Pandemic planning is must-see TV. Pierce County can’t skimp on public transparency
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As coronavirus increasingly makes its presence felt in Pierce County, the local health board has met three times this month, including an emergency meeting and a study session this week.
Dr. Anthony Chen, director of health for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD), has given candid updates on the COVID-19 threat. Members of the eight-member board — seven elected representatives from other local government bodies, and a doctor appointed by the Pierce County Medical Society — have asked thoughtful questions and engaged in important discussions about the relentless pathogen, which has paralyzed their communities like nothing they’ve seen before.
Yet Wednesday’s study session was the first time a Health Board meeting has been streamed live on the internet. Previous meetings haven’t been streamed or even video recorded so residents could watch them later. A TPCHD spokesperson told us Thursday there will now be streaming and an opportunity for public comment “for the foreseeable future”; a few hours earlier, she told us things were fluid due to limited resources and the “unprecedented situation.”
In 1970, poet-singer Gil Scott-Heron proclaimed: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Fifty years later, pandemic planning in Pierce County is being televised, at least for now — though you have to look pretty hard (on the department’s Facebook page, not the website) to find it.
We’re glad to see TPCHD is slowly waking up, Rip Van Winkle style, to digital-age technology. Holding unrecorded meetings was baffling in today’s era of government multimedia professionals and off-the-shelf webcasting tools. It certainly didn’t promote conducting the public’s business in a transparent and accessible way.
Cameras should run at every public meeting, but especially during an infectious disease emergency when residents are holed up at home, warned not to attend gatherings of 10 or more people and hungry for local information about the outbreak.
Occasional stage-managed press conferences by Chen, while helpful, aren’t enough.
For years many other local governments in the 253 have regularly aired their meetings via live internet stream and/or recorded them for replay on Pierce County Television (PCTV). They range from the big cajunas (Tacoma, Lakewood and Puyallup city councils, Pierce County Council, Tacoma School Board and the Port of Tacoma Commission) to the small fries (DuPont, Orting and Fife).
Right now coronavirus casts a long shadow in those meeting rooms, and it’s valuable for constituents to hear and see the dialogue in real time.
We give local officials credit for implementing this basic modern feature of open government, even as we encourage them to explore the next frontier: remote public testimony.
Over the last few years, the Washington Legislature has operated a pilot program to collect input from people around the state who can’t easily travel to Olympia. They could speak on a bill at one of several designated remote testimony sites, from Spokane to Eatonville, Bellingham to Belfair.
Bringing this to the local government level would be a boon for democracy any time of year — think of the benefit for shut-ins, and folks who are geographically isolated — but especially at this moment, when “social distancing” is a compulsory way of life for all.
We echo the recommendations of the nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause; it calls for governments to adopt emergency measures to ensure their community can observe and influence decision making throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
“While it is crucial for public officials to follow the guidance of public health officials, it is likewise crucial for public officials to ensure that government business conducted at this extraordinary time be as transparent as possible, with opportunities for public participation via videoconference, teleconference and through written testimony,” Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said Wednesday.
That message doesn’t just apply to higher-profile governments like the Pierce County Council and Tacoma City Council.
It also applies to agencies accustomed to flying below the radar — and the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health currently tops that list.
This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 3:00 PM.