Penn pens transparency bill

by Sarah Elmquist Squires, Lander Journal

Via Wyoming News Exchange

LANDER — Wyoming Rep. Sarah Penn is gearing up to introduce a bill aimed at increasing transparency in local government and a mandate that provides for public comment for school boards, counties, towns and cities in Wyoming. House Bill 49, the “By the People Act,” will be introduced to the Wyoming Legislature next month, and if passed, will mean citizens have greater access to the work of local governments and how their tax dollars are spent.

“I’m passionate about people being involved in government, because that’s how our government should run,” noted Rep. Penn in an interview. “We all have a duty to pay attention and to hold those who we do elect accountable for things that happen within our government.”

Under the legislation, public comment sessions would be a statutory requirement for local governments, and meeting minutes and recordings – unedited – must be available online. To the extent practicable, local governments must also stream their meetings online under the bill.

Penn said she’s been troubled by the trend of public comments being curbed both here and in other parts of the state, along with instances of public meeting videos having sections removed online. 

She said when you consider the concept that voters are the bosses of elected officials, it seems backward politicians get in the way of oversight. 

“In what circumstance, as an employee, when a boss wants to come and share a position, would we say ‘I don’t want to listen to our boss, I know better … If you want to come talk to me about my performance, first you need to have an appointment,’” Penn wondered. 

“For myself as an elected individual, I want to have people talk to me, I want to hear people’s opinions and perspectives and direction and guidance on where they want things to go,” she explained. “If people are being excluded from meetings and the reasons are [officials saying] ‘We don’t have to listen to the public,’ well maybe we just need to have that outlined in statute.”

In terms of access to meeting materials and videos, Rep. Penn said many public meetings happen during the workday, or might be held in a part of the county that can be hard for some to get to in-person, especially in winter. “We don’t all have the ability to be present in the meetings in the moment,” she said. “Just because people may not be in attendance doesn’t mean they don’t want to be involved … It’s 2024 and we have the ability pretty simply to allow people to have easy access to those types of meetings.”

When elected bodies do not provide easy access to unaltered meeting videos and agenda materials, Penn said it can seem dishonest or that there’s something to hide. 

“The reason I struggle with that is when people are trying to be involved it has the feeling that they’re intentionally being kept at arm’s length, and that brings up the question: Are they trying to hide something? That’s hopefully not the case, but it makes people feel suspicious. And that’s the point of transparency – we can all just know that everyone’s on the up and up. If there’s nothing to see here, then there shouldn’t be any attempt to stop people from seeing things.”

The Wyoming Legislature will convene for the 2024 budget session on February 12 of this year.