Open Government Guide

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has issued an updated Open Government Guide. It's a great resource for anyone interested in open government issues. It contains outlines of the public records laws and open meeting laws in each state, including Massachusetts. (The Massachusetts outline was prepared by Robert A. Bertsche, a partner at the Boston law firm of Prince. Lobel, Glovsky & Tye LLP.)

Community Websites

When the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government put together its list of municipal websites, we discovered that a small number of websites are “unofficial” sites maintained by private individuals, often with the apparent assistance of local public officials. The Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government decided not to distinguish between these websites and the “official” websites of other municipalities that were clearly maintained by the local government officials. As long as the primary purpose of the website was to provide information about the activities of the local government, we treated the website as the municipality’s website. If the primary purpose of a website, however, did not appear to be to provide information about the activities of the local government, then we did not list it as the website for that municipality, even if the municipality did not have a website of its own. An example of such a website is the Petershamcommon.com website, a good community website, but not a website whose primary purpose appears to be to provide information about the activities and decisions of Petersham’s town government.

In the course of our review, the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government discovered other websites similar to the Petershamcommon.com website. These websites provide helpful information about community activities, groups, businesses and people, much like a local newspaper does. For example, there is Graftoncommon.com, Orangetowngreen.com, and the excellent Dunstablecommons.net. All of these websites can be good sources of community information for the residents of the communities to which they pertain. If you are from any of these communities, you should check these sites out.

The Ideal Municipal Website

When the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government project reviewed the websites for Massachusetts municipalities, our goal was to determine if the municipalities posted their key governance records on line. It seems reasonable to expect all cities and towns in Massachusetts to be able to meet this minimum standard. As of September, 2006, however, only 40 did.

This past week we received a question from a town records clerk in Wyoming asking us what we thought the ideal municipal website should contain to promote open government. We responded that ideally cities and towns should post every public record online, including the following:

1. The agendas and minutes of every public meeting in the city or town.
(The website for the town of Amherst, Massachusetts appears to do this.)

2. The materials that the members of the governing bodies receive prior to their meetings. For example, the Town of Franklin Massachusetts posts the “Agenda Packet,” for each town council meeting.

3. An archives of pubic records. For example, the town of Hampden has the Town's Annual Reports posted on line dating back to 1878. Although this example may be extreme, ideally the public records of past year’s decisions and actions should be accessible online, at least for the most recent past.

4. Correspondence, including emails, between public officials and the public.

In addition to posting these records, the ideal municipal website should contain the following features:

1. Downloads of webcasts of public meetings, as the Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, currently provides.

2. List servers which email information about public meetings and other information about the local government to anyone who signs up. For example, see the website for the Town of Tolland, where anyone can sign up to receive emails about a number of different board and committee meetings.

3. Email addresses for local officials so anyone can communicate easily with the local officials.

In addition, a municipality should periodically survey the public on what it likes or dislikes about the website and what it would like to see on the website.

The Massachusetts Open Government is trying to persuade all the cities and towns in Massachusetts to meet the minimum standard of posting the key governance records online. We hope, however, municipalities will discover the benefit of doing more than the minimum with their websites and will strive to make their websites even better.

Newspapers Report On Open Government Report

The Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government released a report in December entitled "Open Government in the 21st Century: A review of the Internet Presence of Massachusetts Municipalities." A number of media outlets have reported on the reports findings, including the following:

Belmont Citizen-Herald
Editorial: Keeping Public Records Public
Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Bedford Minuteman
Town Recognized For Online Access to Public Records
By Ben Aaronson
Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Watertown Tab
Editorial: It Should Be Easier to Find Town Records
Thursday, December 28, 2006

Woburn Advocate
Woburn Web Earns Kudos
By Michael Ballway/Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006

The Republican
Towns' Web Sites Lacking
By Jack Flynn
Sunday, December 31, 2006

Pepperell Free Press
Hanson: Pepperell's Online Records Cover the Basics
By Don Eriksson
Friday, December 29, 2006

Cape Cod Times
Editorial: 2006 Free-Speech Lessons Right in Our Backyard.
Saturday, December 30, 2006

There also were stories published in the Fitchburg Sentinel ("Report: Gardner, Westminster Should Put More Documents Online") and the Berkshire Eagle, but you need to be a subscriber to access the articles.

Hopefully, the more people hear about the goals of the Massachusetts Campaign for Open Government, the more municipalities will be persuaded of the benefit of posting public records online.