Just a few days ago I made an OPRA request to the Borough of Red Bank via opramachine.com. It was a fairly simple request which should have been quite easily dealt with. But for some reason, it was a bit more difficult for the borough to provide a relevant response.
See right to read my request regarding Zoom “Chat” transcriptions for borough meetings.
Why these particular records and dates? Well, I was following up on another matter upon which I am seeking some sort of explanation, but that’s for another day. The problem is that public records are not being maintained.
Over the past few years, the Zoom app has become indispensable for virtually everyone, from family meetups to business and other formal situations.
It was a boost to our community that the Mayor & Council, and most other borough committees and commissions were able to continue to hold public meetings through the pandemic and shutdowns using the Zoom app. It was not so always so useful because for whatever reason the borough shut off participants’ access to the “Participants List” and meeting “Chat“, whilst continuing to use those facilities themselves.
Now I’ve written before about what these restrictions mean for transparency and community building so I won’t go through all that again, but I thought it was worth asking what councillors and committee/commissioners “Chat” about during meetings since I suspect the facility is used to control and direct the meetings, defer awkward questions, and even block criticism of elected and appointed representatives. This does not aid transparency or open government in Red Bank in any way. Obviously publishing those transcripts by public officials would prove me just to be a silly old conspiracy theorist, so why not?
We know the people that count in Red Bank borough do have access to “Chat“. It’s evident just by observation; their furtive keying and prompting of supportive speakers and acknowledging when certain people enter the Zoom room, etc. But sometimes someone slips up and we get a glimpse of what representatives are chatting about.
So it’s clear from the exchange on the right that the borough and panel participants absolutely know what is happening.
The borough is deliberately providing a tool for elected and appointed representatives to communicate on a platform which is not subject to open and democratic scrutiny.
The Zoom app does provide for the chat channel to be open and recorded, and for the participants’ list at a meeting to be available, flagging speakers in the order they indicate they wish to speak or ask a question. One might assume that this information would be in the public domain, but it seems it is not…
On May 07, 2022, I made my OPRA request – see above. A few days later on May 12, 2022, I received this response from the Borough Clerk.
This offers me the minutes of the meeting to which I was referring, which are, in any case, freely available on the borough website, then says, “that no records exist which would be responsive to your request.”
Apart from the question of if the “Chat” records really exist or not, it seems that the borough provides a vehicle for representatives to communicate, hopefully about borough business, which should be available for public scrutiny. But it seems that either the borough then doesn’t know where to find them, or just doesn’t maintain them at all. Neither situation is acceptable.
The Clerk then goes on to state, “This will close this OPRA request“. So that’s it?
I accept that the chat may just be about the day’s Wordle or the price of avocados, but if that’s all it is that can only restore our faith in the intent our elected representatives. The fact this is kept hidden either by accident or design doesn’t encourage our faith in local government.
