There’s no end to the things that can spur disputes with local town officials: Zoning regs, gravel pits, executive sessions, roads and culverts and, of course, budgets — to name just a few.
But laptops?
Call it a classic town spat. Or should we say, eSpat?
Welcome to the ever-shifting but always advancing front-line where the digital revolution bytes traditional Vermont town government.
A laptop is what got Essex Town selectboard member Bruce Post in trouble last May, revealing a cultural/digital divide that took several weeks to work out in this bustling town of 20,000 in northern Vermont.
Politically well-respected (he’s worked for several high-powered Vermont officials, including former U.S. Rep. Richard Mallary, U.S. Sen. James Jeffords and Gov. Richard Snelling) he’s familiar with computers, and though he’s 63 is comfortable with the advances of the digital world. So he didn’t think twice when he brought his laptop to a selectboard work session and then took it into the actual meeting that followed to take more notes.
But that prompted an onlooker to question the propriety of having the laptop open during the meeting, and in a “point of order” discussion, Board Chairwoman Linda Myers ruled that using the laptop violated board rules on digital devices — though in fact the rule only applied to handheld devices.
“I conformed with their erroneous ruling,” says Post, who shut his laptop but remains flabbergasted by the decision that night not to allow him to use it.
“It’s just another technology,” he says. “The absurdity of the discussion was just beyond me,” he adds, noting some irony in the fact the town it took place in is where computer giant IBM is located in Vermont.
For Myers, who also happens to be a Republican member of the Vermont House of Representatives, it was a simple matter of courtesy, “that having a laptop open during a selectboard meeting distracts from paying attention.”
She points out that many businesses, including IBM, have internal rules that insist laptops be closed during meetings so folks pay attention. “I was a journalist for 39 years; I took notes up one side and down the other,” she says, adding she has two computers herself.
“My issue is rudeness,” she says.
In a digital world where young people gather together and then all stare separately at their iPhones or Blackberries, and cell phone calls routinely interrupt conversations, what is courtesy? Is there a digital age divide? Is there any accepted canon of courtesy?
Throughout town government, mostly in ways less obvious and yet sometimes equally thorny, officials are trying to adapt 19th and 20th century local governance systems to the digital ways of the 21st century. Generally, despite some problems, experts see government becoming more open and more accessible because of new technology.
In Essex Town, after considerable back and forth, a vote by the board finally decided 3-1 in June that laptop use is acceptable.
“This is a modern era and we ought to use the modern means at our disposal,” argues Post.
Still, “modern means” raise many issues. What about public access to email messages between selectboard members? Can tweeting during a meeting be a violation of open meeting laws because the comments are not available to everyone? When a selectboard member speaks about a local issue on public access television, or in an email newsletter, does he or she speak for the town? Can board members set up a blog?
All of these questions have been raised at the local town government level, and there’s probably more to come.
The secretary of state’s office is one place town officials turn to for guidance, and the man who holds that elected post, James Condos, is well aware as a former legislator that there’s a whole lot of change going on.
“We recently had a question from a town in southern Vermont where there was a recreation board that wanted to essentially set up a blog,” he says.
The hope was to involve more young people and improve interaction in the meetings. But after some discussion, Condos’ office advised that might violate open meeting laws since not everyone had access to the blog.
“The statutes have not kept up with the technology,“ admits Condos, who saw this firsthand as chairman of the Legislature’s Senate Government Operations Committee, which dealt with such issues.
“If you were to go back five years ago and we had said the only only form of communication allowed would be email, well now we have Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, whatever else is out there,” he says.
“It’s an evolving process at this point,” he says.
One of the more evolved cities in Vermont is the state capital of Montpelier, which in digital terms would be branded “an early adopter.”
Members of the city council, with one exception, all bought iPads last spring, and that has cut down on paper waste and cost and made current and past documents, votes and minutes more accessible, says longtime assistant city manager Beverlee Pembroke Hill.
At the same time, the city took considerable pains to set up rules and the technology to make sure citizens have access to the same information. City and board emails are all routed through, and preserved on, a city server, and Montpelier has been extensively adding to the information available on its website.
Councilor Andy Hooper, 37, and a computer programmer, is an enthusiastic backer of using the iPads. City police used to drop off thick council meeting packets, but now everything arrives – and can be updated – electronically, and it’s easy to check archived material before or during a meeting. All of the information is also available online to anyone who wants to see it.
What about concerns that an iPad is distracting or using it indicates a lack of interest to those attending a meeting?
