A recent survey by the National League of Cities revealed that more than a third of municipal officials said their city has been doing more than usual in the past year to engage the public in budgeting and finance processes. A third of the city officials surveyed also said they've noticed an increase in residents' engagement in local public affairs since the 2008 Presidential campaign.

The National League of Cities survey is part of an effort on behalf of the local government group to understand how their members are communicating with residents.

Founded in 1924 by the joining of 10 state municipal organizations, the league has since expanded to include 1,600 cities and towns across the United States. Its mission is "to strengthen and promote cities as centers for opportunities, leadership, and government."

Survey results indicated that NLC members believe that productive involvement by the public must begin with "useful balanced information."

A just released research brief authored by William Barnes and Bonnie Mann of the NLC tells an interesting tale of the interaction or lack thereof between municipal officials and the public. Cities are using their websites to reach out to the public in a manner that encourages a response. As an example, NLC member Fort Pierre, S.D., population 1,197, posts public meeting agendas with dates, the latest council minutes, public notices, and contract bidding information along with a tool that provides a feedback form so the public can comment.

Member cities are not universal in their efforts to reach out, but in general they all seem to be making some degree of progress. Asked how often they use the public engagement process to solve city problems, 38% of survey respondents said "Often," 53% said "Sometimes," and 8% said "Rarely." (Okay, fess up- which of you were the 1% of dictators who said "Never"?)

The research done by Barnes and Mann involved surveying municipal officials from all NLC member cities. Here are other interesting results from the survey:

• 92% of municipal officials said they regularly used their city hall websites, including publishing e-mail addresses of city officials, for the purposes of engaging the public.
• Impressively, 86% said they posted council agendas and proposed executive actions ahead of time, and invited comments on them; while 67% said they held "town hall" meetings for discussions of critical issues
• On the other hand municipal principles said that only 28% of them had a specific plan to engage the public.

Among the innovative ideas put forth by city officials of how cities can engage the public were "teletown hall" meetings, resident surveys, social networking like Facebook, public access channel, and weekly "listening posts" with public officials at the local farmers market.  (Is that the person with the tomato and egg stains on their jacket?)

The National League of Cities also queried its member officials about their engagement with the public.  "Virtually all respondents (95%) report that public officials value these processes, to a great extent (58%) or somewhat (37%)," the report stated. When asked whether they were satisfied with the amount of public interaction with city officials, 3 out of 10 said they were dissatisfied and only 15% were very satisfied.

Civil discourse, it turns out, is still needed for civic engagement. In response to the survey's request to rate the factors municipal officials felt were the most important to positive public engagement, 78% said the discussion had to be civil. (A response to this summer's town hall meeting hysterics, perhaps?) 76% said the most important factor was that the public receive factual, balanced and useful information about the subject under discussion, (keep your paranoia to yourself, please).  59% of the officials thought that getting more diverse participation was very important and not just "the usual" people, (sorry regulars). Only 17% thought that having a large number of people participate was important and only 6% had the cojones to admit that success was based on whether the participants agreed with them or not. That number may have been understated by the respondents.