Watching County Government At Work – In Real Time; Lawmakers Mull Codifying Meeting Livestreams

By Holly Crocco

Anything is better than nothing… Or isn’t it?

That’s the question being debated by Putnam County legislators who are considering codifying the livestreaming of its meetings by amending the legislative manual to make it mandatory.

The Legislature began livestreaming its meetings in April of last year after $60,000 was assigned in the budget to make the necessary technology upgrades to do so. This came after about a year and a half it took for the install to take place in Room 318 of the county’s office building, where committee meetings take place, as well as in the Historic Courthouse, where the full Legislature meets.

While livestreaming is already, well, live, a resolution that has been introduced by Legislator Erin Crowley, R-Mahopac, to add it to the legislative manual is still being discussed.

Legislator Paul Jonke, R-Southeast, said he’s not opposed to codifying livestreaming. Rather, he would like to see it done well, calling it a “work in progress.”

“I think the audio is terrible here. I think the video has room for improvement,” he said at the March 17 Rules Committee meeting. “The Historic Courthouse – that’s not an easy venue to work at, either. I know we’ve begun the livestreaming there, and we still have a ways to go.”

Prior to the county meetings being livestreamed, they were recorded and audio was posted to SoundCloud.

Crowley said the streaming may not be perfect, but it can be improved upon as the county finds the means to do so. The important thing is that the requirement is formalized so residents know they will never have the right to watch legislative meetings in real time taken away.

“There are many different reasons it’s important that we do this,” she said, citing increased transparency, wider public access, educational opportunities, and public participation.

“There are so many good things, and even if we’re not 100 percent, we’re still 100 percent better than we were on SoundCloud and 100 percent better than we were on YouTube, before we got new microphones,” said Crowley.

She said new technology is constantly evolving, and the county will have to adapt and upgrade as time passes.

“We can always make it better, we can always add new technology,” she said. “Codifying livestreaming is not about being the best of the best because if that were the case, we wouldn’t have spent $60,000, we would have spent several-hundred-thousand dollars in order to pay a guy to run it and have a mixer in the back to make sure we had the ultimate audio and everything else. We did what we felt was fiscally responsible to give the public and our constituents the ability to watch from home.”

Legislator Bill Gouldman, R-Putnam Valley, agreed.

“Why would we not put livestreaming in our manual?” he asked. “We seem to be micromanaging everything that we do here since January.” For example, he said even the seating order of legislators at its meeting is specified in the legislative manual.

Gouldman made a motion to put the resolution adding livestreaming to the manual on the agenda for the next meeting of the full Legislature, but no second was made.

Legislator Dan Birmingham, R-Brewster, who is chairman of the Rules Committee, said there’s no rush since livestreaming is already taking place, even though it currently isn’t officially required.

“If we don’t put it in the manual tonight, there’s no harm because we’re doing it anyway,” he said. “We’re still livestreaming. No one is saying we shouldn’t livestream.”

Legislator Greg Ellner, R-Carmel, said he campaigned on prioritizing transparency – including livestreaming meetings – but agree with Jonke that it can be done to a higher quality.

“I’m the one who said the audio was not acceptable, and we got the new microphones,” he said. “And I also suggested to IT (the technology department) that this camera setup was not what we should have. We should have multiple cameras. So in concept I’m completely in favor of this, but we’re a work in progress, and let’s make it better.”

Legislator Nancy Montgomery, D-Philipstown, challenged Ellner’s support of livestreaming.

“You ran (for election) on it, but you’ve been in office for a really long time and it hasn’t happened yet,” she said. “So why don’t you make a motion that we move this resolution that Legislator Crowley put forward?”

Montgomery said she presented her colleagues with a proposal in 2023 that would have made livestreaming possible for less than $20,000, following the blueprint of local town and village governments that stream their meetings via a simple computer-mounted camera. However, the proposal got no traction.

“It’s 2025 – it’s really easy to livestream a meeting from anywhere, from anything, from any device,” she said. “So I’m not sure why this is so complicated. What it does tell me is there’s resistance to livestreaming from this committee, with the exception of Legislator Gouldman.”

Further, Montgomery asked Legislator Amy Sayegh, R-Mahopac Falls, who is chairwoman of the full Legislature, to put the resolution on the agenda for the Legislature’s April meeting.

Sayegh said she doesn’t see the problem in adding the requirement to the manual, or even the county code – as many other county governments have – and making improvements in the future.

“I have no problem with putting it in the code, but we have to make room for changes,” she said, noting that the county will be moving its committee meetings to a lower floor for the next eight weeks since work is being done on the elevator in the county office building, and it’s not clear if that room is equipped to livestream audio and video.

Legislator Laura Russo, R-Patterson, said she doesn’t understand what the issue is.

“I come from the Town of Patterson, which is kind of small, and since before COVID they livestreamed, but they also allow public recognition via livestream,” she explained. “They open it up to public comment in the audience, then they allow anyone on Zoom to make a statement or comment. I’m disappointed the county can’t do something the little Town of Patterson can do without any issue.”

That public participation is an important component, said Russo.

“We do have people here that can get up and speak, but the people that can’t make it to the meetings don’t have an opportunity to speak,” she said.

Resident Brett Yarris said the technical element of livestreaming is not as complicated as many may think.

“This is like déjà vu,” he said. “I was here Feb. 19 for this exact conversation – word for word, human for human, mouth for mouth, making the exact same arguments a month ago… Livestreaming is a thing, and if the little towns in our county can do it, the county can do it. Every legislator that represents every town in the county wants to do it. Let’s do it.”

Cassandra Roth agreed.

“Patterson’s sound quality and video is horrible, but you know what I love about that? I still get to watch it,” she said. “I still get to hear it. I still get to be involved in it. So no one’s going to go, oh, this isn’t in 4K… What they are going to be upset about is if they can’t hear it, they can’t see it.”

Arielle Honovich said that if teachers across the country figured out how to educate students during the pandemic, the Legislature can surely manage to livestream meetings.

“I taught special education first grade in COVID,” she said. “I have no experience whatsoever in technology, and I figured it out. So it seems crazy that this is like a ridiculously long discussion. If no one has a problem with it, just do it.”

Sayegh noted that many Zoom meetings were “hacked” during COVID, and she and Ellner said county government has tighter security, and they would like to hear from the IT department about making sure livestreams are secure.

“We have a higher level of security and it’s more than just a Zoom call and a cell phone recording the conversation,” said Sayegh. “We have a higher level of security with our email system, with our wi-fi system, so it’s not just something where we can put a camera on the back of a phone. We really have to go through IT.”

Crowley countered that the county’s IT director will surely maintain the proper firewalls and security.

No movement was made on the resolution.