It’s the electronic equivalent of laying down asphalt on parish roads right before an election: after three years of assurances this was around the corner, Bossier Parish finally is getting around to creating facilities to broadcast professionally its jury meetings – a day late and a dollar short of needed transparency.
For years, to broadcast proceedings the nine-figure annual revenue Bossier Parish has done so by slapping down on a table a device that tries to capture the entire panorama of twelve jurors by video and streaming it by Facebook Live. With little technical improvement, the arrangement continues until this day. Audio often is terrible that requires guesswork as to who speaks and there’s no opportunity to view presentations or vote tabulations.
As a result, at the start of the Jury’s meeting last week local web site operator Wes Merriott of Sobo Live made it an offer. Perhaps more known for his biting remarks during public commentary periods of the Bossier City Council, Merriott at the Jury’s interval for public comments offered his technical services to improve the live stream capacity at no charge.
Despite the price, it was an offer the Jury could refuse. At the meeting’s end during time set aside for juror comments, Republican Juror Julianna Parks revealed a sandbagging of Merriott. She had a parish functionary explain that an appropriation of $850,000 had been made to upgrade transmission facilities in 26th District courtrooms and the Jury chambers, with the courtrooms having priority.
Of course, citizens might have missed that because of what was called a transmission error occurring for the meeting last December dealing with the budget that led to no audio/visual streaming or archiving. And the minutes, produced after the fact sometimes weeks later, of that meeting only have the barest documentation of what the budget looks like, unlike every other major governmental body in the region which posts online much more detailed budgeting documentation, before meeting on it.
Regardless, by the end of the month the Jury should vote to move the project forward and its information and technology folks felt possibly the entire project for the chamber would be complete by the end of the year – that is, right after juror elections for the next four years. Merriott for his trouble was given the promise of a chat about transmission quality.
Naturally, all of this should have happened years ago. Almost three years ago I contacted the parish’s public information officer Pat Culverhouse about the very issues Merriott had said had been brought to his attention. The reply I received then was that improvements were in the offing and to be patient. So, this has been known for a long time yet the parish made no targeted effort for improvement until two years had passed.
Parks tried to prompt IT staff to explain away the delay as a product of supply chain difficulties. But that strains credulity that this would knock things back by three years; certainly, starting when the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic descended to show the inadequacy of the current setup would have resolved the problem long ago.
In truth, greater transparency through clearer meeting presentation and therefore archiving wasn’t desired by Parks or jurors generally until they realized it would become a campaign issue – and conveniently decided to tackle that only on the year of elections in a way making the solution available after elections. And the Jury still, unlike every other major government body in the region that posts this on the web, seems to have no plans to provide prior to meetings any documentation of agenda items other than item titles and summaries, except for maps for certain zoning decisions. That information is vital for citizens to understand issues and formulate input on items before the Jury acts upon these.
This is just another game by incumbent jurors – all of whom but one are running for reelection (and in that instance the incumbent qualified but then withdrew and has his brother running instead) – to trick the public into believing they respond and are accountable to citizens primarily when actually they are more motivated to preserve maximal ability to fulfill their insider needs first. Otherwise, the Jury wouldn’t be tolerating the con game it lets its Parish Administrator Butch Ford play to evade state law about where he actually resides and is eligible to vote, or illegally placing its own on the parish’s Library Board of Control, nor would it have taken so long to usher off the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water Conservation District’s Board of Commissioners its designee Robert Berry for illegally serving in two officers until legal judgments dictated it do so (Berry now is challenging for a spot on the Jury).
At least improving meeting transmission is minimal progress that needs immediate follow-through by putting thorough documentation of each meeting agenda item online when the agenda is published. But it still has to rectify other things as well and has a long way to go to win back the confidence of the citizenry, which may require wholesale changes through elections this fall.
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