Community Matters: Toward greater transparency in Beaver County

Two weeks ago, in an entry titled “Transparency needed in regional decision making,” I made the case for greater accountability and transparency in county government.

The argument I made in that essay was not limited to any one set of decisions. That being said, I did spend considerable time talking about the $100 million plus infusion of funds that are being made available to Beaver County as the result of federal pandemic relief legislation.

As I argued, such an influx of resources could be utterly transformative for the future of Beaver County. And, though promises have been made on more than one occasion to engage the public, regional stakeholders have, to date, had no substantive input regarding this unparalleled opportunity.

Over the last year and a half, I have written over 30 columns under the heading of this “Community Matters” series. Although many of those entries have solicited feedback from the public, this most recent piece was far and away the most talked about and commented on entry I have published to date. Numerous visible public leaders asked me about the article, wanted to know more about what they could do, lamented our current state of affairs, and more. In at least one board meeting, the essay was the subject of public discussion. And numerous individuals thanked me for speaking such inconvenient truths and implored me to keep asking such questions in public.

Reflecting upon the response I received and leaning into some of my own observations from more than a decade in public leadership throughout Beaver County, I spent some more time this week digging into this issue of how regional decisions are made, where they are communicated, and how the public might become more involved.

This work is part of a larger series of commitments that RiverWise has made for 2022. I will have much more to say about this in the coming weeks and months. At this point, suffice it to say that RiverWise has made a commitment – both ideological and financial– to invest in research, writing, education, and storytelling that sheds light on the workings of regional government. At the most basic level this means that thoughtful, curious and informed individuals will be resourced to understand and better communicate how and where regional priorities are being set, why and how resources are being allocated and what forums exist for public engagement in such priorities.

In order better to understand how often such gatherings take place, RiverWise staff combed through nearly 70 public meetings that were held during 2021 and compiled some basic information about things like the duration and number of meetings, amount of money allocated, number of resolutions passed, rates of public participation, and more. Two such types of public meetings are regularly held by the Beaver County Board of Commissioners. The first is what is called a "work session." The other is referred to as their "public meeting."

In 2021, the commissioners held 45 public work sessions that were an average of 26 minutes in length. Of these 45 meetings, 40% (18 of 45) were under 20 minutes long and 64% (29 of 45) were under 30 minutes in length. All told during 2021, the commissioners spent 19 hours 20 minutes in public work session meetings.

In 2021, commissioners held 22 public meetings that were an average of 9 minutes in length. Of these 22 meetings, 23% (5 of 22) were under 5 minutes long and 82% (18 of 22) were under 10 minutes long. All told during 2021, the commissioners spent 3 hours 16 minutes in public meetings.

Surveying all public meetings held by the commissioners, we found that the public YouTube videos of such meetings were watched an average of 17 times per meeting.

In total, the commissioners met publicly for a total of 22 hours 36 minutes, or an average of 1 hour 53 minutes per month throughout 2021. During this time, they discharged $237,463,545 (the amount of the final 2021 county budget) representing $175,120 spent for every minute the board met publicly in 2021.

Numbers alone rarely settle anything. And at least part of my charge in the coming months is to help the public contextualize what can be learned from the kinds of data presented above. What this data makes abundantly clear to me at first glance is this. First, residents of Beaver County are almost entirely disengaged from the most vital decision-making forums made available to them. This is, at its core, a failure to participate in the democratic process, the consequences of which have been devastating for our county.

Second, and due in large part to lack of public engagement, our county leadership has limited incentive to do anything differently. The work of a county official is easiest when they can operate without public scrutiny or with underwhelming expectations. Void of pressure to do otherwise, little is likely to change.

Third, residents are right to ask probing questions about the data reported on here. In the absence of regular and transparent communication from our commissioners, stakeholders are justifiably left wondering what kinds of processes lead up to a 9-minute meeting in which millions of dollars of responsibility are discharged and dozens of resolutions are passed. One would hope that such consequential decisions are being carefully scrutinized, discussed, studied and debated by our commissioners. But, in the absence of communication and transparency, one is left to draw his or her own conclusions.

Fourth, and finally: if our region is going to rise above our long-earned reputation as a site of political gridlock and underperformance, those outside of the political establishment must get involved, become educated and begin demanding regional excellence. And those within the political establishment must understand and respond to the damage done by decades of strained relationships between county officials and the general public.

With every week that passes our children and grandchildren are missing out on opportunity, innovation, the fruits of cooperation and the benefits of coordinated regional vision. It does not need to be that way. And though increased political transparency and accountability alone will not solve this issue, they can go a long way toward moving us closer to regional health.

In the coming weeks and months, we will, by focusing more on the issue of transparency, seek to understand how to make such regional health more likely here in Beaver County.

I do hope you will join us on this important journey.

Daniel Rossi-Keen, Ph.D., is the co-owner of eQuip Books, a community bookstore in Aliquippa and the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit employing sustainable development practices to create a regional identity around the rivers of Beaver County. You can reach Daniel at daniel@getriverwise.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Community Matters: Toward greater transparency in Beaver County