State meetings Web site has snags

Online public meeting notices may not be doing what lawmakers originally intended.

The Utah Legislature passed a new law in 2008 that requires all government entities to post all public meeting notices on a state-run Web site. The Utah public meetings Web site, utah.gov/pmn, was designed with public meeting notices in mind.

The Web site, the first of its kind in the nation, may be receiving some praise for being ahead of other states, but some say it is far from perfect.

"Is the public meeting notice system working? I don't think it is. We have a way to go," said, Joel Campbell, vice president of the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Campbell added, "People aren't getting their meeting agendas when they need to be."

However, creators of the public meeting Web site believe the site is doing quite well.

"We have had over 45,000 visits to the Web site and over 18,000 notices have been posted, just this fiscal year," said Patricia Smith-Mansfield, director of state archives.

More visits don't mean progress though, according to Kane County Clerk/Auditor Karla Johnson, who is responsible for posting the notices on the state's Web site. Johnson said the Web site is slow and sometimes may take up to a half an hour to upload meeting agendas.

But that isn't Johnson's biggest worry about the Web site. "My biggest concern is not that people don't have computers but that people don't use it," she said.

Johnson prefers the previously used e-mail method to inform the public. "Within two or three minutes I could send out the information to everyone that wanted it." Johnson said 300 people were on her e-mail list.

Since the change has taken effect, attendance at commission meetings has gone way down and previously, "people were less angry because they were getting information."

Since residents are now required to sign up on the state Web site, it's been trouble for Kane County. "We have had a lot of resistance to the public signing up (on the state Web site)."

Johnson said her list of 300 has dropped to only 20. She believes the reason for the sharp decrease has to do with the hassle of having to sign up on the state Web site and logging in, rather than just receiving an e-mail in their in-box in the past.

"Putting these notices (only) on an obscure Web site that most people aren't into isn't the best way to get information out to the public," Johnson said.

People in the area spare no effort in letting Johnson know how they feel about the change.