This week is Sunshine Week in Pennsylvania, where issues involving government transparency are highlighted across the state. AroundAmbler.com, of course, will focus on Ambler, Lower Gwynedd, Upper Dublin, and Whitpain. We will do one article Monday through Friday on different aspects of transparency.

Today, we are going to focus on something that isn’t required by law, but isn’t hard to do, and has become more and more prevalent over the past decade. Not offering it is a choice. The issue is the availability of public meetings on video, or at least audio.

For AroundAmbler.com’s purposes, these recordings are important as it allows us to watch more meetings and offer more detailed reporting. For the public, it makes their local government more accessible and gives much more information than minutes.

Across the four municipalities we cover, there are often meetings scheduled against one another, or we have a personal conflict. So it greatly helps with our coverage if we can’t be there.

Being able to include video or audio with our reporting, also allows the public to hear what we are reporting on for themselves, so it also acts to hold us accountable. It also allows for more timely reporting, as video and audio are usually provided by the next day, vs. having to wait for the minutes to be voted on at a future meeting.

Here is how we score the local municipalities on this issue. The first five points reflect to how they handle meetings of elected officials. The additional five points represent the availability of meetings such as planning and zoning.

Ambler Borough | 7.5 out of 10
Ambler offers video of its council and planning meetings. It does not offer zoning hearings. We also wish they were available YouTube.com, however, of the municipal video systems that are used locally (sans YouTube.com), it has a better one.

The audio isn’t always the best.

Lower Gwynedd Township | 5 out of 10
Lower Gwynedd does a fine job with its board of supervisor meetings, but does not offer video or audio for planning and zoning meetings.

Upper Dublin Township | 7.5 out of 10
Upper Dublin offers video of its commissioner and planning meetings. It does not offer zoning hearings. We also wish they were available YouTube.com.

Whitpain Township | 10 out of 10
Whitpain offers video for all of its meetings.