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Petaluma City Councilman Gabe Kearney was perplexed when a city planning commissioner objected to his use of an iPad to read a lengthy environmental document during a recent meeting. (CHRISTOPHER CHUNG / PD)
By LORI A. CARTER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Petaluma City Councilman Gabe Kearney felt like he was doing the right thing — for efficiency and the environment — by using his iPad to read a large environmental document during a recent meeting.
But Kearney, who is the council liaison to the city’s Planning Commission, was elbowed out of the discussion when another commissioner objected to the use of an electronic device during the hearing.
He was befuddled by the public calling out by Commissioner Dennis Elias, who didn’t mention his concerns before the Jan. 10 meeting and apparently didn’t accept Kearney’s explanation that he wasn’t receiving private communications on his iPad.
Elias said later that he was concerned about transparency, saying that the public should have access to the same documents as elected officials during a public proceeding.
“Everyone complains that we’re not doing what we can to save money, and then when I try to do my part, I get complaints,” Kearney said. “Using the iPad is a great example of using technology to help us save money.”
But the issue can be more complicated.
Nationwide, the use of electronic devices by public officials has come under fire on several fronts, including whether officials are being influenced by unseen lobbying forces, whether their full attention is focused on the public’s business and whether their communications — even on their personal devices — are public records.
Public agencies in Sonoma County have widely varying policies, from nothing at all to an all-iPad Windsor Town Council and county Board of Supervisors.
Rohnert Park officials are asked to refrain from sending or receiving external communications during meetings, but are permitted to use laptops to access electronic documents.
Santa Rosa’s council policy states that members “shall not send, receive or read electronic messages of any kind during a council meeting.”
Windsor Mayor Debora Fudge, who got her new city-issued iPad last week, said the savings will cover the cost in less than a year. The seven iPads for the five council members and staff cost $5,670, including the monthly Internet service charge for a year.
“We’re going to be saving thousands of dollars. There are so many benefits to using them,” she said.
Suspicions about their misuse are generally misguided, she said.
“You need to work together with trust. We’re professionals,” she said of the county’s elected officials. “You don’t prevent a city from entering the 21st century for a lack of trust. It just shows a deeper dysfunction that needs to be dealt with.”
In Texas, that distrust led a state legislator to propose a bill last year that would have made it a crime for public officials to text, email or send instant messages during meetings. In San Jose, City Council members are now required to disclose any texts or emails sent during meetings.
Gilroy went paperless in 2006 and banned outside communications via electronic devices except for emergencies in 2010. Just this month in Jersey City, N.J., a councilwoman said she wants to ban council members from using electronic devices during meetings so they can focus their full attention on the proceedings.
At a goal-setting conference last year, Kearney said, the Petaluma City Council agreed to allow the use of laptops or tablet computers to read electronic documents during meetings in an effort to save on printing costs.
He said he was accessing a password-protected app called iLegislate that allows elected officials access to council documents, agendas, staff reports and their own notes on those documents.
City Councilwoman Tiffany Renee has at times used her iPad during meetings to access large documents.
Elias cited the state’s public records law in an email explaining his concerns:
“The Brown Act requires transparent communication that the public has a right to see and hear being made by and between elected and appointed officials during public hearings and meetings.
“Electronic devices including laptops, smartphones, iPads, etc. if allowed at the dais during public hearings and meetings introduces the potential for abuse and a hidden layer of communication that is kept from the public.”
He acknowledged he “had no idea” what Kearney was viewing on his iPad and gave no indication that he believed it was improper.
“I only know neither the public nor the Planning Commission had access to what was being viewed and that is in general where the problem lies. That is where transparency, open government and the public trust is compromised,” he wrote.
Kearney bristled at the idea he would violate the public’s trust.
“Those who sit next to me can see what I’m looking at,” he said. “It’s not like I’m playing Angry Birds or updating Facebook or Twitter or reading emails.”
Petaluma’s City Council will discuss formalizing its policy during its meeting Monday.
You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 762-7297 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com.
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http://www.granicus.com/Solutions/Government-Transparency-Suite/iLegislate.aspx
“iLegislate seamlessly connects agenda data to the iPad and makes it available for offline viewing. Elected members and staff can review agendas and supporting documents, take notes and bookmark items of interest. This mobile technology enables users to review meeting materials before, during or after a meeting from any location, even without an internet connection. All of your data is automatically backed up to the Granicus cloud once an internet connection is reestablished.”
Not sure what happened on Monday, but the latest version of iLegislate was tested today by the City IT department and it was confirmed that in fact the app does work as advertised. The data can be downloaded, then, the iPad can be switched to Airplane mode (no internet) and members can continue to peruse the necessary data and add comments. Then, they can disable Airplane mode after the meeting, restore network connectivity, and the comments sync to the Granicus cloud.
So it would seem a good compromise solution is to allow and even encourage iPads (saves paper and resources = $$), yet simply require they be put in Airplane mode when used during deliberations on the dais (this can be verified pretty easily). Should members need internet access to pull up relevant data, they can of course access the laptop in the Council chamber that is connected to a projector for all to see. Does this work for everyone?
@councilwatcher: Spot On!
In California, the public has the legal right to know what information is being used by their elected representatives to review and decide on legislative, quasi-judicial (e.g., appeals) and project approval actions. Using iPads, laptops, cellphones and other personal devices makes it all too easy to violate the public’s right to know and trust.
This isn’t about a council member’s access or ability to get digital information conveniently. All information used by a council member for making one of these important decisions must be public, subject to scrutiny, response or rebuttal in public while the hearing is still open to public comment.
This protects the ability to have fair and open hearings on project considerations and approvals, appointments, resolutions, ordinances and other critical jobs that council members have sworn to do.
