Kalispell council at odds over social media policies

Although the Kalispell City Council makes no formal decisions during work sessions, that didn’t stop a spirited debate about communication policies on Monday.

Mayor Mark Johnson called the work session “the most godforsaken, most individualistic meeting [he has] ever sat through.”

The main topic of debate during the council’s return to the City Council Chambers centered around appropriate use of social media by council members.

City Manager Doug Russell was asked to review the council’s communication policies after councilor Ryan Hunter attracted attention for strongly worded comments posted by members of the public on his Facebook page.

Russell advised councilors to refrain from discussing any public policy issues on social media forums.

He cited concerns that council members’ personal opinions could be misconstrued as official city positions. He also warned against violating the state’s open meeting laws, which require government bodies to provide the public with “reasonable opportunity to participate in the operation of governmental agencies prior to the final decision of the agency.”

These laws, Russell explained, could be interpreted to include social media posts as infractions simply by virtue of a single council member reading a social media post from another council member. Merely viewing councilors’ public statements on policy issues, without performing any other action related to the issue, could be enough to go against the letter of open meeting laws.

But Hunter offered a different interpretation.

“State law and our policies and procedures are intended to…increase transparency in government, but we can’t interpret those rules to limit my social media use in a way that would result in less transparency, not more,” Hunter contended. “That can’t be the right interpretation of state law.”

Hunter said he consulted Dan Clark with Montana State University’s Local Government Center. “I felt comfortable coming out of that conversation that what I’m doing is legal and acceptable,” he reported.

Hunter explained he maintains certain guidelines to use social media as an informative tool, without giving the false impression that his online posts represent an official city position. These include changes Hunter made to his Facebook page description to clarify the page contains his personal opinions and a general reluctance to engage in the comments section of most posts.

“We have to find a way to be comfortable with this,” Hunter urged. “I think it’s important that elected officials have this means to communicate with their constituents and the community.”

HUNTER WAS backed by council member Sid Daoud, who joined the meeting remotely and raised concerns about social media bans infringing on council members’ First Amendment rights.

But many of the work session participants maintained a hard line against council members participating in virtually any social media conversations regarding city business.

Opponents of council members’ social media presence took issue with both the possibility of identifying as a city councilor on social media and purposely leaving off that identifier.

The anti-social media camp also discussed the differences between expressing opinions on a social media page, in a letter to the editor, on the radio or on a personal website.

There was further debate over the responsibilities of page administrators when it comes to the comments on their pages.

“Social media can be a dangerous, dangerous thing when supporters and commenters on your page aren’t addressed,” warned council member Sam Nunnally.

Hunter said he was unable to turn off comments on his page and offered to delete every comment on his posts. But that proposal had its detractors, too.

“If you go in and edit, that’s changing, potentially, the public record,” Mayor Johnson said. “It’s a slippery slope. It’s a no-win situation.”

There was, in fact, no apparent win for either side of the debate after almost an hour and a half of back-and-forth conversation during the work session.

At one point, council members Tim Kluesner and Ryan Hunter got into a heated exchange.

“What happens if you get sued?” Kluesner asked Hunter. “Is it worth it?

“You don’t want to go through that,” Kluesner continued. “You don’t know where it’s going to come from. It will knock you on the back of the head…just a word of caution.”

The tone of the discussion prompted the mayor to interject that the work session was “going nowhere.”

The discontent among the council members seemed to persist into Russell’s report at the end of the work session, at which time he brought up Hunter’s proposal from the council’s last meeting to discuss putting in place a citywide mask mandate.

Russell questioned how the council, if it chose to pursue such a mandate, would enforce the requirement, but Hunter opted not to continue to pursue the idea.

“I know there’s no support for it, or very little,” a resigned Hunter said shortly before the conclusion of the work session.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at 758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.