“This is an etiquette issue more than a technical issue,” says Hooper, who brands himself an optimist that digital technology will make government more transparent.
Montpelier Mayor Mary Hooper (no relation) sees both sides of the technology debate. While she describes herself as being in the less tech-savvy crowd, she finds the easy-to-use iPad “a wonderful device” that has allowed better access to city material — though she quips she misses her walks to the police station to pick up her council packet.
At the same time, in the Vermont House where she represents Montpelier, her legislative committee decided by consensus not to use computers while taking testimony, noting members felt those who appear before the panel “deserve the full attention of the committee.”
Hooper says she takes pains at council meetings to make sure the audience can follow along and the council is attentive despite their digital devices, which are connected via WiFi.
“If we have new people in the room, I do explain what’s going on so people don’t think we’re being rude,” she says.
Taking it a step further, in Vermont’s largest city, five members of the Burlington City Council now “live tweet” when the city council meets (fully a third of the council), says Ed Adrian, a Democrat who represents Ward I.
“I think people have been really supportive for the most part,” says Adrian, who works as an attorney with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office. With people having busy lives, tweets are a way for him to inform his constituents, most of whom can’t make it to evening meetings.
He says the biggest digital impact on city government in Burlington, though, is the use of the social media/email newsletter, Front Porch Forum.
“By far that’s the most important media tool I use,” he says.
FPF bands together Vermont towns or in large cities, local neighborhoods, via an email “forum” that contains everything from pot lucks and concert news to items for sale, houses to rent and comments on roads, zoning or budgets.
Founded by Michael Wood-Lewis and his wife Valerie in Burlington in 2006, it now is available in more than 60 Vermont towns and there are over 160 forums and 28,000 members, says Wood-Lewis.
He has definitely seen an increase in local officials using FPF to communicate, noting there are now more than 450 members counted as local officials, and probably a lot more who don’t list their official titles. He guesses perhaps half of the forums now feature postings of meeting agendas and town announcements — sort of a virtual country store poster wall.
While services like Twitter and FPF are clearly beneficial in passing along town information, they raise some gray areas. During a vibrant discussion last mud season on FPF about rough road conditions in the town of Calais, selectboard members wondered whether to get involved in responding, and whether if they did, they were speaking for the town or themselves?
Wood-Lewis says FPF is good for distributing information and for asking questions or prompting discussion but thinks “it’s not ideal for trying to resolve challenging local issues, “ which should be done in face-to-face meetings.
Attorney Brian Leven works to resolve questions on open meeting laws and other government access issues as deputy secretary of state, tapping into 12 years of experience on government operations with the Vermont Legislative Council. He’s definitely seen an increase in town queries that revolve around digital issues.
“I’ve had them from all over,” he says, listing a few: Can a town charge for a digital photograph of a public document? Is it legal for someone to come in and video-record a board meeting? If a public board wants to meet in a chat room online, does that violate the requirements of the open meeting law?
As for Twitter and text messages, if the messages are not available to everyone, he says it does raise questions of accountability.
“That’s a whole ‘nother issue,” he says.
State experts are well aware that digital technology is changing the way government works. As part of a larger concern about public access to town decisions, Secretary of State Condos has embarked on a “Vermont Transparency Tour” to 12 towns around the state to bring local officials up to speed on open government laws, working with such organizations as the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT), the ACLU and Vermont Press Association.
The VLCT, which represents, and advocates for, the state’s nearly 250 cities and towns, has also been proactive on digital issues, says its executive director, Steven Jeffrey. Last year it put out an article on “Municipalities and Social Media” and this summer has held a workshop and, in July, produced an extensive model “Social Media Policy” that towns can adopt or adapt to their needs (Available at http://www.vlct.org/ by searching for “social media”).
Among many flash points raised in the policy are liability and accessibility, distribution of information, anonymity and who in town government oversees digital tools.
Leven, at the secretary of state’s office, says issues ranging from vexing to niggling will continue to crop up as use of mobile devices and technology change. But overall, he thinks this digital e-volution is a positive trend. Towns and citizens are now thinking about the “bigger picture” in how a town works and gets information out, whether it’s through Twitter, improved websites, Front Porch Forum or some service not even available yet.
There’s kind of a “culture shift” going on about making information public, including what is happening at the Vermont town and city level, he says. “Everyone has an experience now that they can get information at the click of a button.”
“In many ways, the issues that technology is driving are really healthy ones,” says Leven.
