Amid a tumultuous presidential election in the US, it feels good to remind oneself that the ballot box is just one place to participate actively in democracy. The full potential of democracy occurs daily at our local public governance meetings – such as City Council sessions, Housing Commision meetings, Workforce Development meetings – where anyone can drop in and have a voice in local government. Unlike elections, public meetings are frequent and transparency is actually achievable; these things can hold the local government accountable.
In 1971, the US legislature passed The Open Public Meetings Act as a part of a nationwide effort to make government affairs more accessible and therefore, in theory, more responsive. They provide the appropriate legal framework to facilitate and protect the citizen’s right to meet and collectively discuss public affairs, which in turn contribute to building transparency in local government.
That is all well and good – on paper. Yes, people still love their local governments, but unfortunately their relationship is platonic; they like each other, but they barely meet.
According to a Pew Research Center survey across the US in December 2023, 61% of respondents had a favorable view of their local government (compared to 77% unfavorable view of the federal government). Yet we all know that, in cities, attendance at open meetings isn’t a very realistic possibility in most urban dwellers’ busy lives. And for those committed few who do try to catch up on what they missed with the minutes of the meetings, it is often a waste of time.
“In Chicago, it became really clear that there was a need for transparent public record,” says Morgan Malone, the CEO of City Bureau, a nonprofit civic journalism lab based in Chicago.
“Not only was it really difficult to know when a public meeting was scheduled and how to be a part of it, thereafter the minutes didn’t really say anything. When we realized the importance of the discussions, yet their little visibility, and how unknown it was to the public, we said, ‘Oh, we should be documenting these meetings!’” says Malone.
Since 2018, City Bureau has run the program Documenters, a brigade of document genies who are appearing to chronicle discussions in public city meetings where public officials were getting too comfortable with a disengaged public. The potential of local government transparency to change the city for the better has been a call to arms to create an informed citizenry and a staggering exercise of grassroots democracy.
Although taking minutes would be an odd pursuit for most people, it is just another day for the over 2,200 trained documenters who burst with enthusiasm over tedious budget hearings as well as feisty public meetings. The program equips community members with skills such as note-taking, live tweeting and online research. These local residents go to public meetings, write the minutes, upload them on the Documenters’ website – and get paid.
Their coverage includes policy decisions, legislation and public comments. City Bureau, in partnership with other distributors, also fact checks every note and turns them into coverage for local news. “We have some partners who will take the news that we produce, and then the blurbs for each meeting, and they’ll produce a weekly roundup for everybody to know what happened in the most important meetings of the week,” explains Malone.
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The dual goal of the Documenters program is to create a new public record to ensure there is transparency, visibility and accountability in local government, and then with this knowledge to encourage a range of new civic actions.
In terms of transparency and accountability, Malone believes there’s something real to be said about electability culture in the local government and what it means to be a civic actor: “The government office is the only place where you can work and manage billions of dollars and there are no public job descriptions. How can you hold someone accountable when you don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing? The only time city officials are evaluated is during election season when they’re telling you more pie in the sky,” she deadpans.
The result is an inadequate governance at the local level that has affected disadvantaged communities in many ways, often enhancing exclusion such as, for instance, decades of divestments in South and West side neighborhoods in Chicago. “From the notes, I think you quickly realize, especially if you’re documenting the comments from an alderman [a member of municipal council] and the type of questions city officials ask, who knows what’s going on and who doesn’t, who’s reading every single budget, and who’s not. And you can see who’s asking critical questions and the people who they care about,” she explains.
While the intent of the minutes is to allow the public to observe and know how the local government is conducting the public’s business, they are also a call to civic action.
Documenters have learned that information access is the first step for people to realize their power. You can see in the notes where the opportunities are for collaboration and where diverse groups in the city may share the same struggles. In fact, documenting is in itself a good tool for civic education and civic engagement. In the past, the lack of civic participation meant that some people often did not have a choice in determining their own development needs and priorities.
The Documenters program wants to give people the information they need to be able to make decisions related to health, wellness and quality of life for them and their families on their own terms and without being impacted by a system that you can’t navigate on your own, and therefore make decisions for yourself. “And that in and of itself is so powerful because so many people were not equipped for that,” says Malone. “And by no means is that their fault. It was literally the conditions around them.”
Malone insists that City Bureau is not an advocacy journalism organization. “We deeply believe in self-determination for marginalized people, especially those who are most impacted and underserved. The true wealth of the program, really, is what it means to build civic skills, journalistic skills in a more informed community, in their ability to advocate for themselves and the issues that matter most to them with the information they need to be successful to navigate their communities.”
“Having a trusted neighbor who goes to a public meeting and can discuss with others what she or he learned or what you should be aware of and keep your eye on, create trusted information networks, generative relationships, mediums and pathways to get this trusted information across a bunch of different channels, whether that’s an experience like an event, our public newsrooms or a conversation,” says Malone.
From Chicago, the Documenters Network has expanded to eleven cities in the US so far and has covered more than 5,000 public meetings. Some participants of the program have started their own hyper-local newsrooms; other partner organizations have dissected the minutes into different mediums such as art in a tribal site in Bismarck, North Dakota. At its best, the program has the opportunity to meet people in a variety of different ways, and do something transformative with the information.
At the end of our conversation, Malone tells me that she has been on the other side, working for the government at the O’Hare airport and in commercial real estate. “Often people ask me, ‘Why did you go from commercial real estate to journalism?’ And it’s so easy for me to see. I don’t think there’s anything more pressing in this world than social infrastructure, social fabric, social cohesion. I think those are the most important issues right now. The only way to do those things is to really think critically about information, information infrastructure, generative relationship building, trusted bonds. For me, I feel like we are doing the most important work at this time.”
