When the COVID emergency began in March of 2020, local governments had to quickly adapt. Public meetings across the Northeast migrated to Zoom as states made emergency allowances to open meetings laws. Now that public life is reopening, should some of those changes be allowed to remain in place?
The chair of the 39-memeber Albany County Legislature says yes. Democrat Andrew Joyce and his colleagues wrote to state lawmakers asking them to consider tweaks to the Open Meetings Law, saying participation actually increased during the pandemic.