Your government @ transparency

North County Times – Escondido,CA,USA
North County’s two transparency truants are Encinitas and Poway,
which offer only delayed cable broadcasts of their council meetings….

Our view: Live video Webcasts of city council and county board meetings are good for democracy.

If you want a democracy to work, the people have to know what their leaders are up to. And, conspiracy theories aside, technology has greatly improved public access and transparency — from C-SPAN to YouTube.

With the decision by its City Council last week to begin offering live streaming video of its meetings, San Marcos joins the observable ranks of North County cities making local government better by making it more accessible.

San Marcos will be joining more than 100 cities in California — including Carlsbad, Del Mar, Escondido, Oceanside and Solana Beach — and about 250 nationwide that have chosen to make their meetings available online. Along with San Diego County, all offer live Web feeds of their council or board meetings. Vista’s council recently decided to adopt the technology, too, although its meetings aren’t scheduled to stream live.

The new service is expensive, but not prohibitively so. San Marcos is spending $35,457 for the initial setup and setting aside $16,536 per year to create and maintain searchable archives of the meetings. The cities often contract with outside vendors who store the video and integrate it with agendas, minutes and other public documents.

In addition to Internet video streaming, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Escondido, Solana Beach, Del Mar and San Diego County also broadcast their meetings live on area cable television systems. San Marcos and Vista both offer a delayed cable broadcast of their council meetings.

North County’s two transparency truants are Encinitas and Poway, which offer only delayed cable broadcasts of their council meetings. Poway finally got around to even this tardy televising of its meetings only about two months ago.

All it would take Encinitas to broadcast its council meetings live is a flick of the switch and some municipal pocket change. Council members have talked a good game about streaming their meetings online, but didn’t set aside one thin dime toward that goal this fiscal year. Hopefully, regional peer pressure will make it act sooner rather than later.

Of course, all of the video in the world, streaming or otherwise, won’t make a difference if local residents don’t actually tune in or log on to see their local governments in action, and, after watching, participate in the political process. But it does give voters one less excuse for not being informed and involved.