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<p>Elected officials attending meetings by phone is nothing new. In fact, it is increasingly common. If you are a meeting junkie who sits in on every session of a specific municipal council, school board or other government body, odds are high you will see it happen sooner or later.</p><p>When Kathy Dobash justifies participating in 40 percent of 2016 county council meetings by phone, her reasons are not readily dismissed. The trip from Hazleton to Wilkes-Barre can be treacherous in bad weather and can consume a lot of time even in good conditions.</p><p>The math is simple: A minimum of a one-hour round trip for each of 25 voting meetings equals more than a full day of driving for a job that pays $8,000 a year. Add all the other hours of work a council member should put into the position while holding down another job that actually pays the bills and &#8220;phoning it in&#8221; becomes pretty attractive.</p><p>But &#8230;</p><p>&#8226; As they say, &#8220;you knew the demands when you ran for the post.&#8221;</p><p>&#8226; Meeting dates, locations and times are all set in advance for an entire year. Shouldn&#8217;t a person be able to craft the rest of their lives &#8212; barring emergencies &#8212; around that responsibility?</p><p>&#8226; Phone attendance can and will be compromised by faulty connections, forcing people to repeat themselves (wasting time) and potentially leading to misunderstanding on an important vote.</p><p>&#8226; While meeting in person is not <em>de </em><em>facto</em> more efficient, in theory it should be. It is a simple fact that seeing a person&#8217;s face and body language can tell you as much about what they are saying as hearing their words.</p><p>&#8226; What happens when a member of the audience presents printed material to the council, or a guest gives a PowerPoint presentation?</p><p>&#8226; The &#8220;low-pay&#8221; argument is weak not simply because candidates know the amount when they decide to run, but because there are elected officials who are paid nothing for their service (for example, 99 school board members in Luzerne County) .</p><p>All that said, this is 2017. Anyone with a smart phone and an Internet connection can broadcast what they want, when they want for free on Facebook and other apps. Skype has been around since 2003, FaceTime since 2010. Videoconferencing is common in the business world, and distance learning is increasingly available from kindergarten through doctoral programs.</p><p>The fact that five of 11 county council members attempted to attend Tuesday&#8217;s meeting by phone can arguably be viewed as a failure of real commitment to the position. But the fact that the council meeting room could only handle three of those calls is equally a failure of the county keeping up with technology.</p><p>Bottom line:</p><p>Ideally, county council could and should be set up to handle high-quality long-distance video attendance by as many members as necessary; getting the job done well is more important than getting it done in place.</p><p>But make no mistake, government becomes <em>less</em> transparent with fewer bodies actually in the meeting room.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Kathy Dobash attends the County Council meeting by phone most weeks. 11/22/2015 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_TTL112515countycouncil5CMYK.jpg</photo0><caption0>Kathy Dobash attends the County Council meeting by phone most weeks. 11/22/2015 Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>

Our voice: Plenty of reasons for council members to be at meetings