Newtown Supervisor Zoom Meetings Not Open to Residents

UPDATE: Unfortunately, no acceptable proposal was received from any consultant or company to assist the Township to have Zoom BOS meetings that can be attended by residents. At the August 26, 2020, BOS meeting, the Township Manager said there will be no further proposals to consider and BOS Zoom meetings will continue as usual - no public attendees welcome!

Wrightstown Township does it, Warrington Township does it, even tiny Newtown Borough does it. Practically every township and borough surrounding Newtown Township does it. They all host Supervisor/Council Zoom meetings that are open to anyone in the public who wishes to attend.

Figure: Screen grab of the April 22, 2020, Newtown Board of Supervisors first-ever meeting via Zoom! Unfortunately, the public was not invited to attend.

Since April 22, 2020, when Newtown Township first started using Zoom for its public Board of Supervisors (BOS) meetings, the township has been reluctant to follow suit for fear of being “zoom bombed,” which happened once when an open meeting was tried without following proper security features recommended by Zoom (see below). Instead, the township adopted a policy whereby residents can submit comments via email and the comments will be read during the meeting.

What is “Zoom Bombing?”

Zoom bombing or Zoom raiding is an unwanted, disruptive intrusion, generally by Internet trolls and hackers, into a video conference call. In response, Zoom, citing the sudden influx of new users due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been taking measures to increase security of their teleconferencing application (see below).

Understandably, Township Manager Micah Lewis is concerned about zoom bombing because Newtown simultaneously broadcasts BOS meetings live via cable channels 22 (Comcast) and 40 (Fios). Mr. Lewis said the Township could face fines from the FCC and/or repercussions from cable providers if the content contains pornography – the most popular subject of zoom bombers. This is NOT a concern with other Zoom meetings, which therefore allow the public to join the discussion.

How to Run Secure Zoom Meetings

Practically every government municipality that runs successful, open Zoom meetings implements one or both of the following two security features:

(1) Use a waiting room. Mr. Lewis contends that “meeting rooms are not the answer because [guests] can not ‘see’ or hear the meeting from a room.” As other municipalities have shown, however, guests can be invited into the meeting or at least submit questions and comments even when they are not visible. See below for how Harris Township manages this.

(2) Shut off ability of guests to share screens.

Newtown Tried & Failed – Why?

Newtown Twp tried to open up the June 10, 2020 BOS meeting to participation by residents following these rules:

• Everyone will enter on mute.
• All outside participants will have their audio/video turned off until they are speaking.
• Waiting room option can be used, however, the person in the waiting room can not hear the meeting (if not watching live on the government access channel)
• Participants should be reminded that their names will appear on the screen.
• Participants should be reminded that the meeting will be recorded.
• For public comment: Participants should clearly state (or spell if needed) their name and address for public comment.

• Participants can “raise their hands” and be unmuted when called on by the Chairman during public comment or to comment on an agenda item.
• Emailed comments accepted as we have been doing and will be read aloud.

Unfortunately, that did not work because screen sharing was turned on by default – the only mode for regular Zoom meetings. An unidentified participant - who should not have been allowed in as a guest in the first place - zoom bombed the meeting by sharing a screen showing a pornographic video.

How to Prevent Another Failure

To prevent this, Zoom recommends webinars for Town Hall meetings. Unlike regular Zoom meetings, Zoom webinars are designed so that ONLY the host and any designated panelists can share their video, audio and screen. Webinars allow view-only attendees. They have the ability to interact via Q&A, Chat, and answer polling questions. The host can also unmute the attendees. Attendees in webinars, can not rename themselves as well.

Though Zoom provides options for you to get more social with your attendees, your average webinar has one or a few people speaking to an audience. I attended such a Zoom webinar on July 28, 2020, hosted by the National Black Police Association. The topic was “Hiring – Considerations for Police Diversity.” Only the panelists were visible. Other participants were invisible, but were able to ask questions and send comments to the moderator.

Mr. Lewis claims that “Zoom is set up to work great with corporate entities, however is more difficult with the government due to the sunshine law provisions, etc.” However, as noted by Warrington and other Bucks County township officials, this is not true (see “Case Study 1” below).

Case Study 1: Warrington Township

Warrington Twp manages to run successful Zoom BOS meetings without suffering any "zoom bombing." Here’s how Warrington Township Supervisor Fred Gaines describes the process they use.

“To participate in a Zoom meeting you have to either be invited by the Host or request to attend as a guest. Guests must register with their name and email address but they are kept in listen mode unless the host un-mutes them. The fact that they are muted prevents people from Zoom-bombing the meeting since the host can always re-mute them if they attempt to Bomb the meeting or ramble on in excess of the allowable time. When legitimate guests are invited to speak their audio is turned on and they can participate in any back and forth questioning. The Governor's emergency orders allow for meeting to be held virtually. The process described above will withstand any challenges of violating the Sunshine Act,” according to Gaines.

Case Study 2: Harris Township

Amy Farkas, Harris Township Manager, hosts BOS Zoom webinars. Here’s what she had to say on the PSATS member bulletin board:

“Registration over zoom is required if the meeting is set up as a webinar. The webinar format on zoom is a great tool if you think you will have a lot of members of the public who want to attend. You can assign roles to each person (i.e. staff and your elected officials are panelists and the public are attendees). Once the person enters their email address, zoom automatically sends out a link to the meeting.”

Ms. Farkas doesn’t see how registration violates the Sunshine Law, “since you aren't excluding anyone from attending. We've been zooming and also have our meetings on our local government access channel. We also started a youtube channel and have been trying to stream meetings live on that. I think as long as you are giving the public options to participate, you are meeting the law.”

Don’t get me started about live streaming via Youtube or Facebook. I’m happy if Newtown Township takes one small step for residents and one giant leap for the township by simply running secure Zoom meetings open to the public!

Related Content

• “BCCT Editorial: How To Do Public Meetings in a Time of COVID-19”
• “Will Open Government Be a Casualty of COVID-19?”