Remote meetings extension bill shipped to Healey’s desk

Lawmakers on Thursday sent Gov. Maura Healey another extension of pandemic-era policies allowing remote access for public meetings in Massachusetts, and the debate around making that authority permanent is already taking shape.

The legislation (H 62) that the House and Senate passed during lightly-attended sessions Thursday would keep in place language granting public bodies flexibility to hold meetings virtually or in hybrid formats, as well as measures lowering the number of people necessary for a quorum at Town Meeting and allowing representative Town Meetings to be held with remote participation.

Those COVID-era policies are set to expire March 31, and the bill pushes that sunset date until June 30, 2027. Healey has 10 days to act on the bill.

Municipal leaders had been urging Beacon Hill to keep remote and hybrid meeting options in place, arguing that they have boosted civic participation and made it easier for local governments to manage operations.

“We hear all the time from members of select boards, school committees, planning boards, you name it, from across the South Shore, which I represent, but really across the entire state that, you know, some good things did come out of COVID-19,” said Sen. Patrick O’Connor of Weymouth.

The senator said municipal officials have “a larger amount of flexibility ... in being able to attend meetings, vote on meetings” while the general public is now “able to testify and not worry about child care or being able to make a meeting” held with only in-person participation.

Government boards in Massachusetts were granted the ability to meet without a physical quorum of members present and without affording public access to the physical meeting locations under an order Baker announced on March 12, 2020 -- two days after Baker declared an emergency in Massachusetts and one day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

In the five years since, it has become the norm for most public meetings to have at least some option to follow along remotely and the number of government bodies that regularly livestream their meetings has significantly increased.

“These are incredible steps that we’re taking today to extend this, extending it with a larger runway than we usually give as well. And my hope is that we can make this permanent,” O’Connor, a Republican, added.

There is bipartisan support in the Senate for making the hybrid meeting allowance permanent.

Senate President Karen Spilka said Monday that she looked forward to passing the extension to 2027 “and then working in our chamber to enact a permanent hybrid meeting law.” Healey offered a plan to permanently enshrine the option for hybrid public meetings as part of a local option tax bill she filed in January .

With many in the Legislature having expressed support for making a hybrid meeting environment permanent, the advocacy is shifting to focus on whether public bodies should be required to offer remote access to their meetings.

“Without the ability to participate remotely, people across the Commonwealth would be shut out from important public conversations about government decisions that directly impact their lives,” a collection of advocacy groups said in a statement. “Now, the next step is to permanently guarantee hybrid access to open meetings so equitable access cannot be denied from town to town or meeting to meeting. We look forward to working with House and Senate leadership to get this done this session.”

That collective -- which includes ACLU of Massachusetts, Boston Center for Independent Living, Common Cause Massachusetts, Disability Law Center, League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, and more -- said its members support a bill (H 3299) from New Bedford Rep. Antonio Cabral to permanently update the Open Meeting Law to require a hybrid meeting format in addition to the option of attending in person.

That bill has nearly 40 co-sponsors, including the minority leaders of both branches. It was referred to the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association said that making the current hybrid meeting options permanent “continues to be a priority for the MMA this legislative session.” The MMA, though, supports doing so via Healey’s bill or standalone bills from Rep. Danielle Gregoire (H 3342) and Sen. Jacob Oliveira (S 2197).

While Cabral’s bill would require that “all meetings of a public body shall be physically open, and remotely accessible, to the public,” the Gregoire-Oliveira legislation and Healey’s proposal would maintain remote access as an option for what the MMA estimates is more than 10,000 boards, committees and commissions across Massachusetts.

“Despite good intentions, mandates for hybrid meetings are not practical and logistically infeasible given how local government operates,” MMA Executive Director Adam Chapdelaine said. “We’re grateful to Gov. Healey for her thoughtful and common-sense proposal, and greatly appreciate similar bills filed by Rep. Gregoire and Sen. Oliveira, which provide additional options for legislative action.”