Category: State Government

Categories
Civic Engagement Local Government State Government

IIJA: Engagement’s Impact on Funding

 

(This is a reprint of a blog post contributed to PublicInput.com)

As the National Association of Regional Partnerships, or NARC, wraps up its annual National Conference of Regions meeting in Washington, D.C., two important federal funding initiatives have regions thinking about new opportunities and challenges for their connected jurisdictions.

The American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, and the (“Bi-partisan”) Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA, will distribute $1.9 trillion and $1.2 trillion, respectively, to state and local governments

National Investment: Local Impacts

ARPA funds are tied to the economic hardships suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic and can be used for supporting public health expenditures; addressing negative economic impacts of the pandemic; replacing lost public-sector revenue; and providing premium pay for essential workers.

IIJA funds provide a huge multi-year investment into the improvement and innovation of the nation’s infrastructure. Everything from transportation to broadband internet expansion and water pipe replacement is the target of this federal funding program. Roads and bridges are the biggest beneficiaries.

Social, environmental, and infrastructure challenges facing local jurisdictions typically do not stop at a legal boundary. Hence, the need for these jurisdictions to have established formal agreements in place to tackle these challenges and opportunities as a collective.

It’s very common for these agreements to cross state boundaries. For this reason, regional planning, which includes multiple jurisdictions working together to benefit the whole, will be front and center in these programs.  Front and center in that process are MPO’s (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) and COG’s (Councils of Governments) as groups focused on regional initiatives and investments.

As the federal government plans a historical disbursement of funds for state and local infrastructure improvements, local governments are preparing to make their pitch for needed funding for their communities. Many of these initiatives will involve multiple jurisdictions and regional planning partnerships will be critical to pursuing federal funding.

Competition, Planning, & Public Engagement

Competition for IIJA funds will be stiff. “This is why it’s crucial that so many state and local government leaders are doing preparatory work now to position their organizations for the coming influx of federal money,” according to Ellory Monks, co-founder of The Atlas, an online community for local government leaders to crowdsource ideas and advice.

Engagement is highlighted as a key to securing funding

The focus for local jurisdictions in their planning puts public participation as a top priority. Governments will conduct historical civic listening sessions to collect input from residents about their preferences for infrastructure improvements. How well these jurisdictions capture the collective voices of their residents will be tied to the success and the level of funding requested and received.

IIJA includes descriptive requirements for public engagement

No other federal funding program has been as insistent of jurisdictions and descriptive in their requirements surrounding resident engagement to ensure representation, inclusion, and equity in their public participation efforts.

For example, the IIJA offers provisions promoting digital equity along with a $2.75 billion allocation to the category. Among requirements for jurisdictions to qualify for these funds, they must provide detailed plans that:

    • Identify barriers to digital equity faced by covered populations in the state;
    • Provide an assessment of how the objectives will impact the state’s civic and social engagement; and
    • Provide a description of how states plan to collaborate with key community stakeholders and residents

For jurisdictions to meet the important community engagement requirements, the act allows and encourages the use of technology to encourage public participation in the planning process. This encourages public institutions to utilize their civic infrastructure to improve their physical infrastructure.

The Competitive Edge: An Engagement Platform built for equity

Today, many jurisdictions are recognizing the opportunity presented by the pandemic to re-imagine the way they connect and engage with their residents.

PublicInput’s unified public engagement platform helped many jurisdictions provide equitable access to the public process when traditional means of engagement were no longer possible.  By providing options for residents to provide input online, by phone, email, and even text messaging, organizations reported significant increases in participation.

Increasing the volume of participation is one thing, but measuring improvements in equity has been an even more noteworthy benefit of new approaches. Agencies using PublicInput’s Equity Mapping tool have combined census data layers from the EPA’s EJSCREEN with their resident database to visualize engagement from neighborhoods most impacted by the pandemic.

Equity Mapping layers showing participation in low-income and linguistically isolated communities in Austin, TX

Geospatial layers like these can be even more valuable when combined with a resident database that can generate resident segments by census block, EPA EJSCREEN percentile, or another relevant filter such as Qualified Census Tracts (QCT’s). An example below shows how Guilford County, NC did exactly that using PublicInput’s segmentation and reporting tools.  By creating a segment of respondents who live or work in Qualified Census Tracts, they were able to zero in on the input from areas that qualify for ARPA spending. 

Guilford County leveraged PublicInput’s segmentation tools to report on ARPA engagement specifically from residents in Qualified Census Tracts

QCT’s have historically been a key focus for Community Development Block Grants, but more recently have become relevant in deploying ARPA funding. Federal guidelines offer even greater flexibility for expenditures in Qualified Census Tracts, as these areas are often home to communities, households, and businesses disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. With the right technology, agencies can now improve how they engage these communities, and use data to clearly identify key themes and needs.

Whether you’re deploying ARPA funds or pursuing IIJA funding for critical projects, being able to demonstrate equitable community engagement will likely become the tipping point for local governments securing competitive federal dollars for their community.

Categories
Democracy Local Government Public Engagement State Government

Virtual Meetings & State Legislatures

(This is a reprint of a blog post contributed to PublicInput.com)

More state legislatures are enabling virtual public meetings as an option for deliberations and public engagement.

Historically, government officials have been required to meet in person to deliberate about the public’s business. This has been particularly true for meetings that included constituents and their elected representatives. Some states even have laws requiring officials to attend meetings in person.

Face-to-face meetings between elected officials and the public are important.

