially when technological advances eliminate any contention that livestreaming meetings and allowing remote public comments present some sort of undue burden on government officials.

In a state that seems bent on winning awards for murkiest government in the nation, why haven’t we seen meaningful movement on transparency reform during the past two years?

Think about this for a moment. In the category of open meetings alone, the pandemic has driven unprecedented advances in technology that facilitated access to government goings on we wouldn’t have imagined a half decade ago. It seems like overnight – albeit with a little life-or-death motivation – state and local officials implemented systems for virtual meeting attendance that allowed constituents, taxpayers, to attend and even offer public comment from afar.

For the first time, district and circuit court hearings are streamed live, providing broad public access to hearings that always were open, just not accessible because they occur in far away courtrooms at inconvenient times for many who work.

And many small governments have continued to livestream even subcommittee meetings, generally improving transparency.

Yet, instead of cementing those evolutions as requirements in 21st century reforms to the Open Meetings Act, our lawmakers effectively allowed them to sunset as the pandemic chugs toward a conclusion and governments seek the de-facto privacy provided by in-person-only meetings.

The failure to tug our government boards permanently into the spotlight provided by new technologies positions us for an inevitable backslide into midday college board retreats at far-flung resorts, unbroadcast special meetings of school boards, and secret termination discussions at universities.

At this juncture, failure to reform is nothing less than a slap in the face to taxpayers who foot the bills for decisions made during those meetings, and who now know the benefits of unfettered access to decisions made on their behalf.

It’s time Michigan’s lawmakers recognize the past two years of technological advances have removed all the hurdles they once cited as reasons to pump the brakes on public access reforms.

It’s time for some technological sunshine to break through Michigan’s governmental murkiness.