Redondo Beach has launched social networking pilots to create greater transparency and public participation, but the city attorney warns of complications concerning California’s open meeting law, the First Amendment and the expense of maintaining the sites. -db
Redondo Beach News
August 18, 2010
By Sascha Bush
The City Attorney’s office spoke to the Redondo Beach City Council at its Aug. 17 meeting about the practical uses and potential perils of today’s most popular social networking media vis-a-vis local government.
As Facebook and its kin increasingly become the primary source of information and communication for many people, many cities have become fans of the trend – creating Facebook pages, Tweeting local news and updates, posting video on YouTube.
Although Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Nixle (Redondo has pilots of each) are free to use and can reach potentially millions of users, doing so is not without risk, City Attorney Mike Webb warned.
Twitter, with its 140-character posting limit, and Nixle, which is used for public safety news and alerts, pose less of a liability as both are used more for quick updates of information.
A Facebook “friend” page, however, would be open to comments from residents, employees, visitors – and none of it could be regulated (or even turned off) without risk of violating First Amendment rights. Council members could not post freely without risk of Brown Act violations. Information posted on the page would have to be archived to comply with public records laws, but Facebook does not offer that option and doing so can be expensive – so much so that San Francisco has already found archiving its Facebook page too exorbitant a cost to handle
“There’s going to be case law on this,” said Webb. “I’d prefer it not be case law with the city of Redondo Beach in the title.”
Staff recommended disabling the city’s current Facebook “fan” pilot page for the interim; Mayor Mike Gin disagreed with that recommendation.
“Traditional government is very conservative,” said Gin. “Now we’re emerging into this social media… we need to embrace it.”
Gin pointed that that online communities built within social network sites tend to be self-policing (regarding inappropriate comments) and that as there have been no problems on the Redondo page and its 3,000-plus “fans” yet, the page should be kept active but “closely monitored.”
Councilman Pat Aust preferred to err on the side of caution.
“The liability far exceeds the benefit at this point,” he said. “There are too many unforeseen consequences.”
Copyright 2010 The Beach Reporter – Los Angeles Newspaper Group