Four times a month, the Eugene City Council gets into the weeds. They do this in work sessions rather than in their regular council meetings, the place where public comment is invited.

At the League of Women Voters of Lane County, we love work sessions for two reasons: They provide great background on the challenges a budget-constrained organization faces, and they are a meaningful way to get to know your elected officials.

As part of our efforts to keep members informed, we send volunteers to most public meetings held by local elected officials. Our Observer Corps produces a Sunshine Report (named for laws requiring transparency and disclosure in government) twice a month summarizing the meetings for our members.

They’re brief, but fairly complete. Want to know what Eugene and Springfield school boards are up to? Our reports cover that. We’ve also summarized Lane County Commission, EWEB board, Lane Community College sessions and more. They’re available on our website for anyone to review. 

While these summaries are useful — voters can’t go to every meeting, obviously — we highly recommend showing up as a great way to get to know incumbent candidates before an election. It’s at these meetings that we can experience an unfiltered view of how local government works. 

Observing officials asking questions of staff members, responding to their colleagues, expressing opinions before voting — that’s real-world information, not hypothetical or one-sided talk. If you’ve watched a city council wrestle with the issue of automated license-plate reader cameras, or consider a new taxing district, or decide how to fill a multi-million-dollar budget gap, you learn things that even the best summaries don’t have the space to reveal. 

And, you can look to Lookout Eugene-Springfield, City Club and other outlets that sponsor candidate forums that allow voters a close-up view of Lane County Commission, councils and other competitive races. Letters to the editor and community opinion sections also provide windows into what others like or dislike about candidates.

News coverage costs money, and free access that helps voters is something that matters. Close to the May 19 primary election, the local League of Women Voters will post candidates’ own responses to vetted questions through Vote411.org.

But here’s the thing. Being in the room with elected officials while they’re doing their jobs is an order of magnitude better for assessing how well they serve the public. What our members say they have found after a year of attending public meetings bears this out. For example, one Observer Corps member told me she felt politically aligned with an elected official before spending a year listening and reporting on the issues that group faced and the decisions it made.

She came away also impressed by the pragmatism of another official, whom she didn’t know as well. And she also saw how complicated the issues facing these governing bodies can be. Officials are much more than their political alignments. They bring a set of skills to the work they do for their community. At these meetings those skills are on display for us, the public. 

The League of Women Voters, founded in 1920, is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works to educate voters and boost turnout. We don’t want to influence who you vote for. We want you to vote. And we want to support sources of information that voters can use to make their best choice. The good news: Most governing bodies post online information about meeting times and agendas, links to live streams and recordings of their meetings for those who can’t attend in person and want to see democracy in action.

Terry Parker is the president of the League of Women Voters of Lane County.