Jonathan Wharton, Jodie Gil on WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Some local elected officials heard from their constituents more. They faced them less.
So went the first year of “Zoomacracy,” the move of municipal public meetings online due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a study by two local government-watchers. The results offer lessons for year two — and beyond, when life returns to a new normal.
So conclude the two government-watchers, Jodie Gil and Jonathan Wharton, after studying how 95 local governments, including New Haven’s and Seymour’s, interacted with the public in approving 2020 budgets.
Gil and Wharton report on their findings in an article entitled, “Open Budgetary Meetings Amid a Pandemic: Assessing Connecticut’s Various Pathways to Public Engagement During COVID-19.” The article appears in the latest issue of the academic Journal of Civic Information. (Read it in full here.)
They also discussed the findings and recommendations during a conversation Tuesday on WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Seventy percent of the municipalities they surveyed had as many citizens or more citizens testify in budget deliberations as Covid-19 moved hearings online, Gil and Wharton found.
Some towns (Fairfield ranked at the top) were already set up to connect with citizens online. Others struggled to navigate the technology, including dodging Zoom bombs.
Some allowed citizens to speak through Zoom. Others had them type questions in the chat function.
She and Wharton have decades of experience watching or participating in local government meetings. Gil was a reporter with the Valley Independent Sentinel and the Hartford Courant; now she’s a journalism professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Wharton served as New Haven’s Republican town chair and a City Plan commissioner; now he’s a political science professor at SCSU.
The pandemic needed a reexamination of how local government interacts with its citizens, Gil said.
“We’d gotten into a mode of business as usual before Covid. This shook things up. Even if we go back to some form of the old version, I hope public officials use this moment to reflect on what’s working and what’s not working,” Gil said.
For instance: Government had to make relevant documents available to the public online before meetings under a gubernatorial executive order guiding the temporary move to online meetings. That’s one move Gil would like to see become permanent.
“I think that’s a huge win for democracy. If we can see all the documents before the meeting, we can participate more. The fact that that was never required before was sad,” Gil said. “And I shouldn’t have to drive to town hall to get a photocopy rather than get a pdf online.”
Their study quotes New Haven’s legislative affairs director, Al Lucas, reporting that citizens “tended to stay in the meetings longer when they were conducted via Zoom, than when they would be held in person. … Many New Haveners were previously unable to attend alders’ meetings because of childcare concerns and work schedules.”
Another of the study’s interviewees felt “conflicted because on the one hand, the number of people participating in the process is significantly higher than when we were meeting in person. On the flip side, it is far more impactful to have a person show up to our meeting than it is for me to dispassionately read a letter into the record.”
Gil felt a similar mix. She recalled how as a reporter she sometimes had to choose between two government meetings a night; now reporters can watch one live, then catch up on the other. On the other hand, “there is something lost when you’re not in the room. If you need to hold somebody accountable, it helps to be in person with them. When [elected officials] see a reporter at the meeting, they see you’re serious, as opposed to just seeing your icon.”
Online, participants lose the opportunity for unstructured, spontaneous interaction. The schmooze factor. “Schmoozing,” Wharton observed, “is a lost art through Zoom.” That’s part of the art of local democracy, as well.
Based on their research, Gil and Wharton offer specific recommendations for governments conducting public hearings and meetings online:
• continue distributing documents in advance of meetings where they’re discussed.
• include virtual chats in minutes.
• specifically invite members of the public to comment during meetings.
• use social media to invite more citizens to participate.
• find a consistent way to notify the public about upcoming meetings.
The bigger question: What happens when the pandemic passes?
Gil said she’d like to see a “hybrid” model of in-person public meetings that also stream online with opportunities for people at home to weigh in.
Wharton emphasized the need for towns to make their own decisions, learning “best practices” from each other and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. The conversation has just started, he said; let it continue.
Click on the above video to watch the full interview on Zoomocracy with Jodi Gil and Jonathan Wharton on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”