[open-government] Minnesota legislation to allow legal public meetings via social media - final vote coming

Tue Apr 29 16:34:48 UTC 2014

This is a very interesting issue - my comments at the bottom:

News Report - MinnPost:
More lawmaker tweets? Legislators may liberalize Open Meeting Law
http://bit.ly/mnpublicmeetingsonline

Can government officials have discussions on Facebook or Twitter
without breaking laws requiring public hearings?

Faced with social networking’s ubiquity, the Minnesota Legislature is
discussing whether to liberalize online rules and, in effect, loosen
Minnesota’s Open Meeting law.

A House bill has triggered bipartisan support and opposition.
Supporters say freer rules reflect modern communication; opponents
fear more decisions will be made out of the public eye, beyond council
chambers and hearing rooms.

After more than a year of negotiations, bill sponsor Rep. Duane Quam
(R-Byron) anticipates both chambers will take a final vote on his bill
this session.

...

The legislation:

Current senate version:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?f=SF527&y=2013&ssn=0&b=senate

1.1A bill for an act
1.2relating to open meeting law; providing that certain communications on social
1.3media are not meetings under the law;amending Minnesota Statutes 2012,
1.4section 13D.01, subdivision 2.
1.5BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

1.6    Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2012, section 13D.01, subdivision
2, is amended to read:
1.7    Subd. 2. Exceptions. (a) This chapter does not apply:
1.8(1) to meetings of the commissioner of corrections;
1.9(2) to a state agency, board, or commission when it is exercising
quasi-judicial
1.10functions involving disciplinary proceedings; or

NEW addition:
1.11(3) to participation in social media forums by members of a public
body otherwise
1.12subject to this chapter, so long as:
1.13(i) the social media forums are open to public participation;
1.14(ii) the social media forums have been first identified by the
public body at a public
1.15meeting and a list of the identified social media forums is kept
on file and publicly posted
1.16at the primary offices and on the official Web site if one exists
of the public body;
1.17(iii) participation is limited to discussion only and no decision
or vote is made
1.18or taken;
1.19(iv) the use of social media forums is not the sole or primary
means of deliberation
1.20by the public body; and
1.21(v) participation does not take the place of any required public
meeting or hearing; or
1.22(4) as otherwise expressly provided by statute.
1.23(b) For purposes of this subdivision, "social media" means forms
of Web-based
1.24and mobile technologies for communication, such as Web sites for
social networking
2.1and microblogging, through which users participate in online
communities to share
2.2information, ideas, messages, and other content.

Current house version:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=House&f=HF0653&ssn=0&y=2013

1.6    Section 1. [13D.065] USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA.
1.7The use of social media by members of a public body does not
violate this chapter so
1.8long as the social media use is limited to exchanges with members
of the general public.
1.9For purposes of this section, e-mail is not considered a type of
social media.

CLIFT COMMENTS:

I am not sure why the House version is so much shorter.

Some trends I see and comments:

1. Elected officials and community/political activists are networking
deeply as Facebook "Friends" - state legislators use Twitter to
message politically and widely and local officials are using Facebook
a lot more.

2. Politicians are taking a "network centric" approach with them in
the center - personal profiles are more important than Pages ... these
uses are often mixed between campaigning/campaigns and governance.
Facebook profile use is huge among "wired" local officials. We need a
"Get Friendly" outreach campaign to encourage a far greater diversity
of residents to "friend" elected officials. We also need a public
archive outside of Facebook that archives all public posts being made
by public officials related to their responsibilities in governance.

3. For years, particularly in rural MN community forums online -
http://e-democracy.org/rural - the open meeting laws were cited as an
excuse NOT to engage with the public online in clearly public and open
forums. Like "newspapers of record" I always thought that city
councils recognizing and LINKING to online fully public forums could
be a solution. The open meeting law should not be used to keep fully
public and accessible exchange online from opening up the process. So
the legislation should require government units to links to recognized
public forums and not just have a list on some cork board in the
physical office.

4. There is a huge failure of governments to collect and maintain
statewide contact data on ALL the elected and appointed officials in
the state at all levels - Citizens should be able to enter in their
address and find out exactly who represents them all level of
government and how to contact them - address, tel, email, web form,
twitter, facebook PERSONAL profile, facebook PAGE used in governance
(versus campaign), other social media, etc. There is also a huge
failure in terms of creating a public meeting announcement and alerts
system that allows the public to be pro-actively notified about
meeting agenda items that interest them. Note
http://publicmeetings.info

5. Let's crowd-source social media use by Minnesota elected officials.
Starting with the MN House: http://bit.ly/mnlegsocialmedianotes

6. Minnesota needs a comprehensive open government and open data
education effort to go beyond policy, to help communities across the
state take advantage of civic technology and open gov:
http://openminnesota.org

7. The fact that this legislation hasn't generated more media
attention until now is a HUGE missed story by the local media. As
someone tuned into these issues globally, this is the first I had
heard of this. IMHO, why isn't there a profile ONLINE engagement site
on how to craft this legislation to strengthen the proposal.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org

P.S. Sorry for the lack of editing ... back to paying attention at
http://poplus.org conference.

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
  Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072
ᐧ