Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. today announced that Governor Kathy Hochul has convened the State Legislature for an extraordinary session to address, among other things, amending the Open Meetings Law (OML) in an effort to allow virtual public meetings to temporarily continue in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

On March 13, 2020, in response to a disaster emergency declared pursuant to New York State Executive Law, former Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order 202.1 suspending certain aspects of the OML relating to in-person attendance. This order was extended a number of times during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, when former Governor Cuomo announced that effective June 24, 2021, he would not be extending the state of emergency, public bodies across the state were no longer able to conduct virtual meetings.

Today, the State Legislature will be back in Albany to authorize state and local public bodies (with the exception of the Legislature) to conduct meetings remotely until January 15, 2022, provided that the public has the ability to watch or listen to the meeting and the meeting is recorded and transcribed. Assemblyman Thiele had been lobbying for the passage of legislation to facilitate the continued use of remote public meetings and had introduced his own legislation (A.8108) to achieve this. The bill remained under review by the Assembly Governmental Operations Committee.

Assemblyman Thiele said, “As the Chair of the Assembly Local Governments Committee, I am thrilled that Governor Hochul has called us back for a special session to address this critical matter of concern for our local governments. COVID-19 has changed our lives and how we go about day-to-day business. What started out as a necessity evolved for many public bodies into a convenience. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over yet. We are battling with the surge of the Delta variant and our laws must adapt to our current state of affairs. I thank Governor Hochul and Speaker Carl Heastie for convening the State Legislature to address this important topic.”