What a difference leadership makes at the county board level! For years leadership fought efforts to record meetings. Now, standing committees on the county board will be! Transparency and accountability!
PILOT PROJECT
I attended the Executive Committee this week to hear about redistricting and potential changes to the county board rules and was pleasantly surprised!
The meeting was being audio recorded! And they are changing the county board rules to require all standing committees to audio record. Standing committees are committees with all supervisors on them and the ones that make budget recommendations including:
- Personnel and Finance
- Public Works and Transportation
- Environment, Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Zoning and Land Resources
- Health and Human Needs
- Public Protection and Judiciary
- Executive
They are piloting it before the rules go into effect in April. Right now they are handing out the recording equipment and starting to use it. The Executive Committee was the very first to do it. In the future you will be able to see the audio recording in legistar like the video is for the county board.
Looks like the audio hasn’t been uploaded yet, but I would expect it to appear when the minutes are completed.
EMAIL FROM CHAIR EICHER TO STANDING COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Hi Chairs,
As you know, there has been interest in recording standing committee meetings to allow the public to hear the nature of the discussion for themselves. While having Citi Channel record all meetings would be cost prohibitive, I would like to post audio recordings of each meeting. ZLR has long followed the practice of audio recording and posting the meeting on the Department of Planning and Development website.
I believe it makes sense for us to use the last month of this term piloting this approach. I anticipate there will be interest in incorporating this practice as a requirement in the county board rules.
Just as the video is captured for the County Board meetings and can be accessed through Legistar, the same would be true for the audio recording. An example of the template for posting is attached.
The Board Office has purchased recorders and will distribute them to committee staff. We will work with the departments to make the process of uploading the audio as easy as possible. Most HHN meetings are currently recorded by Citi Channel. If that is not possible for some reason, the expectation would be that the meeting be audio recorded.
Please let me know your thoughts about this approach by the end of the week.
Thanks.
Analiese Eicher
Chair
Dane County Board of Supervisors
She/Her/Hers
This was the attachment:
EANR Legistar Video Template
CHAIRS SUPPORT THE EFFORT
It’s extra exciting that the county board staff sent out a similar email with specific instructions and said the following: “Chairs of each of the standing committees support this effort.”
CHANGES TO COUNTY BOARD RULES!
County Board staff presented changes to the rules of procedure for the county board at the Executive Committee meeting. Among the changes was this language to record county board meetings:
ADD (15) Standing committee meetings shall be audio recorded and a link to the audio recording shall be posted with the agenda and minutes in the legislative tracking system public webpage.
Also among these changes is allowing committee members to appear by phone if noticed and other changes.
Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner also has some changes to record county board meetings as well as:
- allowing people to speak in front of a committee more than once on the same item
- allowing the public to speak during the final budget meeting at the county board after the “uber amendment” comes out
- allowing people with interpreters additional time for public comment
- allowing for the process rules to be changed once a year
- creating public engagement plans for the committees
- increasing the per diem paid for each meeting for lower income people
- replacing the word citizen with resident (also in the county staff proposal)
- providing free child care at budget meetings
These changes will be before Personnel and Finance on Monday (see F. 1.), and will be back before the Executive Committee at their next meeting.
MAKE YOU OPINIONS KNOWN
If you have comments on how you can participate in county board, now is the time to speak up. Currently they only make changes to their rules once every two years. You can email all county board supervisors at
- County_Board_Recipients@countyofdane.com
Be sure to include your address so they know which district you live in and only expect to hear back from your county board supervisor. If you want to hear back from them, contact them individually and by name. County Board Supervisor information is here.
