Lehigh County Commissioners have started to transition back to regular in-person meetings.

These so-called “hybrid” meetings will replace the exclusively online meetings held for the past year and a half during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the first time July 14, commissioners had a choice as to whether they would attend the regular meeting in person or via Zoom, the online platform that ushered in a new meaning of the word zoom.

Two commissioners attended via Zoom, while most of the others traveled to the meeting room in the Lehigh County administration building on Seventh Street in Allentown. One commissioner was absent because of a family emergency.

The public remains restricted to attending via the electronic platform.

“Hybrid is the plan with the public hearing room opening to the public in August,” Geoff Brace, chair of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners, said in an interview.

“We put a lot of work into the technology to make live public participation by Zoom possible and hope we can use it regardless of COVID. It’s good government.”

Commissioners adopted a measure to facilitate electronic signatures on official documents.

The 1999 Electronic Transactions Act defines an “electronic signature” as “[a]n electronic sound, symbol or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”

That act states: “a signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form; a contract may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because an electronic record was used in its formation; if a law requires a record to be in writing, an electronic record satisfies the law; and, if a law requires a signature, an electronic signature satisfies the law.”