Remote Access to Public Meetings (with Laura Kiesel)

The second episode of Lights Out Mass is all about remote access to public meetings.

We interview journalist Laura Kiesel about the importance of remote access for people with disabilities and the difficulties she’s encountered when requesting accommodations from Arlington, the town where she lives. We also discuss proposed legislation that would require hybrid meetings and the opposition from local officials, who say they prefer “flexibility” to “mandates.”

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Links

• You can find Laura Kiesel’s website here and you can follow her on Twitter here

• Her June 2021 DigBoston article is “Municipalities Need to Keep Virtual Access in a Post-Pandemic World”

• The bills that would require hybrid meetings are called “An Act to modernize participation in public meetings” (H.3040/S.2024)

• If you want to reach out to your state legislators about these bills, you can look up their contact information here

• You can read the written testimony from the Massachusetts Municipal Association opposing mandatory hybrid meetings here

• You can listen to more testimony about remote access to public meetings here (unfortunately, not all of the testimony was recorded)

The hosts of this podcast are Andrew Quemere and Jeff Raymond.

• Andrew writes this newsletter and is also on Facebook, Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon

• Jeff is the founder of Mass Transparency and is also on Twitter and Bluesky

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Sunlight is the best disinfectant!