(Source: MIRS.news, Published 01/30/2023) Multiple members of the state's association of counties want to see county officials authorized to attend and participate in board meetings remotely again, after a pandemic-related policy expired in December 2021.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, members of a county public body could sit in on a board session remotely, and were permitted to submit votes as long as a quorum was physically present in the meeting location. While county officials were allowed to have entirely virtual operations amid the pandemic, the coronavirus policy's Dec. 31, 2021 expiration also resulted in the previous remote voting options being completely eliminated.
The Michigan Association of Counties (MAC) found that members really valued the aforementioned flexibility, and would like to see an outlet for remote vote-casting – even with a quorum physically present – reinstalled.
"Think about the U.P. too. Let's say they're on a bunch of different regional health department boards or community mental health boards, and you've got a nasty snowstorm…would you really not want them participating? Or do you want them on the road when it's in the middle of something like that?" said Deena Bosworth, the MAC director of governmental affairs.
During a presentation from the MAC to MIRS in early January, Bosworth illustrated how the association has encountered some situations where a budget needs to be approved, but a board member is stuck in the hospital. She expressed how although the individual is capable of jumping online to cast a vote, they are barred from doing so by Michigan's current Open Meetings Act (OMA).
"We've heard all kinds of arguments last year about 'oh, we just don't want people governing from Florida . . . or we just want face-to-face.' Well, I get that, and I think that we can put some parameters around it," Bosworth said, later adding that the push for remote voting options is often "situational and not necessarily geographical."
In December 2021, as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's emergency order authorizing wholly remote community meetings was nearing its end, Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) introduced legislation allowing an entire public panel to meet remotely through March of last year, depending on certain factors.
However, the bill did not move beyond the Senate Local Government Committee.
"They're doing it because they have a civic duty and they just want to be involved," Bosworth said about county commissioners. "Do we want to discourage that by inflexibility? Or do we want to embrace what's happening out there? We're all getting used to technology, and COVID helped them all get used to technology…so do we want to embrace that and encourage people to run? Or do we want to discourage flexibility and kind of push people out?"
According to a 2021 survey involving 49 state and territory chief information officers (CIOs), 86% of respondents said they were expecting "remote work as a regular rather than occasional" to be retained following the COVID-19 pandemic.
When it came to what was the biggest driver for expanding digital services, 10% said it was increasing public participation and engagement, 10% said it was optimizing operations and lowering costs and 4% said it was empowering frontline government employees to collaborate and increase productivity.
As for the non-government realm, PurplePass – a ticketing and event management service – relayed that around 67% of marketers have increased the time and money they've invested in webinars and other virtual event options, with many discovering that they improved workplace communication and data collection on who was using the events.
