When nearly 200 people packed a recent city council meeting in Jersey City, the city’s local cable TV channel had a camera there to capture the proceedings and stream them live — into the hallway, just outside the chambers. Many people were surprised that, in 2022, municipalities are not required to livestream their meetings.

“The pandemic showed us that public agencies are capable of streaming their meetings and using platforms such as Zoom to conduct their meetings and giving the public the ability to comment, ask questions by video or audio or text message or even email. And now that we’re transitioning to a post-pandemic setting, I think that public agencies like Jersey City are missing an opportunity to use those technologies to expand access to public meetings,” said Walter Luers, a board member of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government. “If we can have therapy remotely and we can have routine doctor’s appointments remotely, then we can absolutely have public meetings remotely,” he said.