How It Works
LocalMatters creates, checks, and shares local government summaries. It’s built from public meeting records, linked to source material, and regularly audited for accuracy.
How are LocalMatters summaries created?
LocalMatters is built entirely from official public materials, including meeting videos and supporting documents.
Before meetings, we publish agendas and notify subscribers about issues they follow if they create an alert. After meetings, we organize discussions by topic, generate summaries, and link claims back to the original source material.
We organize information by issue rather than by meeting because we believe it is easier for residents to follow how a topic develops over time.
Every summary includes links back to the public record so readers can verify information for themselves.
How do I verify a claim?
Our goal is to make local government easier to follow. To that end, claims are linked back to source material whenever possible, allowing readers to check information against the original record.
On any detail page, enabling the “Show sourcing” toggle will show you which parts of the summary are linked to source material. Click any underlined section to open the original document or jump directly to the relevant moment in the meeting video.
How do I know the information is accurate?
We strive to be as accurate as possible, but no summary of a public meeting can be guaranteed to be perfect, regardless of who creates it.
To help readers evaluate information for themselves:
- Claims are linked to source material whenever possible.
- We regularly review a random sample of claims against the original public record and publish the results.
- Readers can report issues, which we investigate and correct when necessary.
Our goal is to make local government easier to follow while preserving the ability to verify what you read.
How do your accuracy audits work?
We regularly review a random sample of LocalMatters claims against the original public record.
For each claim, a human reviewer compares the claim against the original source material and records the result.
We publish the results of these reviews publicly here.
What happens if something is wrong?
You can report issues through our feedback form.
When a concern is raised, we review it against the original source material and make corrections when necessary. We also use reported issues to improve our systems and reduce the chance of similar errors in the future.
Reader feedback has already helped us identify and fix real issues, and we are grateful for those contributions.
Do you use AI?
Yes, LocalMatters uses AI to organize hours-long meetings, identify topics, and generate readable summaries.
AI is not used to pull in outside information, invent quotes, fill in missing facts, or go beyond what is supported by the public record.
All content is based on official meeting materials, and source links are provided so readers can verify information themselves.
What is the environmental impact of LocalMatters' AI usage?
Meetings are processed once in the background, and the resulting summaries can be viewed by any number of readers without additional AI processing.
Based on our current usage, processing a full year of one city's meetings is estimated to use roughly as much electricity as running a household refrigerator for one day and consume about three gallons of water.
These are intentionally conservative estimates based on publicly available AI sustainability research. Because AI providers do not disclose the exact resources used for individual requests, actual impacts may be lower.
How can I follow issues I care about?
Our goal is to help residents stay informed about both what is coming up and what has already happened.
You can subscribe to topic alerts for issues such as housing, public safety, public works, or economic development. You can also create location-based zoning alerts. Before a meeting, we’ll notify you when an upcoming agenda matches an alert you have created.
After a meeting, you can use LocalMatters to see summaries, votes, public comments, and more. We also offer a bi-weekly email digest with a roundup of recent local government activity.
Is LocalMatters replacing local journalism?
No.
LocalMatters helps residents follow local government meetings and public records, but it does not replace the work of local journalists. Journalists provide investigation, context, interviews, accountability reporting, and community knowledge that cannot be captured from meeting materials alone.
We see LocalMatters as a starting point, not an endpoint. By making public meetings easier to follow, we hope to support local journalism, encourage civic participation, and help residents identify issues they want to explore more deeply.
That is also why we link summaries back to primary source materials: to make it easier for journalists, residents, and community members to verify claims and decide where additional reporting, discussion, or public engagement may be valuable.