In the last decade, it has become more common for citizens to show up at local government meetings and use the microphone to pontificate on issues irrelevant or out of the control of that specific local government entity.
Local governments have responded by limiting the ability of citizens to speak to agenda items that state or federal law requires a public hearing with public input to be held.
Last spring, the Fargo City Commission put this discussion at the forefront:
The Fargo City Commission is looking at a proposal that would remove the public comment period section of their biweekly meetings.
The proposal was one of many presented to commissioners on Monday, in front of a filled city hall audience. The main suggested policy would restrict public comments to strictly agenda items at the top of the meeting, with an opportunity to speak on any topic at the end of the meeting. However, City Administrator Michael Redlinger discussed a "piece of feedback" he received that would remove public comments from the commission meetings in lieu of quarterly non-voting public forums.
Both Arlette Preston and John Strand voiced concerns about the removal of public comment periods.
"To eliminate them or push them off into public meetings is squelching the voice of the public, and why would we do that. Who wants to do that," said Commissioner Strand after hearing the proposals. "I'm not on board with that at all, I thought we all agreed on that. Now we are seeing proposals that completely upend that."
"Twenty minutes at the beginning of the meeting is not that much time," said Commissioner Preston.
The Fargo City Commission even intended to hire a consultant to figure out what they should do:
Some Fargo city commissioners were caught off guard when the matter of public comment — seemingly already decided — was brought back to the table for consideration in early March.
The resulting backlash took the Fargo City Commission back to square one and prompted the city to spend another $6,000 in taxpayer funds to meet with their consultant to rehash the issue.
At the time, I wrote about this issue, and offered some solutions.
Have a monthly “Open Mic Night” where all the local governmental entities come together but discuss no official business and just listen to the public in a Townhall style setting. Record it and post it online like any other government meeting.
Maybe it’s 90 minutes, maybe it’s three hours, everyone gets 3 minutes to talk, and they line up can unleash whatever has them upset until time is up.
This will do three things:
Allow governmental entities to justify more strict controls during official business meetings.
Give citizens a venue to vent that is meaningful.
Any public official that shows up and sits through such a meeting would immediately have the respect of those who are venting, which will help come election time.
In all likelihood, some agenda items will result from these sessions that otherwise would not make it to the agenda.
SB 2180 Seeks To Guarantee Citizen Input, While Allowing Local Meetings To Stay On Track
SB 2180 was introduced this session to guarantee the ability of citizens to speak at public meetings. Local government and legal council explained how it is simply not that cut and dry in the video of the initial hearing above.
The Senate State and Local Government Committee decided to amend the bill in a constructive way, as could be heard in their committee work discussion:
Under the amended version, local government boards would be required to allow public comment during at least 1 out of every 4 meetings as a matter of course - while allowing local government to restrict comments to issues that:
Apply to that level of government’s operation.
Are not disruptive.
Not defamatory, abusive, harassing, or unlawful.
The amendment also allows for time limits.
Much of this is to get a handle on speakers that simply talk about things that local governments have nothing to do with.
Two examples of this are what has happened recently in Dickinson with a speaker making anti-semitic rants, and protesters in Fargo demanding the city commission take a stance in the Israel-Palestine war.
Local governments need to do a better job of making it easier for citizens to speak on relevant topics to that level of government while not requiring public resources to be wasted at meetings listening to angry people rant about nonsense that has nothing to do with local government issues.
It’s not clear that SB 2180 will fix the problem, but it is good to see the Senate is not dismissing the the fact that legitimate citizen input needs to be heard in a much more accessible way.
Share this post