Countdown clock to stay: Council approves public participation rules

The NBA-style digital countdown clock denounced as “tacky” is here to stay in the City Council chambers.

The City Council on Wednesday agreed to limit public participation at City Council meetings to 3 minutes a person and 30 minutes overall, despite warnings that the “grossly inadequate” rules invite more litigation.

The vote came after Rules Committee members meeting before the full Council got yet another earful about the ground rules they’ve established for continuing to give the public their say under court order to do so.

Michael Graham, an attorney representing the watchdog group, “Project Six” called the rules “grossly inadequate” to comply with either “the spirit or the letter of the Open Meetings Act.”

“The proposal can barely be described as an attempt to do the absolute, bare minimum in order to bring the City Council into technical compliance with the Open Meetings Act. Even under that rubric, the proposal is a failure. The rules are unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny … resulting in more unnecessary costs to taxpayers,” he said.

Graham called a 30-minute period that would essentially pave the way for 10 speakers per meeting absurd when compared to the hundreds of pieces of business considered at the typical Council meeting.

“The failure of the proposal to tailor in any way the public comment period to the amount of City Council business highlights the overall failure of this proposal. It is not designed to facilitate public input on matters of significant public concern,” Graham said.

Andy Thayer, who filed the lawsuit that forced the City Council’s hand, made it clear that the litigation will continue, in part, because of what he called the “content restrictions” and the “lack of transparency in choosing who speaks and in what order they speak.”

Thayer noted that during a public hearing on the annual city budget, the Civic Federation led off the testimony and stayed on the stand for hours while critics were shunted to the end, when only a half-dozen aldermen were left in the Council chambers.

“We could have saved a lot of time and money if the city had bothered coming to us and talked either to our attorneys or to both plaintiffs,” he said.

Prior to the final vote, Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th), a Democratic candidate for governor, tried to double the public comment period from 30 minutes to one hour.

He was shot down by Rules Committee Chairman Michelle Harris (8th).

“We don’t have enough time to go through and have everybody comment on what their wishes are,” Harris said.

“While I would love to say, ‘Let’s make it two hours or three hours,’ let’s have a larger dialogue. Bring it back to the floor. But I think we should go ahead and vote on it in its current condition and then, we can modify things like we always do.”

Pawar voted no. He was not alone in his opposition to the new rules.

Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) agreed with him that 30 minutes is not enough time to give the public its fair say.

“It’s our job to listen to the people. That’s what we were elected to do. If it takes three hours to listen, then that’s our job to listen and hear what people say,” she said.