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The way Eugene city councilors describe it, the decision to move their virtual-only work sessions back to an in-person format — while the public and media remain remote — is common sense.
But perhaps councilors have forgotten who they work for?
To some, it may not sound like a big deal for the council to keep the public and press physically out of these 27 meetings per year. Councilors don’t make official decisions in work sessions, after all, and public comment isn’t allowed. And anyone with an internet connection can join remotely and listen to councilors conduct city business.
But the five councilors who voted in favor of the switch overlooked one of the primary benefits of conducting business in person: the ability for constituents to meet with them face-to-face. These interactions aren’t limited to the public comment portion of regular City Council meetings; they’re the moments before and after the council is in session, when citizens may get one of their few opportunities to talk to their councilor one on one.
In-person interactions give the public a chance to get the candid, unrehearsed opinions they deserve from their elected officials. That’s a key feature of local democracy, not an inconvenience.
We can hear the protest of councilors like Matt Keating — who said at Wednesday’s meeting that his elected colleagues should not “let the public participation piece, or the perceived public participation piece, be a barrier” to their decision. Why deal with the distraction and additional expense of opening these work sessions to the public, when any constituent can simply email their councilor and get a response later?
But as members of the press, we’ve seen up close how elected officials can defer tough questions to follow-up phone calls or emails, where they’re able to formulate scripted responses or fall back on their busy calendars to put off conversations they’d rather avoid.
We expect more from the Eugene City Council. In voting to support the change, Council President Lyndsie Leech said the added cost of a few thousand dollars per year to move work sessions to in-person “is absolutely worth it if even one decision that we make a year is a better decision because we’re able to work together more effectively.”
Who are the stakeholders involved in these decisions? Is it council and city staff in isolation?
No. It’s the people of Eugene — the people who voted to give the council its power. By physically separating the public and media from council business, councilors declare that their ability to communicate openly with each other is more important than open communication with constituents.
Certainly, the media — and, by extension, the public — would benefit from the ability of journalists to ask councilors clarifying questions about the issues being discussed at a work session. It may be easier for councilors to have uncomfortable discussions without the public looking at them. But the discomfort that may come with looking constituents in the face is part of the job. By keeping them out, councilors get more leeway to shape their messages on issues of public interest, with less of the public scrutiny those discussions call for. At least they agreed to pass up on catered lunches.
This is all the more concerning given that House Bill 4177 is currently sitting on Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk awaiting her signature. The bill would make it easier for elected officials to conduct business through “serial meetings” outside of meetings entirely, blowing a hole in Oregon’s pro-transparency public meetings laws.
In this context, the City Council’s move feels like another effort to keep the public out of the nuts and bolts of governance. While this move doesn’t go as far as the pending change to state law — a change we’ve urged the governor to veto — it’s a step away from transparency that the City Council would be wise to reverse.
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