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Public officials can remove disrupters from a meeting - but can they remove themselves?
Rather than remove disruptive members of the public, the city's Board of Health removed itself.
Public officials can remove disrupters from a meeting — but can they remove themselves?
Let's stipulate to the following: Last night's Board of Health meeting, at which the Board intended to vote on a new rule regulating various aspects of "outdoor feeding" in the city, was interrupted repeatedly by protesters (many if not most associated with Occupy Philly). The disrupters were asked repeatedly to quiet down, and didn't.
The Board members eventually called a recess and then resumed in another room, to which the general public was not allowed access — though reporters were, including a member of Occupy Philly, who was allowed to videotape the proceedings. Audio from the meeting was piped, live, into the original meeting room, allowing the public to listen to the proceedings as they happened.
Here's the question: does that still make the meeting "public" under state law?
The Pennsylvania Sunshine Act broadly states that meetings of most "public" bodies — the Board of Health would almost certainly qualify — must be "public," meaning that citizens should have the right to see what's happening and express themselves. Generally, a quorum of a body may not conduct business behind closed doors.
Occupy Philly didn't exactly invent the disturbance of meetings: it happens all the time, including at many or most City Council meetings. Usually, disturbers are asked to settle down. On the (fairly rare) occasions that they don't, they are often escorted out by a Sergent At Arms or the city's Civil Affairs Unit officers. On some rare occasions, they are arrested.
But this is the first time we've known the public body — the Board of Health in this case — to opt to remove themselves, rather than the disrupters.
And there is, after all, a difference: public officials obviously didn't want to mass-remove the many disrupters — but had they started to do so, is it possible that other members of the public would have allowed the meeting to take place and thus had the opportunity to watch it in-person and make their opinions known? The purpose of this meeting wasn't to take public testimony — but by attending, members of the public have the ability to express themselves, even just by being present for reporters to see.
Even Mayor spokesman Mark McDonald referred to a "segment of the audience that was bent on disruption." So what about the other segment?
McDonald and Department of Health Communications director Jeff Moran both told CP last night and today that the city's law department assured the Board that they were well within the bounds of the Sunshine Act.
"The Sunshine Act allows an entire meeting to be conducted by speakerphone, with members in various remote locations, so long as the public is given access to hear what's going on," McDonald wrote in an email. "Last night's meeting far exceeded those standards, in that the press and videographers were allowed in to observe, while the remaining public was allowed to hear."
I ran this by Darrell Zaslow, an attorney whose passion for government transparency led him to pursue a multi-year (and eventually victorious) legal crusade to force City Council to hear public testimony in Council sessions (no they didn't used to).
He agreed: "If the public makes their participation or observation impossible by their own misconduct, it would seem to me that [The Board] did their best under difficult circumstances to comply," he said.
"They probably would be found by a court to have acted to the best of their ability under the circumstances."
Really entering a "grey line" of interpertation of the Pa. Sunshine Act!! By allowing the meeting to continue, with public involvement limited to "listening" to the proceedings via speaker!! But shutting out the public in a closed door meeting, without the public means of voicing any opinion!!!— Dadair1
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