To Tweet or Not To Tweet [Media]

So some of our metro council members here in Nashville have been live-tweeting at meetings. Awesome, right? Well, now they have been banned from doing so because apparently this violates something called the open meetings act, because tweeting is considered closed communication since not all constituents have access to social media. My opinion is that this actually opens the meetings to people who may not choose to go to council meetings every Tuesday (after covering the Brentwood City Council for a month or so, I don't blame them). Though apparently they're allowed to tweet as long as they're not "deliberating."

Of course, I found out about all of this on my favorite local blog, Nashvillest, and the best part of the Nashvillest coverage of the tweet-ban is that I finally realized who my council person is – of course it's the guy who they refer to as the snarky Twitterer:

It was a good run, but at least Councilman Cole’s string of snarky responses makes things at least partially bearable.

Councilman Erik Cole, meanwhile, continues to tweet circles around the rest of the council. Non-deliberatively, of course. [@district7]

Anyway, I'll have to research whether or not I agree with what Cole is doing in our district (I just moved here in October), but judging by his tweets, I think I'm glad to have him as my representative.