passopenrecords.org

We received this story from Lora Lehmann, a member of the Abington Citizens Network, about the problems of getting public access into public meetings and the importance of keeping the pressure on your officials to do so. Thanks to Lora and the others of you who have been sending us your stories. Keep them coming.

In our municipality we have been in a struggle since 2/06 to get both our township and school district meetings onto our Comcast Public Access channel. The efforts were met with the most unbelievable resistance I could have imagined. Like the experience of the resident in Grove City who dared to challenge (see story from recent posts), we met behaviors that could only be described the same way - commissioners who turned on the citizens they purport to serve.

We persevered by keeping a campaign going that included letters to the editor, email update lists and “vote” lists and, of course, the development of a website where the facts as well as details of the progress (or lack thereof) could be reported. We finally succeeded (although we were awarded the airing of just one meeting a month on a “trial” basis). Although they are to be installing cameras in the meeting room shortly, we still have no open dialogue about when we might get the “working” meetings – the or committee meetings where all the good exchanges on the issue take place – on the channel. And we still have no open dialogue about populating the channel with community activities and other interesting things. One challenge has been how to safeguard the time and space for the serious meetings and not have them put on “entertainment,” which would “squeeze out” the issues because they were less popular. So our struggles are not over yet! But the school district has also promised to include school board meetings in its fall lineup.

I am not sure how to impress upon others how important it is to see your politicians at work. Only by following them meeting after meeting, can you begin to sort out which ones are paying lip service to an issue to grandstand for their constituents and which ones are seriously doing what it takes to move the job along on behalf of their constituents. By our second aired meeting, it was clear what a valuable tool this will be to make changes for open government at the ballot box.

Residents can hear each other’s voices and they can monitor the work of their leaders. Above all, this arms them with the knowledge that they need to continue the fight for open records and open access and other important issues in their local communities. I hope other communities are recognizing that citizen control of their Public Access channels is crucial in this fight. I welcome them to contact me if they would like to share information to keep this trend going.

Lora Lehmann
Abcitizens@Yahoo.com