Public Comment Assessment Report: Understanding Public Comment to Enhance Agency Procedures and Public Engagement

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) initiated a research project aimed to better understand public comment to enhance agency processes. This study was primarily initiated by the Director’s Office with the intention of answering a diverse set of questions associated with public comment and rulemaking, including questions raised by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC). The project’s primary purpose was to identify and develop a suite of best practices for inventorying, synthesizing, and presenting public comment to agency decision-makers. The project sought to integrate best practices derived from project participants and interdisciplinary social science literature.

In order to understand public comment and identify potential best practices for agency application, WDFW’s Conservation Social Scientist (project lead) designed and implemented the project as an assessment. This assessment was not intended to be value-laden nor to comprehensively evaluate agency procedures; however, this assessment was intended to better understand WDFW’s public comment landscape and identify potential best practices, derived from WDFW staff, non-WDFW state agency staff, external public comment experts, and interdisciplinary social science literature.

The project began in July 2023 (project scoping initiated) and is still ongoing, as this report is just one of many final phases of the project in its entirety. Between October 2023-January 2023, the project lead conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups (n=37) with WA state agency staff (WDFW and non-WDFW), requested answers to tailored questions from a relevant non-governmental organization, and collected interdisciplinary social science literature on public comment, notably rulemaking. Given the project’s large scope, myriad of disparate topics (e.g., public comment, rulemaking, public meetings, community outreach, technology, environmental justice), and use of semi-structured interviews/focus groups, the results are largely outlined in narrative form.

Overall, the project found that WDFW public comment processes were at a high level fairly consistent in that they tended to adhere to standard and routine procedures with variations by program or context. Non-WDFW programs also seemed to also be fairly consistent, with more variation in the application of alternative public comment approaches (e.g., negotiated rulemaking, multi-lingual outreach and communications, public meeting techniques, and environmental justice-informed practices). While fairly consistent and routine, variations did exist within procedural minutiae (e.g., public comment review and integration) not necessarily guided by legal or processual standards (e.g., rulemaking), While consistent, this routinization can make procedural minutiae and emerging challenges more difficult to address among staff or decision-makers. Such variations have sparked questions and calls for further guidance, including with regards to emerging public comment issues, like mass comment campaigns (e.g., form letters), public comment generalizability, public comment composition (substantive comments vs. voting or preference-based comments), public meeting organization (e.g., commenter timing and in-person versus virtual attendance), e-comment platform use (e.g., design and centralization), spam, comment analysis, and environmental justice considerations. Using diverse input shared by project participants and interdisciplinary literature, this report provides a synthesized suite of best practices and potential project next steps to ensure their future implementation.