Notes on “Hybrid” Meetings
G Jackson/30 Oct 2022

The term “hybrid meeting” can translate into several different formats. Some are easy to achieve, some not. Some comply with the Brown Act (if AB361's exemptions expire), but most don't. The Brown Act, absent the current AB361 exemptions, allows teleconferencing, but only if it satisfies various very narrow requirements for who participates to what degree from where.

It’s important to note at the outset an important difference between

·         “hybrid” meetings, those where participation can be either in person or remotely via some form of teleconferencing, and

·         “broadcast” meetings, those where participation requires physical presence but what happens is also broadcast for the public to view (or listen to) remotely.

“Broadcast” meetings have some technology requirements, but they’re much easier to implement that any kind of “hybrid” meeting, and there’s no expectation that watchers will have the same experience as participants. California code expressly permits broadcast meetings (https://gregj.us/3U7QU3H).

Brown Act/AB361

In general, the Brown Act requires that the official part of meetings—where motions, votes, and other official acts take place—be in locations physically accessible to the public. They can be in multiple locations connected by teleconference, but each official location must be accessible to the public, and notice of meetings must be posted physically at each meeting location.

Even if it’s possible for “outsiders” to watch and listen to the meeting remotely, or to submit written or oral comments, in general it’s not acceptable for meeting participants—Trustees, committee members, and so forth in our case—to  attend officially via Zoom or similar mechanisms from their homes, cars, or offices.

As currently enacted, AB361 (which replaced the Governor’s earlier executive orders) exempts entities from those restrictive Brown Act requirements. It permits use of Zoom, Teams, Webex, GoToMeeting, and other such technologies, and for official attendance to be possible from online locations not physically accessible to the public (such as their home computers or personal phones), but only "during a declared state of emergency" (the text is at https://gregj.us/3z2bTwO). That’s what has enabled LJCPA and other entities subject to the Brown Act to meet online during the pandemic.

The Governor has announced that the current state of emergency will end Feb 28, 2023 (https://gregj.us/3sGC0FS). So far as I know, he’s announced no plans for an executive order or legislation to extend the existing exemptions. The principal implication of the Governor’s announcement is that as of March 1 our Trustees must attend meetings in locations physically accessible to the public to vote, and for their attendance to count toward quorum.

However, it’s possible for us to allow public attendance via some form of “hybrid meeting”. We need to consider what that might mean and how we’d make it work.

Hybrid Format A

The simplest "hybrid" meeting is one where

  1. the in-person physical meeting can be easily captured by a single camera and microphone,
  2. that camera and microphone are connected to a computer that joins the corresponding online session (Zoom, Teams, GoToMeeting, Webex, or whatever),
  3. the computer's audio output is connected to a speaker system in the meeting room (and no other audio inputs are), so that physical participants can hear what remote attendees says, and likewise
  4. the computer's video output is displayed on a screen in the meeting room (in either duplicate or extend mode).

Small groups can meet easily under these conditions. The Brown Act allows such meetings under certain conditions, notably that

·         eligible participants must have access equivalent to that of physical participants (it’s far from clear what that means), and

·         a quorum of the body--that'd be our Trustees--are physically present at the publicly accessible physical meetings places(s) in the body's jurisdiction (so a Trustee joining from Hawaii, Oakland, or a distant campground wouldn't count toward quorum).

Hybrid Format B

As the group or audience grows, things grow more complicated. In that case generally all remote participants must be muted unless the meeting host--whoever's at the computer in the meeting room--allows them to unmute. People who join remotely can pose questions, make comments, or request to speak via the Chat function or the "Raise Hand" function, or alternatively by texting someone who's present in person (generally not who's hosting, since the host is focused on managing the session). The remote experience becomes increasingly different from the in-person one.

When a lot of people attend meetings in person, or there are too many Trustees for one microphone, Format A becomes problematic: the single camera and microphone (#1) can't capture all the in-person comments, questions, discussion, or dynamics of the meeting, and so remote participants don't have full access to the meeting. That presumably violates the Brown Act.

The Phil Donohue method (someone running around with a mic, as used to happen at the Rec Center) doesn't solve this problem. So for larger meetings two additional requirements typically ensue:

  1. the meeting room is equipped with sufficient fixed, portable, tracking, or omnidirectional microphones to enable full capture of comments, questions, and discussion throughout the meeting room, and
  2. the meeting room is equipped with sufficient fixed or moveable cameras to make sure that whoever's speaking (and ideally the general room dynamic) is visible to online participants.

#5 typically requires a facility equipped with an audio mixing board and the appropriate assortment of wired, wireless, and omindirectional microphones. #6 requires at least a tracking camera or one or more cameras managed physically by operators.

Good modern conference spaces are built for hybrid meetings (I have in mind modern boardrooms, although they typically don't involve a participating audience, and larger facilities such as Qualcomm's auditorium, where I've participated in huge meetings for college applicants and their families, or—if I’m reading photos accurately—the City Council chambers).

So far as I know, there's no such facility in La Jolla, except possibly at Conrad, LOT, or maybe LJHS. Quite likely UCSD has such facilities, but they aren't physically in our jurisdiction and so would run afoul of Brown Act requirements. So we either need to invest in the necessary equipment and staffing to bring one of the local meeting venues up to par, or "hybrid" meetings aren't going to work.