SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – Plenty of people filled the seats at the San Diego County Board of Supervisors chambers on Tuesday evening.
They had gathered for the first public meeting of the Transparency Committee held by Supervisors Joel Anderson and Nora Vargas.
Many were having issues over the aspect of trying to appeal for more open and transparent county government following last Tuesday's agenda item 19, which called for misinformation to be considered a public health crisis.
"We want more transparency. We want more transparency about the COVID numbers. We want more transparency about important agenda items that should have more than three day’s notice for the public,” Amy Reichert of ReOpen San Diego said.
Others are also calling for different form of transparency with it comes to COVID-19 data and information.
"And knowing that transparency also includes grants, procurements, contracts. We want to make sure that all communities are served,” JoAnne Fields of the API Initiative said.
Anderson told ABC 10News that transparency was one of his campaign promises. That's the goal of this committee; open the county's doors to hear from the public on being more open for their constituents.
He added that he was thankful of Supervisor Nathan Fletcher’s support when wanting to form the transparency committee.
"Too often in each county, things are decided downtown that impact our lives without us even knowing that people are voting on it,” Anderson said.
He said there was a lot of feedback on how the board can be more open about their upcoming decisions like the one from last Tuesday.
"One is a lot of people would like to have more time with the board letters before we vote on them, so they have time to react. So, moving it to 30 days instead of a week would be huge, especially when we are talking about major policy changes,” Anderson said.
There's was some frustration from last Tuesday’s decision. But, there’s some hope from holding this type of open forum.
"We're really happy that they're listening to the people. That's number one,” Reichert said.
"I do think it's a good effort on our elected officials, on our county board of supervisors,” Fields said.
Anderson said he couldn't comment on any subcommittee having this kind of public comment before he was in office.
He also tells us that he thinks that all subcommittees should be held in an open hearing, so things are done in a more public way.
