The importance of meeting coverage

One of the most important tasks of local media is the coverage of meetings. As the number of newspapers has decreased nationwide, and other media outlets disappear, meeting coverage has also diminished to almost nil. As many of our readers are somewhere else this summer, or on vacation, do one favor for us. Take a survey of what media outlets you find, and see what they are doing to cover meetings. And support those publications that take the time to attend them and report on them.

Locally, we see the essential part of covering actual meetings. For it is there that you really learn, and we can tell the facts about what happened. Our meeting stories do follow a formula. We include essential elements that happened, add a few quotes from the officials, plus a few facts and relevant figures and numbers. You don’t report your feelings about the meeting in a meeting story, you have enough work to tell the story succinctly, enough to interest the reader or to provide some useful fact that one can go back to.

Always, you hope for something silly to happen or be said, to make the seemingly boring meeting memorable. But it does not always happen. Sometimes we choose not to report something said if we can’t make it fit with the rest of the story. We would never not report a fact to hide something, but occasionally something personal is said, or what was said would take too much time to explain. Often, meetings are full of sentence fragments that do not make for good quotes.

And there are a lot of facts, not just in the meetings themselves, but in the consent agendas that are voted on in bulk.

Our readers can help with this. One issue in our paper this week is the discussion over an MSBU tax increase for renourishment in Charlotte County, which has surprised some with its cost. The discussions about putting it up for a vote have been well advertised, and plainly discussed in public meetings. However, like a sidewalk that was voted down last year by Charlotte County, it was sort of under the radar until some citizens looked hard at it. 

Of course, no sane person can keep up with the scope and number of public meetings, so you have to do your best. One thing all of us can do (and we have mentioned this before) is sign up for meeting notices from local boards and commissions. That way, we have more public eyes on things, and staff has people who care.

What would be better would be for people to start asking hard questions at meetings early on. Indeed, politicians like these questions; they are, after all, ego-driven people, and to question them on this lets them reveal their knowledge to their constituents.

Actually, we have heard from local politicians that they like informed people who gather facts. A few citizens might be the trigger that gives a local politician the backbone to take a stand on something.

One item that needs scrutiny from armchair warriors is the consent agenda at county meetings. The consent agenda has a long tradition in government meetings; the idea is to gather up the things that do not have any possible disagreement, and bundle them into one agenda item, so the meeting can actually discuss what may have disagreement, and provide for public comment on those issues. We are not arguing for or against consent agendas. They are but a fact.

But there is a problem with them. They are packed with money and projects, things that need to be understood. We admit to glossing over them. For instance, many of the ugly apartment complexes across the state come from county allocations through federal funds. There are also procurement items for trucks, and cars and security programs. It is endless. Someone outside the county should be looking at them.

Back in the 1990s, there was a populist city councilwoman in Richmond, Virginia, who got elected to council. She hated the whole idea of the consent agenda, and saw it for what it had become, namely a way to put all sorts of spending and rule changes into something that never got discussed at the Richmond City Council.

There is a wealth of information in each county and each government agency waiting to be discovered.

Think about this: Lee County has just over a $3 billion budget, and that does not include things like our local fire departments. The entire state of Rhode Island has a budget of just over $15 billion. The reason we compare is that Lee County and Rhode Island are just about the same size, with the state at 1,214 square miles (1,035 square miles of land). Lee County spans about 1,212 square miles, though it depends on how you calculate.

We are grateful that Lee and Charlotte have their meetings on video, and we sometimes attend that way, due to the cost of travel and staff time. But many smaller meetings do not get coverage: all the advisory panels, MSBU and MSTU units, and such. But there is no substitute for attending; you can be sure that all of the staff and vendors are there for the money.

This upcoming budget year is important for Florida. Ginger Watkins, who has been an advocate for local participation, routinely attends the yearly budget meetings of the Boca Grande Fire Department. She serves on the Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority and speaks to the importance of following Florida law for them. She does not do this because there is malfeasance, but because it’s sort of what you do for good government. It is what Reagan called “trust, but verify.” I will leave with a habit from the everyday world that parallels government.

When people take up the collection at church, the rule is always that no one counts the money alone. This protects the church, and the individuals. It also makes life easier, as two learn friendship and the importance of church finances with each other. It is more trouble NOT to have two. These kinds of rules help us protect our public meetings.

Garland Pollard is editor of the Beacon. Email editor@bocabeacon.com