We present the return of our scores and fumbles editorial, with our takes on some recent news items of interest.
SCORE: Theoretically, allowing local advisory boards and commissions, such as Lake County’s Board of Supervisors and city councils, to meet remotely could make it a lot easier for more residents to take advantage of opportunities for civic engagement, especially for constituents with disabilities or time demanding jobs that make it difficult to attend after hour meetings. According to a report by Calmatters reporter Sameea Kamal, there’s the issue that digital meetings, such as the ones which became necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic, deprive people the opportunity to address their elected officials in person.
Recent proposed legislation (Assembly Bill 817) seeks to extend those meeting policies instituted during the pandemic. The Legislature agreed last year to do that for state boards until Jan. 1, 2026. But legislators declined to give that option to local advisory boards, beyond specific exceptions. As per Kamal, The bill failed in the Senate’s local government committee last week, failing to get a single “yes” vote.
Currently, state law requires local boards to meet where the public has access. Members are required to post a notice and allow the public to attend, even at their homes.
The bill which passed by the Assembly by a 54-8 vote in January would have, until Jan. 1, 2026, let advisory bodies have no board members and only one staffer at a physical meeting location. It would have required board members to be on camera.
Press and government transparency advocates, including Brittney Barsotti, general counsel for the California News Publishers Association saw the bill’s failure as a “critical victory for open government.” We concur with their request for the Legislature to go back to the drawing board and with their suggestion to hold additional hearings which hopefully can lead to a better bill next year.
FUMBLE: The recent collective decision by the Lake County Board of Supervisors to approve a multi-year contract for Sacramento based Imprenta Communications Group to deliver digital newsletters into constituents’ inboxes via a monthly newsletter highlighting county news items and projects comes with a hefty price tag: $264,000 over three years.
We find the entire project redundant and a waste of resources, considering there are many ways that said projects are already being communicated and there are multiple sources of communication already in the county. In fact, the plethora of websites, newsletters and outlets conveying similar information has turned into a jumbled mess. It feels like it is time for some consolidation and simplification.
Various County agencies already have digital newsletters to keep people informed about multiple projects including both Chambers of Commerce, the City of Clearlake, County EOS, the Sheriff’s office and periodic updates by the City of Lakeport, not to mention social media channels such as Facebook. We crunched the numbers, the initial June newsletter outlined six items, so at $88,000 every year, that comes to $7,333 monthly. Approximately $1,222 per blurb? Let’s hope future editions will yield a better return on investment.
SCORE: The County’s diligent efforts to improve outreach via social media appears to be paying off as the area’s Public Education and Government (PEG) TV channel continues to expand on YouTube and through MediaCom to complement the “Lake Life” channel which features unique content about life in the county. The BOS recently approved amendments to their contract with PEG-TV in order to set compensation for videography services for the county including municipal councils and BOS meetings.
BOS chair and PEG TV chair Bruno Sabatier has been working behind the scenes with station manager Thomas Dewalt and secured funding to expand the station’s services and to onboard volunteers to round out the PEG-TV board.
Youtube has been adding more meetings to the channel including events such as the candidate forums which took place in the spring during the Primary Election. This is a welcome change to previous efforts where BOS and planning commission meetings were posted on a timely basis, but the MACs and other agencies were not always equally represented in the past. Dewalt said Lake County has an eclectic community with a lot of people doing great things and we concur.
FUMBLE: Feel like being an activist and criticizing the Israel government over the war in Gaza? That may be enough to get you fired. As the independent non-profit site “The Intercept” reported this week, it doesn’t take much to be accused of terrorism these days. Under a new anti-terror legislation that recently passed the House of Representatives, the secretary of the Treasury would be given unconstrained power to revoke the nonprofit status of any organization deemed “terrorist supporting.” The problem is that the bill is so overly broad that even nonprofit news organizations like The Intercept could be at risk if they continue hard-hitting reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza.
There are always two sides to every story, but the mainstream media in our eyes has been skewing coverage of the issue, outlets like CNN and most recently online news outlet the Hill, firing journalists for daring to criticize the actions of Israel’s right-wing government. As Senator Bernie Sanders said recently: Israel does not have the right to kill more than 34,000 civilians, it does not have the right to orphan 19,000 children and it does not have the right to annihilate Gaza’s health care system and to aid and abet in war crimes with our tax dollars. We feel it is insane that journalists are being reprimanded and terminated for pointing out these facts.
—The Editorial Board, Lake County Record-Bee
