The Herald reviewed the practices of every Cape May County municipality and the county government to find out how transparent each governing body is with respect to its regular public meetings.

The rubric used was designed to evaluate each on the availability of information and accessibility to public meetings – criteria Herald readers have identified as most important.

To their credit, many local governments quickly developed online participation strategies and purchased equipment to facilitate remote meetings during the pandemic. More recently, however, some have walked back those advancements. The public is left to ask why.

Essential to a well-functioning and honest government, by and for the people, is frequent feedback from a community of informed citizens. The public expects elected officials to welcome and encourage that participation, as well they should.

But in several cases locally, these calls for transparency have been met with resistance from those elected to represent the interests of the very constituents they too often prefer to shun. The public is left to ask why.

The Herald’s government transparency performance scorecard will be maintained online and published frequently in the pages of the newspaper’s print edition. The scorecard will be updated online and in print as changes necessitate. We hope improvements will be reflected in those updates, but time will tell.

There are sensible limitations to government transparency. Secrecy is sometimes required for a government to act in the best interest of its citizens. That has merit. But a balancing test to fetter access in those instances exists and is generously deferential to the government. Those situations are not at issue here.

What’s contemplated under this rubric is a governing body’s compliance level with the very basics of government transparency. There’s nothing complex or tricky here that would warrant further context or an analysis of other situational factors.

This scorecard is simply an evaluation of how much the governing bodies and elected officials of Cape May County care about the community’s informed participation in their public meetings.

And so, over time, if those that score poorly do not improve and embrace the level of access that should be standard in 2024, the public will be left to ask why.

Our criteria defined:

Remote Monitoring of Live Meetings – Can the public easily access and listen to or watch an online feed of the governing body’s meetings as they happen? Some boards accomplish this via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, YouTube or Facebook. A star in this category does not require that the public be afforded the opportunity to ask questions remotely, just that the public can monitor what is happening in the meeting online as it unfolds.

Meeting Time After Business Hours – Is at least one meeting per month held after 5 p.m.? Meetings held during business hours are not easy for everyone to attend or participate in, especially those who work a typical 9 to 5. To get a star here, the governing body must promote transparency by making its meeting time convenient for the working public at least once a month.

Video Available Within 24 Hours – To get a star here, the governing body must proactively make a video recording of the meeting available to the public online within 24 hours of its conclusion. This helps ensure that those who have a conflict or otherwise cannot attend the meeting at its designated time are able to keep abreast of developments in their community without unnecessary delay. Video is preferable to an audio-only recording, as it allows remote review of slide decks and other demonstratives utilized by speakers and gives the public an overall better feel for the meeting.

Audio Available Within 24 Hours – To get a star here, the governing body must proactively make an audio recording of the meeting available online to the public within 24 hours of the meeting’s conclusion. Those that also release video within 24 hours get a star in both the video and audio categories.

Remote Participation Available – A star here indicates the public can ask questions and make comments at the appropriate time without having to physically attend the meeting. Some governing bodies accomplish this by allowing questions by telephone, by allowing Zoom participation or by having the clerk read YouTube or Facebook comments into the record. No matter how they do it, if they do it, they get a star.

Meeting Documents Available Before Meeting – Does the governing body proactively make the full draft agenda packet available online prior to the meeting? This includes copies of all proposed ordinances and resolutions in their entirety, so the public can give anything that might be subject to official action a thorough review, an essential for an informed public comment component of the meeting.

To indicate a change has been made in your municipality, email editor@cmcherald.com.