When should governments decide to overlook requirements that they meet in-person and in-public?
When the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Authority canceled its meeting because of coronavirus, millions of dollars of transportation spending went delayed indefinitely. Now leaders at all levels of government are wondering how much business they should conduct in person versus some kind of virtual meeting with proxy electronic votes.
Senator Mark Warner says he’s concerned about the message that sends.
“I have some concern about this moving too early because if we move to that kind of arrangement I’m not sure what kind of psychic signal that sends particularly to communities that may not be affected already,” he says.
Megan Rhyne at the Virginia Coalition for Open Government says local governments can have electronic meetings, but the subject must be about the emergency. So that excludes the stalled agenda of the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Authority because none of that was about the crisis.
She says local governments need more flexibility, but transparency rules should not be abandoned.
“Any kind of relaxation of the rules should be of limited duration, limited scope and require public notice and some ability of the public to witness and participate where possible,” Rhyne explains.
For local governments, the timing of the crisis is particularly problematic because they’re in the middle of budget season. That means they need to hit a series of deadlines to conduct public hearings and in-person budget votes. Attorney General Mark Herring is considering requests to figure out ways for governing bodies to meet their obligations without having too many people in the room at the same time.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
