Transparency vs. Communication: Why the Difference Matters in Building Public Trust

It is a familiar scene in local government. A city council, village board, town board, or county board is considering a significant decision. Residents begin paying attention, questions surface, social media conversations accelerate, and elected officials hear a common criticism: “Why wasn’t the public told about this?” For local government officials and staff, that criticism can be frustrating.

“We’ve been discussing this in open meetings for six months.”

“It has been on every agenda.”

“The information has been posted on our website.”

“The report has been available since March.”

All of those statements may be completely accurate. The municipal organization may have followed every requirement for public notice, conducted its discussions in open session, posted agendas and supporting materials, and made hundreds of pages of information available to anyone who wanted to review them. The process may have been transparent, but was it communicated? The distinction matters.

Transparency and Communication Are Not the Same

Local government is inherently transparent. Open meetings, public notices, published agendas, minutes, public hearings, budgets, plans, studies, reports, ordinances, resolutions, contracts, emails, and other records provide an extraordinary amount of public access to the work of government. Yet access to information does not guarantee awareness or understanding. Transparency makes information available. Communication makes information accessible and understandable.

Most residents do not attend council or board meetings every two weeks, read lengthy agenda packets, or routinely search municipal websites for new information. That does not mean they are disengaged or do not care about their community.

For many residents, local government becomes particularly visible when an issue directly impacts their lives: a road project affects their commute, a development is proposed near their home, a tax or utility rate increase is considered, garbage collection changes, or a public safety concern emerges. That is often the moment when they enter a conversation that staff and local officials have already been having for months. From the municipal organization’s perspective, nothing has been hidden. From the resident’s perspective, the issue may feel like it appeared overnight.

When people learn that discussions have been underway for months, that gap can quickly turn into suspicion or distrust. The agendas were posted. The meetings were open. The public hearing was held. The legal requirements were met. Yet, relying exclusively on those mechanisms assumes residents will come to government for information. Effective communication delivers information to residents.

Meeting Residents Where They Are

People consume information in dramatically different ways. Posting an agenda is important—a non-negotiable requirement—but an agenda is not a communications strategy, and neither is a website, social media, meeting minutes, newsletter, email list, or public information session on its own. Together, these tools can create an effective communications strategy.

The goal is not to communicate everything everywhere. Overcommunication is real and can be counterproductive. When every update is treated as equally important, the messages that matter most can get lost in the noise. Effective communication means identifying what residents most need to know and delivering it in a factual, concise, and understandable way through the channels most likely to reach them. For a significant community issue, that might mean a dedicated webpage containing detailed information, supported by a mix of email, social media, mailed information, media outreach, infographics, frequently asked questions, videos, presentations, or opportunities to ask questions. The website can serve as the information hub while other communication channels bring people to it.

Repetition is also not a failure of communication. Government officials who have discussed an issue for months may feel as though they have said the same thing dozens of times. For a resident encountering the issue for the first time, it is new information. Communicating a topic once does not equate to the information being received by everyone.

Accessible Means More Than Available

Government is complex. Budgets, levy limits, utility rates, development agreements, tax incremental financing, public safety staffing models, capital improvement plans, zoning regulations, and infrastructure projects cannot always be reduced to a few bullet points or sentences. However, complexity is not an excuse for making information unnecessarily difficult to locate or understand. Residents do not need expertise in municipal finance, engineering, planning, or state statutes to understand how a proposal may affect them.

Government communication must move beyond simply posting agendas or documents to a municipal website. For example, municipal organizations should:

• Post the complete study and provide an executive summary.

• Publish the budget and explain or highlight the major changes.

• Share the technical presentation and create an infographic or summary that helps residents understand the key information.

Clear and factual communication does not mean oversimplifying an issue or advocating for a particular outcome. In fact, it can strengthen neutrality by giving residents the information necessary to form their own opinions rather than relying on rumors, partial information, or someone else’s interpretation.

Communication is an Intentional Process

One of the most common mistakes municipal organizations make is waiting too long to begin communicating or doing so in a reactive manner. Residents who are just learning about an issue may reasonably wonder why they were not brought into the conversation earlier.

Effective communication takes intentionality and planning. For a significant issue, a cross-department staff meeting at the beginning of the process to talk specifically about a communications strategy can have a dramatically positive impact on the outcome. What do residents need to know? When do they need to know it? Who are the stakeholders? What questions are they likely to have? Which communication channels will have the best reach? Who is responsible for keeping information current? A simple communication plan developed at the outset can help ensure communication is a critical part of the process rather than an afterthought.

That planning should also identify who will lead day-to-day communication, and it may not be the person leading the project. On a major road reconstruction project, for example, the city engineer may have the most detailed knowledge, but their time and expertise are needed to manage the engineering work. A communications professional, or another member of the team assigned to coordinate communication, can work with the engineer to identify key information, anticipate questions, translate technical details into clear and concise messages, and keep information current. The subject-matter expert remains closely connected to the information without carrying the full responsibility for communicating it. This can improve public communication while protecting valuable staff time.

It’s important to communicate throughout the process and bring residents along the way. Explain when an issue is being studied and why, share what is learned and the options being considered, provide opportunities for questions and feedback, and clearly communicate the recommendation, decision-making process, final decision, and next steps. This may sound overwhelming, especially for a smaller municipal organization. It does not need to be. A communication plan does not have to be lengthy or complicated, and every issue does not require a dedicated webpage, newsletter, video, mailer, public meeting, and social media campaign. Start with the information that matters most and the communication channels already available. Be consistent and build from there.

Communication takes time, and that investment is worth it. Writing an update, developing an FAQ, creating an infographic, updating a webpage, or responding to questions all require staff resources. Time spent communicating on the front end can build understanding, reduce confusion, address misinformation, and prevent staff and elected officials from spending even more time responding to questions and concerns later.

Consistent communication also creates a path from issue to information to consideration to decision. It demonstrates something that meeting agendas and minutes alone often cannot: how and why a decision developed over time.

Intentional communication cannot guarantee agreement. That is not its purpose. A resident can have all of the facts and may strongly agree or disagree with a board or council decision. Effective communication does not eliminate controversy, nor should it attempt to. What it can do is reduce disagreements rooted in misinformation, surprise, or misunderstanding. When residents disagree, they can at least do so with a clearer understanding of the facts, the process, and how the decision was reached.

A Shared Responsibility

Local governments need to change how they measure communication success. Rather than asking, “Did we post it?” ask, “Did residents have a reasonable opportunity to receive the information and understand what it means and why it matters?”

Residents have a role in staying informed and engaged in their local government, but local governments cannot place the burden of staying informed entirely on them. It is unrealistic to expect people to regularly attend meetings, read agenda packets, monitor municipal websites, or recognize the significance of every item moving through a public process. Residents have jobs, family responsibilities, youth sports, and countless demands competing for their attention—yet they still deeply care about their community.

Local governments have a responsibility to communicate and provide information that is easy to find, understand, and follow.

Calls for greater transparency will continue, and sometimes those criticisms will be warranted. Transparency remains a fundamental obligation of public institutions. However, when the process has been open and the information is available, the response to “Why didn’t we know about this?” cannot simply be, “You could have come to the meetings.” A more productive question is: How could we have communicated this better? That question shifts the focus from defending the process to improving it. Meeting legal requirements and gaining public understanding are two different responsibilities.

The goal is not for every resident to follow every issue or agree with every decision. It is to give people a reasonable opportunity to know what is happening, understand why it matters, and engage when it matters to them.

Transparency provides access to government. Communication creates understanding. When local governments do both well, they build something even more important: trust.

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