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How much public comment should Council allow? A cautionary tale.
This week, for the first time, Philaephia's City Council opened the floor to public commentary.
How much public comment should Council allow? A cautionary tale.
This week, for the first time, Philaephia's City Council opened the floor to public commentary.
The change in procedure came not from a push within Council to hear what the Good People of Philadelphia have to say in its weekly Thursday meetings, but as a result of a state Supreme Court decision two weeks ago, which said that the lack of public comment period violated the state's government transparency laws.
A victory for the people, you might say.
But that's not the end of it: of the four speakers who showed up to take advantage of the new policy, reported the Inquirer, was lawyer Darrell M. Zaslow, who, along with the Homeowners Association of Philadelphia, sued the the city over its public comment procedures in 2007.
Zaslow complained that Council's new policy isn't good enough and, he contends, may still violate the state's transparency laws because the public comments are restricted to items on Council's agenda that day — versus whatever a member of the public wants to talk about.
But, and as much as CP generally triumphs the cause of transparency and openness in government, I offer a cautionary tale.
Prior to living in Philly, I spent a little while in Miami, working for the Miami New Times.
A big public radio listener, I was surprised to find, one afternoon, that the local station's usual content had been replaced by live coverage of a meeting of the Miami-Dade county School Board and its really, really open public comment period.
I listened fascinated — then worked a full day and got back in the car: the public comments were still going. I drove home and turned on the radio: still on.
And that's how it was, once a month: the public comments stretched on, and on, and on, and on. Various proposals raised to limit the time spent hearing them were shot down. The public, it seemed, could not get enough of it!
It wasn't necessarily a bad thing at all: the comment period was full of interesting, and utterly democratic public sentiment, and the Board's members were required to sit there and listen to it.
Still, the idea of placing more limits on the marathon sessions didn't strike me as crazy, either.
So what do you think? How much public comment, and under what restrictions, should Council allow at its Thursday meetings?
The Inquirer's Jeff Shields offers a nice breakdown of the rules currently being proposed:
Council's draft rules allow members of the public to comment for up to three minutes each before official action on bills and resolutions. Subject matter is limited to pending bills, a restriction that ran into an immediate challenge.
Speakers must be Philadelphia residents and taxpayers, and are asked to sign up ahead of time, though no one wishing to speak will be denied, Verna said. The Council president also has the authority to shorten the time per speaker and to limit repetitious testimony.
In great democratic tradition, the new rules on public comment were introduced by resolution. That will be followed up next week by public comment on the public-comment resolution. A vote will follow.
They better be ready for stuff like"Throw Nutter in the gutter ."or worse.
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