Opinion: Join effort to document local government meetings

One of the best professional compliments I’ve ever received came from Joe Palacioz Sr., the longtime city manager of Hutchinson who retired from that post in 2005 after more than three decades of public service.

I was a young reporter covering City Hall for The Hutchinson News. Palacioz told me during the 2004 budget approval process that he appreciated how I worked to understand the ins and outs of that document.

I wasn’t fishing for compliments. And I don’t remember Palacioz being known for giving them. The fact is, from time to time plenty of people in the city didn’t like what I reported.

But Palacioz’s words were meaningful because they spoke to the role I played in informing the public. Every resident was affected by what happened at those City Council meetings – from how much they paid in taxes to whether their streets got fixed.

Yet almost no one had the time to sit through the meetings. And even if people had popped in, they likely would have struggled to understand some of the details.

I was a lifeline to crucial information for tens of thousands of readers each day. Because The Hutch News made it my job, I could attend every City Council meeting each week. And I took my responsibility seriously.

These days, there are fewer and fewer reporters covering local government. The decline of the news business means fewer local journalists at city council or school board meetings.

That’s bad because researchers have found that when there’s less local news, voter turnout goes down and corruption goes up. And there’s a whiplash effect in communities that I’ve experienced. An issue that’s been flying under the radar, such as the potential sale of local parkland, suddenly gets attention and becomes a microcontroversy.

That tends to stress out elected officials, who are increasingly targets of harassment, and fosters distrust in the process among residents, who don’t hear about something until it’s too late.

Ensuring that communities remain informed and engaged is an adaptive challenge that requires experiments. The Journal is proud to be a part of one that we hope will make a difference.

The Kansas Leadership Center this spring is joining with the Wichita Foundation and members of the Wichita Journalism Collaborative , including The Journal , to launch Wichita Documenters . The effort aims to make public meetings more transparent and accessible by paying residents to attend, take notes of what transpires and share them with journalists and the public.

This growing effort in participatory civic media, which will soon reach 15 cities in 11 states, won’t provide everything we need. (Editor’s note: Since this story was first published, Documenters has grown to reach 19 cities in 11 states.) But it will provide additional visibility into hundreds of public meetings every year.

It also gives residents a chance to see how government works up close, grounding them to perhaps run for office or serve on a local board themselves at some point.

The Kansas Leadership Center has long taught that leadership starts with you. Perhaps this can be the beginning of an era when an informed and engaged community starts with you too.

A version of this article appears in the Spring 2024 issue of The Journal , a publication of the Kansas Leadership Center. To learn more about KLC, visit http://kansasleadershipcenter.org . Order your copy of the magazine at the KLC Store or subscribe to the print edition.

The post Opinion: Join effort to document local government meetings appeared first on KLC Journal - A Civic Issues Magazine from the Kansas Leadership Center