This is because elected officials can’t ignore people that are right in front of them talking about a problem or a policy. It also helps them put a “face” to a certain issue or law. The public’s physical presence at a meeting can be very impactful when making decisions and could affect the outcome.

Times and technology have changed and public attendance at council meetings or committee meetings usually represents those who have a strong opinion for or against the issue that is being debated and may not represent the voice of the whole community.

The Pursuit of Alternative Means

In March 2020 as the COVID-19 virus became a pandemic, state and local governments were forced to shutter their buildings and halt their in-person proceedings. Alternative means had to be pursued to conduct the public’s business and for the continuation of governance.

For years, the public has had options to view or listen to their governing bodies’ proceedings electronically, whether online, televised, or by radio and officials were physically present in those proceedings. Now, the elected and the electorate would need to segregate from each other and conduct their meetings virtually. Yet, some states had laws that required meetings of public bodies to have the officials present which prevented them from attending virtually.

With the growing pandemic, states had to act fast to enable the government to continue to operate and in a way that would not violate their open government laws surrounding access, participation, and transparency of public meetings.

Executive orders became the norm in most states to enable their governments to continue operations, including holding virtual proceedings. Those emergency orders, however, had deadlines so it was up to state legislatures in those states that restricted virtual attendance to create formal alternatives for convening public meetings.

Fast forward to the summer of 2021

With a year and a half of a continuing (and resurging) pandemic, along with 18 months of positive data about the effectiveness of virtual public meetings (VPM), decisions by state and local governments to meet virtually have taken hold across the nation on whether or not there were legal restrictions preventing them. Today, VPMs as an alternative or complement to in-person meetings are launching a new era of public engagement for governments and for residents.

Recall that not all states have laws requiring in-person attendance by officials that prevent VPMs and therefore do not require legislative action to approve their use. Wyoming is a good example of a state that switched to VPMs over the last year and a half, including hybrid models, to ensure continuity of services and decision-making along with public outreach.

For those states that either required officials’ in-person attendance or wanted to revise legislation to ensure VPMs were included in their public meeting requirements, 17 states had bills filed over the last year that included language pertaining to VPMs, according to BillTrack50, a free research and tracking service of state and federal legislation and legislators from LegiNation, Inc.,

So far, four of the 17 states have signed and enacted legislation to support VPMs (California, Georgia, Nebraska and Utah), while seven are still in committees or have been approved by one chamber and crossed-over to the other. These states include Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington. Bills addressing VPMs in six states died in committee or failed on the floor: Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas.

A New Way to Govern

With or without needed changes to laws to enable VPMs across state and local jurisdictions, many public officials and residents are realizing the benefits along with the challenges of adjusting to VPMs and hybrid models that blend VPMs with in-person meetings.  Residents are enjoying the ease and convenience to learn about and engage their public officials without the challenges to their schedules including traveling to a meeting for whatever reason they may have.

Public officials are seeing the ranks of public participation swell and increased diversity among attendees. Key challenges facing public bodies such as inclusion to hear from more voices in the community are being facilitated using VPMs. The public’s personal preferences surrounding communicating and sharing information with public officials are being met and with greater ease. That helps build more trust between public officials and residents.

Whether out of necessity or in response to a disaster, state and local governments and their constituents are finding VPMs provide a new and welcoming way for governing and advancing democracy in their jurisdictions.

 

Categories
open government Public Records State Government Transparency

With cybersecurity hot, now is the time to open government

 

This article originally appeared in STATESCOOP

Commentary: Opening data isn’t at odds with IT security, but supports it, says the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

With governments focused on tighter security measures surrounding sensitive data, now is an opportune time to adopt reforms that also remove obstacles to open public records and improve access.

Updating open government laws, and reforming policies and practices can yield numerous benefits — economic and political — and free resources to focus on malicious cyberattacks and ongoing data security.

State and local governments face a real threat from hackers infiltrating government IT systems and accessing personal and sensitive information. State CIOs, once again, identified security as their top priority in the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ Top Ten list for 2019.

However, the government must provide ongoing access to public records that is distinct from its responsibility to prevent illegal access to private information.

The best way to enact reforms is for government to take a holistic approach to the way public institutions manage transparency and public records. With better legislation and administrative guidelines, agencies can vastly improve access to public records and meet the growing challenge of digital public records as they are created.  Here are four ways to make government more open:

  1. Disclose proactively

This is the act of releasing information before it is requested (or shortly after it is). Public records such as meeting minutes, reports, schedules, and data sets can be posted to an agency’s website or centralized in a designated online public records repository. The source can be a government server or one managed by an external third party through cloud services, as cited in the NASCIO survey to address growing data storage.

  1. Improve training and education

Time is money. So are costs associated with litigation which, unfortunately, is sometimes the result of poor FOI administration. Better and ongoing training and education of employees can increase agency efficiency and lower admin costs.

  1. Adopt professional standards and best practices

Fulfilling open records requests is a daily task. However, most agencies treat public records requests as a distraction or an “add-on” to their programs and services. Developing behaviors to increase proficiency and decrease expenses can be replicated in other agencies, such as tracking time and costs to process requests and maintaining a log of agency responses.

  1. Change the culture

Advance an internal mindset that addresses open records fulfillment as a public service responsibility, not a distraction. Quantify it as a line item on the budget. After all, it is the law.

Viewing their role as a steward and facilitator, government agencies can secure public information without restricting it. This creates both financial and political benefits by increasing responsiveness, accountability, and trust while focusing more resources on securing protected information.