Hoover City Council at odds over changes in YouTube recordings

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For more than five years, the Hoover City Council has been recording and broadcasting its meetings on a city YouTube channel, and those meetings were available for anyone to go back and review at any time.

That’s no longer the case.

At some point this year, videos of previous Hoover public meetings were removed from public access on YouTube. The city also stopped broadcasting and video recording the public comment section of council meetings at the end of the meeting.

Therefore, the general public no longer is able to see and hear those public comments on the YouTube broadcast.

Those two decisions have drawn criticism from some council members and members of the public. A majority of council members said they were surprised to learn that older meetings had been removed from public view and that general public comments were no longer being recorded.

No elected official is taking responsibility for the initial decision.

Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato said the change was made at the direction of the council and directed questions to Council President John Lyda. Lyda said he didn’t know who made the initial decision. Council members Steve McClinton, Mike Shaw, Sam Swiney and Casey Middlebrooks said they were not informed before videos were first removed nor consulted before those changes were made.

Jason Cope, the city’s technology director, directed questions to the city’s public information officer, who obtained a response from City Attorney Phillip Corley.

Corley asked that questions be submitted in writing and, when asked who made the initial decision to take down YouTube videos, said, “This was a council policy communicated by the council president to the city clerk. … The policy was communicated to the city clerk on Sept. 6, 2022.”

However, videos from the past five years were taken down prior to Aug. 1. Corley did not respond to further questions about who made the initial decision.

Corley did say that he advised the city that state law does not require meetings to be videoed or livestreamed, or for recordings of meetings to be made or preserved.

“However, temporary recordings should be deleted once minutes are approved according to the Records Disposition Authority issued by the Alabama Local Government Records Commission,” Corley wrote. “Another alternative would be to livestream only with no recordings or not to livestream at all. Transparency under Alabama law means that the meetings are open to the public and minutes of what was done at those meetings are made available to the public. The minutes are permanent public records and the official record of actions taken at a meeting.”

‘COMPROMISE’ POLICY

Lyda, in response to concerns from fellow council members, said he took input from council members and drafted a “compromise” policy that allows for videos of council meetings to stay online for 60 days or after the minutes of those meetings are approved, whichever occurs later. That was the first time an official policy had been created, he said. People also can download a copy of the videos before they disappear.

Lyda said council members’ opinions ranged from having no cameras at all to recording the meetings and keeping the recordings available forever, and he tried to find some middle ground.

“I’ve not seen an issue in my tenure as president where we’ve had as wide an array of opinions as we did on this matter,” Lyda said. “My goal was to draft a policy that no one loves but everyone can live with.”

Corley said nothing has been done wrong. “The city has not improperly deleted videos or records,” he wrote. “The city complies with Alabama law with regard to records retention. The city goes above and beyond state law requirements by streaming the meetings and making the videos publicly available.”

But a majority of council members — McClinton, Shaw, Swiney and Middlebrooks — said they still actually prefer that recordings of council meetings be available for public view forever.

Robin Schultz, a Bluff Park resident who lost two bids for the Hoover City Council in 2016 and 2020, spoke to the council about the matter on Aug. 1. He said the recent changes in handling of videos go against the idea of transparency so frequently heralded by council members, especially when they were running for office, and asked them to make the old videos available again and keep making all meetings available going forward.

Councilman Steve McClinton said he agrees. “I’m for total transparency,” McClinton said. “Why take them down? There’s no reason for that.”

Lyda said state law determines what transparency is, and state law doesn’t require that meetings be recorded — either in audio or video format. Most city clerks at least make an audio recording of the meeting to help them develop the written minutes of the meeting, which are required by state law.

Lyda said that even though state law doesn’t require a video recording, it is the desire of the Hoover City Council to provide that for the public, so the new policy he created is his attempt to define how those recordings should be handled for this council term.

“Our main goal and mission is to follow the law to the letter of the law,” Lyda said.

SOME SATISFIED

Councilman Derrick Murphy said that when the current mayor and five new council members were elected in 2016, their primary objective was to make viewing of council meetings possible for people who couldn’t make it to a meeting.

“That was the primary objective, and it was met,” Murphy said. “Outside of that is logistics.”

For government bodies that do broadcast or record meetings, each one does it differently, and he’s satisfied as long as there is live streaming of council meetings and work sessions, he said.

“I think we have to be fair,” Murphy said. “From a transparency standpoint, we have been transparent as a city. … A lot of processes have been put in place the last six years that this city never had. I’m proud of that.”

Councilman Curt Posey said his original goal also was to have a live webcast of meetings, and that has been accomplished.

Posey also noted that the council does record public comments that are part of official public hearings on matters. Also, Lyda frequently will allow public comment on other votes that don’t require a public hearing, and those comments also are part of the council videos. The cameras now are being cut off only for the general public comment period at the end of the meeting, and that is something that was recommended by the city attorney because of potential legal ramifications, Posey said.

“You don’t know what a person is going to say,” Posey said. “The majority of us could care less if the public comment is on there.”

Shaw said cutting the cameras off for the public comment period doesn’t bother him because some people are reluctant to speak to the council if they know they are being recorded and broadcast to the general public and have to give their name and address.

‘RIGHT TO BE HEARD’

But Shaw said he does think the recordings should be left online for good for transparency’s sake. “I think it helps people see what their government is doing,” Shaw said. “Sometimes people want to go back and look at particular issues for historical purposes.”

McClinton said while the minutes of meetings do record actions taken at meetings, it’s important for people to be able to see and hear what was actually said in the meetings and how it was said.

“A piece of paper and words of minutes don’t capture the emotion and passion and somebody’s body language and the inflection of their voice,” McClinton said.

Also, at Corley’s direction, the council meeting minutes contain much less information than they once did. Corley has advised the city clerk that minutes only need to contain the actions taken by the council, not necessarily capturing everything that was said about a matter.

The public comment portion of Hoover’s council meetings has drawn more people to the microphone — and more public criticism of council decisions — following the serious flooding events of October 2021.

People with complaints about the council’s handling of stormwater flooding matters are frequent guests at the microphone, and Lyda has become more strict about enforcing a three-minute time limit for speakers, particularly those who are critical of the council or city staff.

Some residents have started making their own video recordings of meetings.

McClinton said it shouldn’t matter whether people are being critical of public officials.

“We should always allow people who have complaints about Hoover to be on the record,” he said. “Whether I agree with them or not, they have a right to be heard. To censor it is very dangerous.”

Swiney said that, to him, the public comment portion of the meeting is part of the council meeting and should be recorded just like the rest of the meeting.

Middlebrooks said that would be his preference, too. However, he does believe there needs to be more compromise in all levels of government, and he accepted Lyda’s revised policy as a compromise.

Schultz said the current group of elected officials have a history of touting transparency and have taken steps to make the city more transparent, but the recent actions are a step back in the wrong direction. The videos should be made public again, and future videos of complete council meetings should remain available for people to see whenever they want, he said.

“We’d like to refer back to them,” Schultz said. “Sometimes they make for good reference material. You all have nothing to hide.”

Shaw said he doesn’t think the issue is dead. “I think there’s certainly ongoing discussion about it.”