With closed chambers, City Council to pre-record, replay its meetings
Open meeting act advocates troubled
On Tuesday morning Pittsburgh City Council convened its regular meeting, but the weekly government business was not streaming online, and cable channel viewers were met with a freeze frame telling them a replay would be available at 7 p.m.
Instead, the city clerk’s office announced via social media and the city website that “[u]ntil further notice” the meetings would be “prerecorded and replayed” on the city channel and later posted online.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has kept elected officials and the public at home, Pittsburgh’s choice to not make the council meeting available in real time is raising the eyebrows of Sunshine Act advocates.
“I do not consider a recording after the fact as public participation,” said Melissa Melewsky, an attorney with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.
Council convened the meeting using the video conferencing application Zoom, which has livestreaming capabilities. The 10 a.m. regular meeting was posted on the city’s YouTube channel at 11:30 a.m. By 11:45 a.m., the sign language interpretation of the meeting agenda commenced on the city channel — Comcast 13 and 14 / Verizon channels 44 and 45. The recording link has not been added to the City Council calendar webpage, where all meetings are usually archived.
City Clerk Brenda Pree directed all questions to the city’s Legal Department. That department did not respond for comment.
Council President Theresa Kail-Smith said the decision to hold meetings on Zoom was made so members and the clerk could meet remotely.
Despite council chambers having closed on March 17, Ms. Kail-Smith, Councilman Daniel Lavelle, Ms. Pree, the assistant city clerk and a police officer have been reporting to chambers for the weekly meetings while other members joined via telephone conference call. Those meetings were broadcast live and livestreamed online.
“It’s a challenge to try to figure out how to host the meetings in public, allow public comment, because we want to make sure people can email us anytime,” Ms. Kail-Smith said. “We recognize it’s not the same as being able to come down and talk to council. We’re trying to give all opportunities to the public, trying to adhere to the Sunshine rules and trying to keep everyone safe and protected.”
The public can submit public comment via U.S. mail or email at cityclerksoffice@pittsburghpa.gov.
As the pandemic began to disrupt public life in March, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records and District Attorneys Association each issued guidance for how public agencies should follow the Sunshine Act — a law governing open meetings procedures — during the COVID-19 crisis.
“Public participation pursuant to Section 710.1 is a necessity,” the DA’s association document reads. “Commonsense should also prevail here. There may be no singular way to meet this statutory requirement, but no doubt government officials working together can identify ways to permit their constituents to have a voice in a manner that is achievable given whatever technology and other methods of communication are available in their communities.”
Some of the roughly 6,000 agencies conducting public business in Pennsylvania may not have access to the latest technology, and there is room for “some flexibility” during the pandemic, said Erik Arneson, executive director of the Office of Open Records.
“Some of [the public agencies] don’t have websites, some might not even have have email addresses. That is certainly possible,” he said. “But in the case of an agency that is able to hold the meeting on Zoom, I cannot fathom why that agency would not make it available to the public in real time. … That’s one of the benefits of Zoom, that’s what the Sunshine Act envisions, that’s what the standard is, and if an agency has the ability to let the public participate in real time and if they choose not to do that, they are in real danger of violating the Sunshine Act.”
The city’s Department of Innovation and Performance said it plans to soon make a livestream available.
“Simply put, our testing of the live YouTube stream is taking a little longer than expected. We hope to have it ready next week,” said David Finer, the city’s communication technology manager.
Department director Santiago Garces said the delay is “due to time and resource constraints” and that the city’s cable channel “lacks the technology required to stream the internet feed into the cable channel at this point. We were able to make the recording available about an hour after the meeting concluded.”
But Ms. Kail-Smith said she is revisiting the Zoom idea with the clerk and other members.
“There was somebody sitting in on the meeting that nobody knew. We asked him to identify himself three times and he did not, so it’s a safety concern,” she said.