Although we preach the importance of public meetings, we recognize that there are some legitimate frustrations to be had with their openness. For instance, a lot of public meetings are boring. And long. And, critics are right: public meetings aren’t necessarily the best format for every single deliberation made by a governing body.

But most of these “issues” are besides the point. As our Policy guy, John, noted, the need for public meetings doesn’t mean that every conversation needs to happen in public, but that all the official meetings should. That’s the basis behind our push to open up the meetings of the “Super Committee” -- the body created by Congress to deal with our national debt -- and an important factor to consider in the arrests made at a DC local gov meeting in June.

I wrote about the event shortly after it happened, but the quick version goes like this: Two reporters were arrested by Park Police at a Taxicab Commission public meeting at the request of members of the commission: the first for taking photographs of the meeting. The second, for filming the arrest of the first. The charge? Disorderly conduct and unlawful entry...which, at a public meeting (and with video evidence of how they actually acted), is absurd. Thankfully, the charges have since been dropped and there’s been a lot of conversation about the future of the Taxicab Commission (Council Member Tommy Wells wants to scrap it, local blogger David Alpert wants to reform it), but there's been little conversation about the impact of this event on DC’s public meetings law.

The gray zone in this issue is that DC’s Open Meetings Act doesn’t actually specify whether or not meetings can be photographed or recorded. But, as the DC Open Government Coalition pointed out, “The absence of an explicit statutory mandate to allow recordings of open meetings does not translate into a prohibition [of recordings].”

Following pressure from the media and advocacy groups like the DC Open Government Coalition and the National Press Photographers Association, on August 1st the Taxicab Commission issued a revised policy on public attendance, behavior, and recording during meetings:

Pursuant to section 742 (the “Open Meetings Act”) of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act ... all meetings and hearings of the Commission are open to the public. Also, a recording (or transcript) of the proceedings will be made available to the public free of charge.

A member of the public, including any representative of the media, may record or photograph the proceedings of the Commission at an open meeting by means of a tape recorder or any other recording device so long as the person does not impede the orderly conduct of the meeting, by, for instance, creating excessive noise that impairs the ability of others to hear the proceeding or using excessively bright artificial light.

The policy goes on to review all the ways the commission does not have to support public recordings, but open government activists in America’s littlest state should still take heart. Perhaps this renewed policy will set a precedent for the broader Open Meetings Act, or will at least inspire District residents and activists to advocate for one. In their statement about the Taxicab Commission debacle, the DC Open Government Coalition highlighted the fact that the role of director for DC’s Open Government Office has been vacant for almost 4 months. The office, they note, was established as the public’s primary means of enforcing the Open Meetings Act and funding for the Office has already been provided.

Filling this office is a step DC can take to show their commitment to open government and to reduce the “burden” of meeting citizens’ requirements for greater transparency. DC is by no means the only governing body wrestling to adjust to the increased demands on and attention paid to its public meeting and public records laws: this sort of news is making headlines all across the country. The important thing is that, going forward, DC and other governments do find ways to adapt to the Age of the Interwebs and the increasing expectations constituents have for public access -- and that they take advantage of the free tools (YouTube...) and advocacy groups out there offering help.

*Photo credit: matthewgriff, via Flickr.

It’s time to think big: The Super Congress situation is developing at an incredibly fast rate and we want to be able to respond as fast as possible -- both as an organization committed to greater government transparency and as citizens who live in a democracy.

Right now, the rules on the books say almost nothing about about how transparent this super committee’s process has to be. That means that a body of 12 members of Congress will get to operate totally above the reach of accountability (in the form of public meetings and financial and lobbying disclosure) to determine one of the most significant deals in American history: how to slice $1.5 trillion from the national debt.

We’ve written about this issue a few times (here and here, for example) and have even built a coalition of partners to support our five leading recommendations for committee openness, but now we want to hear from you.

Calls to congressional offices and district meetings with representatives are great ways to get our voices heard (and you may be hearing from us again about taking these actions), but what more can we do? America, we need to get riled up: The recommendations made by this committee will have a tangible impact our country and our lives. Now is the time to get creative.

Some (rough!) ideas we’ve thought up:

• Guerrilla theatre productions of Super Congress committee meetings in public spaces
• Asking folks to hold rallies in the districts of the 12 selected members of the committee
• Smoke machine flash mobs. (As in “smoke and mirrors” or the smokey backroom deals of lobbyists....Get it?)
• Asking business to hold their meetings outside.
• Get a congressional representative to write a “Dear Colleague” letter in support of opening the Super Congress. (Oh, wait, Reps Quigley and Renacci beat us to it.)