The due process rights of project applicants, opponents, appellants and others doing business with the council are damaged without access to the full legal ‘record’ about their issues. Once the hearing is ‘closed’ to public testimony, no additional information can be slipped to one council member.
As the Brown Act states:
“In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
These digital devices make it too easy for illegal, secret, serial meetings or ‘votes’ to occur between council members. It makes it too easy for lobbyists and others to secretly influence deliberations during the council meeting. It is rude for council members to be searching online while the public is talking to them.
Just turn them off.
I could care less about their i-pads, but to use savings as a justification is idiotic. The sheople will believe anything. Any excuse will work if you want to justify it. Stupid is as stupid does.
LBR:
In the spirit of transparency, council meetings are required by the Brown Act to be open and public. Using iPADS raises the possibility that they can send messages to each other which are not seen by the public. Even the possibility of that happening should be enough to keep them off the dais.
I find it comical that a member of the Planning Commission would be concerned about transparency and public access. These are the same people who conspire to kill any project that does not fit their progressive mold. They were put in place in a back door deal and vote in lock step. And Dennis is concerned about transparency? Comical.
Lisa, not only are we not going anywhere, we are pushing on the gas pedal.
It makes perfect sense for the councils to use tablets or laptops to view council documents. It is a savings in both paper and staff time. The crazies on this blog need to get a grip.
I think if public officials are going to use products that are made outside of this Country that employ workers in China rather than the USA, they should have to vote yes on every single issue that comes before them that will provide jobs over here!
OMG, it never stops. Secret cabals of public officials with their hidden copies of the UN Agenda 21 loaded into their I-Pads. Please, get real.
The correct answer to THE QUESTION is: “What in the hell are you talking about?”
It’s just an excuse to get freebies at public expense. I think there should be random checks for porn and a weekly public printout of their history – and all of a sudden, they’d decide they didn’t need the free iPads after all.
Luddites unite!! No technology for the governing class!! They did a much better job when they rode horses and used quill pens!!
Actually, the problem is not the i-pads, it’s the people we elect to run the government. We need to do a better job.
Toys bought with other people’s money. They can’t help themselves. When a case of 5,000 sheets of paper costs $20 at Costco, no one can convince the average person there is any savings. They will be outdated and obsolete before you would go through $200 worth of paper for all of them. When they need replacinf they will cost another $6000, or more.
Steveguy:
this secret, treasonous allegiance that these people engage in is amazing.
Here we are working our ass off, paying misappropriated taxes through the nose, making it work in the toughest economy of our lives, while these people hedge their bets, keep their gig ‘sustainable’, let us pay them to orchestrate our decline?
THEN when you call ‘em on it they ignore you, act like your speaking Portuguese.
Or use that ‘conspiracy theory’ line or worse, the ‘tin foil hat’ line.
BTW when you hear that term, almost by definition it’s ‘one of them’, it must be in their training or something.
It’s hard to accept on many levels, it’s also verifiable fact.
There are about two dozen communities that have kicked ICLEI out.
We need to do the same.
Join and connect with some response-able citizens at City Hall on the 14th, as we insist on a diologue about this globalist NGO; ICLEI.
We will ask THE QUESTION.
On the fence?
Can’t decide if this crap has merit to you?
Observe how our ‘public servants’ respond, listen to what we have to say, read something on your own.
This subject needs to be on our radar, right now.
Partly so when ABAG/MTC comes to town to pitch their tyranny to City Council you know what’s at stake.
When pressed ICLEI towns will create propaganda about how many warm ‘n fuzzy sounding agencies and alliances this NGO has to add credibility. Or they’ll start with the ‘green house gas’ drivel.
The whole ‘reason’ (excuse) for this enormous oppression is ‘global warming’, or ‘climate change’ as they call it now.
So the decimation of our well being is based on a lie the UN contrived as an instrument of our oppression.
Well if they can perpetuate a lie over and over ’till we beleive it, it should take us less tries to speak the truth.
Oh, and no to I-Pads.
Hello, paper trails, Freedom of Information Act, this is a rogue situation we have going on here.
Dissent when appropriate is our responsibility, the Constitution provides for it.
It is patriotic.
Under the circumstances…
it’s appropriate.
I don’t care if they have ipads or secret message pens. These people do not care what citizens say about anything and if that’s not clear already it may be time for Petalumans to get clarity about how the City Council works.
The technology is useful, for the politicians to check on their ICLEI talking points, since they can’t seem to think for themselves. Much easier than carrying around the Handbook. They do have Handbooks. I have read the Handbook.
The ICLEI threat is real, and is happening. No conspiracy, it’s an actual plan by which our politicians want to force upon us.
To those that doubt— read the Handbook, it is available on-line PDF style. A very interesting read. In the Handbook, it shows our politicians how to make seperate agencies with no accountability run by elected officials.
Look it up, UN Agenda 21 is poison, and ICLEI is the way they implement ” The Plan”.
Has anyone at the Press Democrat read the Handbook ? If so, perhaps they agree with The Plan.
I fondly remember the first meeting of the Petaluma City Council after they installed new condenser microphones. Anytime somebody up there received a messsage on their Blackberry or other electronic device, the sound system would make a loud static sound. It was shocking how many outside messages they were getting.
Now what the PD fails to report is that Councilmember Kearney stated in this meeting that his comments on the Deer Creek FEIR were all on his iPad… meaning that he made up his mind BEFORE the public and staff comments on the project. And he was the only one who voted for that mess of an FEIR. I don’t trust Kearney as far as I can throw him.
Some government entities have built their meeting rooms with metal mesh embedded in the walls to block Internet access. Some have installed jamming devices. I would never trust a politician to monitor their Internet access themselves during a meeting.