Council holds brief meeting fully online due to pandemic

Screenshot of Facebook page that carried the meeting, with dialog box for Zoom, the platform used by the mayor and council 

In its first meeting conducted online, the Midway City Council approved changes in the leave policy for city employees to conform to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. It was conducted by way of Zoom, an online meeting platform, and streamed on the Facebook site Midway Government Streaming Meetings.

The meeting was a special one, in more ways than one. Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said he expects the regular meeting on April 6 to be conducted online due to the restrictions in place for the pandemic. Council Member Bruce Southworth, who always makes the motion to adjourn and has said this is his last council term, suggested that the council just keep on meeting that way.

That would require a change in state law, because the Kentucky Open Meetings Act requires that a public agency “precisely identify a primary location of the video teleconference where all members can be seen and heard and the public may attend” and “provide meeting-room conditions, including adequate space, seating, and acoustics, which insofar as is feasible allow effective public observation of the public meetings.”

Public agencies in Kentucky are meeting without such arrangements under an emergency order from Gov. Andy Beshear and an opinion from Attorney General Daniel Cameron that says, “For a public agency to identify a primary physical location to conduct a video teleconference and invite public attendance at that location would contravene all of the guidance from the president of the United States, the governor, and public-health officials like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In this state of a proclaimed national emergency and under a similar declaration by the governor, it is the opinion of this office that it is not currently 'feasible' for public agencies to be required [to] 'provide meeting-room conditions'—in the sense of a physical location where observers would be in close proximity to each other.”