So, got any great ideas? Got any less-than-great-but-possibly-salvageable ideas? Brainstorm with us in the comments -- and be sure to like/up-vote the good ones, too!

For more updates on this campaign, join us at http://sunlightfoundation.com/opensupercongress.

Kudos to andymangold for the kicking image.

Here at the Sunlight Foundation mothership, when we talk about local, we tend to be talking about the issues faced by folks outside of the Beltway - challenges close to home that you’re tackling in New Hampshire, Utah, and elsewhere. But, given that we’re based in DC, we’re not exempt from paying attention to transparency issues that happen close to our home, either.

Take, for instance, the recent events that went down at a public meeting on Wednesday. Two reporters were arrested by US Park Police officers (!) at a Taxi Commission meeting: the first, Peter Tucker of thefightback.org, for taking photographs. The second, Reason TV’s Jim Epstein, for video-taping the arrest of the first.

Officers were directed to make the arrests by a member of the Commission’s staff. The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis and John Kelly report that,

Earlier in the meeting, Tucker said, [interim chair of the Taxi Commission, Dena] Reed objected when he placed a microphone near her seat; he was told to place it some distance away. Previous commission meetings, he said, have included signs notifying attendees that no photographs [sic] or recordings are allowed.

Despite reports (and video) that Tucker and Epstein did nothing to disturb the meeting, the two men were arrested for “disorderly conduct and unlawful entry”...”Unlawful entry” of a public meeting. Business Insider reports that the reporters could be sentenced to nine months in jail and $1,250 in fines. All this, again, for recording a public meeting.

Sadly, DC is not among the states included in this incredible resource from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of Press that lists every state’s open records and meeting’s laws, but you can read the law that’s on DC’s books here: D.C. Open Meetings Act. As Debonis and Kelly note, although the law requires meetings of governmental bodies to be open to the public, it does not specifically address whether photographs or video recordings are permitted.

Public meetings are a big open government issue all around the country: You can’t get more basic transparency than having one’s government literally open the doors to let citizens in to listen to its dealings. But Tucker and Epstein’s experience highlights an important tension between government and technology: Not everyone can take time off to attend meetings of interest. Making public meetings truly accessible to the public means putting record of it online where the public can access it with as much detail (and data) as possible. The DC law may not explicitly provide for this level of public accessibility, but that doesn’t meant that they should throttle attempts by members of the press or public to do so.

Take a look for yourself at the arrests of the reporters below. We’ll post an update when there’s more news.

Tired of waiting for your city to become more transparent? Tony Webster, John Schrom and Ryan Johnson decided to take responsibility for their city of Minneapolis and create a software platform in order to "open municipal government, encourage clean and information-based elections, track issues and inspire community engagement and public participation." Their new project is called Open Minneapolis.

Webster, having formerly interned for a city council member in college, had seen first hand how much information never made it to the public or was difficult to access.

Talking with Webster on the phone he explained the rationale behind the project. "There is so much that happens behind the scenes that we don't know about. There has been a lot of great projects at the federal level, and in some cases state level, but not usually in Minnesota. I really wanted that transparency to come to Minneapolis."

The project has been active since July 2009 and this week they launched a site listing their goals and showing some fantastic preview images. As a journalist, having worked with numerous city and state websites across the country, I would eat my hat in exchange for this type of data accessibility and clear user interface.

While all the goals of Open Minneapolis are important to me as a journalist and a citizen one is particularly catching my eye: the implementation of a standardized XML format for public meetings.

Municipal meetings are difficult enough to sit through in person. Waiting to mine a PDF release for the data you need is even worse. With the implementation of an XML format for public meetings analysis of this data will become a breeze.

Imagine visualizations of city council actions going back years or interactive flow charts showing how a particular proposal was fought over. Ideas that are possible now but only with a disproportionate amount of work - an XML standard would make it straightforward and quick.

The team behind Open Minneapolis has formed a charitable non-profit, CivicEquity, that would oversee such a standard as it expanded beyond Minneapolis. CivicEquity would also distribute the software Open Minneapolis is based on: the team will release it as open-source for any non-commercial use!

As the Sunlight Foundation expands its activities into states and cities it is projects like these that will truly make our mission successful.

If you're interested in policy work, web development, have legal expertise or data acquisition experience head on over to their site and get involved today. The team has a grant application to the 2010 Knight News Challenge - their grant proposal is here - please rate it!