At the Council Meeting Monday, we’ll be voting on the adoption of a Social Media Policy for City Council — It’s the first such policy specifically for Council and has the potential to provide important guidance to Councilmembers now and into the future.

Worked on collaboratively over the last seven months, most of the content is a consolidation of existing laws, just addressed to their particular applications in the social media space. For example:

  1. Already existing Ethics rules prevent Councilmembers from endorsing political candidates, since our roles are non-partisan. So this policy reiterates that social media posts should not contain any endorsements either.

  2. Also, existing Ethics rules prevent a Councilmember from promoting their own campaign when they’re acting in their official capacity. So this policy reiterates that a Councilmember can’t promote or link to their own campaign from their Councilmember social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, etc.

  3. Another relates to a U.S. Supreme Court case last year which formally established that official elected official social media pages are considered a ‘public forum’, and therefore comments cannot be unreasonably blocked or moderated. (Reasonable restrictions are permitted around things like profanity, threats, spamming, overrun, etc.)

  4. A fourth, is that existing Open Meetings laws prevent a quorum of Councilmembers (3 or more) from debating policy decisions under consideration outside of an appropriately published public meeting. So in social media world, this means that there can’t be a comment thread where more than two Councilmembers are sharing an exchange discussing what decision to make.

  5. One last highlight is that Councilmembers, as the City’s Legislative Branch, are appropriately considered distinct from the City’s Executive Branch. As a result, the Executive Branch can support Councilmembers in the fulfillment of their official duties online, but does not hold responsibility to govern as they do for City Departments and other City social media pages. It is empowered to act to the degree needed to enforce applicable laws or protect City’s legal interests, intellectual property, or public reputation.

You can read the full policy as part of the meeting packet for the September 22 Council meeting and please feel free to reach out to me with any comments, suggestions, or questions as well!

At the end of the day, the theme of the document is to aid Councilmembers in understanding how the standing laws bear on their conduct in the social media space so we can uphold the standards that we’re all pledged to and reflect due professionalism in the business of the Council.