By Evan Wyloge
Arizona school boards will still not be required to provide live-streaming video recordings of their board meetings, a proposal that state lawmakers approved earlier this year, leaving the practice as optional.
The continuation of the status quo comes after Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed House Bill 2380 on June 19th.
The bill would have required all public school governing boards to provide public access to a live video feed of each governing board meeting and online access to meeting recordings for at least five years. The bill exempted districts with 250 or fewer students from the live-streaming video requirement.
In a letter explaining her decision, Hobbs wrote that the veto was influenced by the potential costs and technical hurdles that would have been involved in implementing the proposed changes.
“Transparency in all public bodies is a necessity,” Hobbs wrote in the letter. “I am concerned that the threshold for providing a live video feed was amended from 5,000 to 250 students and could add costs to rural districts where connectivity is an issue.”
The veto comes after a monthslong investigation by The Beam into the practices of school boards and whether they provide public access to recordings of school board meetings. The investigation found that only about 40% of districts make recordings and provide them to the public online.
Around 30% of school districts did not make recordings of their board meetings, instead opting to provide only the legally required meeting minutes.
Advocates for the bill, including organizations such as the Goldwater Institute, argued that while meeting minutes can help the public see what the board voted on, they can be sparse on details and omit key elements of the board’s discussion.
Another 16% of school boards made board meeting recordings but required a formal public record request to access them.
In a small number of cases, The Beam’s investigation found that some school boards were making recordings to help create meeting minutes, but then had deleted the recordings before the required retention period ended, which attorneys said violated state transparency laws. Making recordings is optional, but when boards make them for the purpose of generating minutes, they must be maintained for at least three months.
HB 2380 would have required all but the smallest of school districts to make recordings and post them online to anyone who wants to see them.
Rep. Matt Gress, the author of the bill, said he will continue to work on the issue in future legislative sessions.
“I’m disappointed that House Bill 2380 will not become law,” the Phoenix-based Republican lawmaker said. “Parents and taxpayers are demanding greater transparency. And I think this bill would have delivered on that concern, especially in terms of how districts operate and spend public dollars. So we’ll come back and hear feedback from the stakeholders.”
The Arizona School Administrators, an organization that provides guidance to school administrators and shapes education policy, took a neutral position on the bill.
Rebecca Beebe, the organization’s director of governmental affairs, expressed a concern similar to Hobbs.
“Staff capacity and turnover, cost, and lack of infrastructure are absolutely valid concerns when it comes to a district’s ability to comply with all kinds of mandates,” Beebe wrote in an email. “That said, Arizona school districts are some of the most transparent and accountable public entities in the state and country.”
Hobbs urged lawmakers championing the bill to find ways to address the concerns about costs and technical challenges, leaving the door open for changes in state law in future legislative sessions.
“The sponsor should collaborate with education stakeholders to find consensus and limit unintended consequences on our small, rural districts.”
The bill also came with other provisions that had garnered opposition from school board associations. Notably, the bill would have required school district boards to hold their meetings in public facilities within the district. Additionally, board members would have been allowed to remove items from consent agendas — the bundled items routinely voted on as a bloc — before a vote. And detailed cost and purpose disclosures for any out-of-state travel for school employees and governing board members would have been required by the bill.
Heidi Vega, the director of communications for the Arizona School Boards Association, said the organization opposed HB 2380 for two reasons — both with the challenges of small, rural districts in mind. The first concerned the requirement to hold district board meetings inside the district.
“Arizona’s schools, especially in rural Arizona, could face a multitude of issues if fires, floods, or other natural disasters happen,” Vega wrote in an email. “Arizona has called for states of emergency in the past, and it’s important that we are not overly prescriptive in statute to the point where it would be impossible for governing boards to meet.”
Vega’s organization also opposed the requirement to provide live-streaming video of board meetings when this could pose a challenge for districts, such as “in extremely rural parts of our state that may not have the technology or the money to provide this at this time.”
She also highlighted how internet infrastructure could be a limiting factor.
“When you are requiring every school district to comply with a mandate, you have to ensure that they can actually do so,” Vega wrote. “What if [the] internet is down on the Navajo Nation, or in [a] rural school in Cochise County? We worry about connectivity issues in attempting to implement this legislation.”
Gress said future legislation could address the cost challenges by including a grant for districts that need funding to help pay for the equipment required to provide video recordings of their meetings.
He also said it might be possible to provide exemptions for districts that face infrastructure limitations, like poor internet connectivity.
Though government transparency and public access is not an issue that intrinsically comes with partisan positions, the bill highlighted the tribal nature of Arizona’s Legislature, with support coming only from Republican lawmakers. Opposition to the bill came only from Democratic lawmakers, who expressed concerns during legislative hearings centering on bill provisions unrelated to meeting recording requirements.