{"id":547,"date":"2023-03-17T09:30:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/?p=547"},"modified":"2023-03-17T13:20:55","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T18:20:55","slug":"their-only-transparency-is-their-weak-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/their-only-transparency-is-their-weak-argument\/","title":{"rendered":"Their only Transparency is their Weak Argument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Their only Transparency is their Weak Argument<\/h3>\n
\n\t

Council Meeting 3\/16\/23<\/p>\n

Have you ever argued with someone regarding the color of the sky? Well, it was a similar debate last night at the New Albany City Council meeting.<\/p>\n

District 5 Councilman Josh Turner presented a fairly benign resolution requesting the other city boards and commissions to find a way to live stream their public meetings within the next 30 days.<\/p>\n

The Facts \u2013 The council meetings for the last year have been streamed from the new chambers in city hall with somewhat acceptable success. (Last night\u2019s meeting should be<\/u><\/em><\/strong> available for view here<\/a><\/strong><\/em>) The object of the resolution was to use the same process and technology afforded to the council.<\/p>\n

The debate that followed was dominated by 2nd<\/sup> District CM Adam Dickey. Mr. Dickey is the current Chairman of the Floyd County Democrat Party, so it is safe to assume that his aversion to transparency is the party\u2019s stance \u2013 he and the other party members in attendance chose to abstain from the vote. The resolution failed 3-0-5 with Mr. Turner, Mr. Blair & Ms. Griffith voting yes. Republican at-large representative David Abersold joined the Democrats in abstention.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough his \u201carguments\u201d against were the most transparent the Floyd Democrats have been in a long time (psst - I\u2019m saying they were weak).<\/p>\n

The arguments ranged from \u201cstaff resources\u201d aka someone to hit the button to go live (nearly all of the other meetings are during staff hours), what is the process, what about the cost to let\u2019s wait until the state mandates it.<\/p>\n

Well let\u2019s touch on each of these;<\/p>\n

Staff & Process \u2013 The city employs an IT Director. It is reasonable to say that this is 100% within their duties. It is sensible to expect them to write a robust procedure on how to use the equipment to steam any meeting held in the chambers. If need be they can flex their hours like the rest of the world to help out in person.<\/p>\n

Cost \u2013 There is a current \u201csystem\u201d in place, no new equipment needs to be purchased at this time. Also, in all practicality there is no or very little cost to stream video these days. Internet data is unlimited and the resolution was to LIVE<\/em><\/strong> stream, not to store and stream on demand where some minimal costs could be in play.<\/p>\n

State Mandate \u2013 The information that the in the current state session there is some legislation to mandate (and I would assume specify some minimum requirements) streaming. Mr. Dickey didn\u2019t want to start doing something that won\u2019t meet the mandate. I can tell you right now that using two fisheye security cameras won\u2019t meet the requirement. Let\u2019s get the process down and ready for the new equipment that will be required.<\/p>\n

Where I stand \u2013 My campaign is based on three principles \u2013 the first of which is Transparency. A live streamed meeting is a simple way to start meeting this benchmark. Nearly every church in the country provides a live stream of their services, schools live stream sports events, our local school board does a really decent job streaming their board meetings - the technology is established<\/strong>. The only reason for a government entity to not stream is to prevent ease of public access<\/strong>. The city representatives against this technology should be embarrassed, the citizens should demand more.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the bottom line? \u2013 Just like trying to argue that the sky isn\u2019t blue \u2013 there is no way to justify the argument not to live stream meetings. You must ask yourself why the Floyd Democrats are against transparency.\u00a0 When elected I will push to improve the equipment and provide a robust live stream process for all public city meetings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council Meeting 3\/16\/23 Have you ever argued with someone regarding the color of the sky? Well, it was a similar debate last night at the New Albany City Council meeting. District 5 Councilman Josh Turner presented a fairly benign resolution requesting the other city boards and commissions to find a way to live stream their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[38,39,37,22],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues","tag-live","tag-open-door","tag-stream","tag-transparency","post-with-thumbnail","post-with-thumbnail-large"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":553,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swforna.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}