A new way to hear from the public
Barrett & Greene Inc — Many cities and counties have a sincere desire to learn more about what their residents feel about potential policies. One traditional, and common, way of doing this is through council meetings that are open to the public, which often attract the same small group of people who have the time and inclination to focus on the topic being discussed.
These sessions are frequently made up of an hour or two of council business, followed by people standing at a microphone to talk for three minutes, just at a time when everyone on the dais is worn out.
But there’s a far better system than that, which has gained traction around the world, and is finally coming to the United States. The approach uses Civic Assemblies, which bring in a randomly-selected, broadly representative group of people, who are involved in a process that includes being educated about the topic at hand, discussing potential approaches and finally creating a series of recommendations to advise their elected and appointed leaders.
These have become particularly popular in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Latin America (notably Brazil), some of which get as high as 15 percent of the mixture of people invited to participate from a wide variety of demographic groups.
Entities in the United States are just beginning to use this potentially powerful technique; the largest of which is Snohomish County, Washington, which has a population of over 870,000 and forms part of the Seattle Metropolitan Area. Their list of recommendations was put together on June 6 and 7.
Snohomish County’s civic assembly was organized by Civic Genius, which used to be an independent organization, then came under the National Civic League umbrella in late 2024. The county was considering entering the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence and leaders there wanted to get a good sense of what the public really thought was important before jumping headlong into the unknown.