Good government covers a number of different disciplines and facets. We all want a government that is responsive to our needs, listens to the citizenry, uses our money efficiently, and is transparent in what it does. Rarely is any particular government perfect in all of these facets, but we expect at least an acceptable effort in all of them. This is why a particular development in Glendale has many observers shaking their heads and crying foul.
Leaders in Glendale recently made the move to stifle free speech by no longer televising the public comment portion of their city council meetings. While ostensibly there could be legitimate reasons to do this their justifications rang hollow; concerns about someone saying a bad word and of people attempting to build a following based on their participation simply don’t carry enough weight to justify it.
While I am not a legal expert, I’m not sure that the City Attorney’s answer was much better. His concern was about “obscenity, threats, and political statements”. While obscenity is not ideal and threats unacceptable, the political statement angle has the most potential to take things awry. After all, when you are offering comments at a city council meeting, isn’t that by its very nature a political statement. Or is it only a political statement when the eye of the beholder doesn’t like what’s being said?
Worse yet was the lame-duck nature of this move. It was initiated by a Councilmember who had lost his re-election bid but was still in office. A member of the council who will not be there in just over a month is impacting how the office will be run into the future…it just doesn’t seem right.
Granted, anyone who has made a point of watching public commentary in city council meetings understands the potential problem. It’s not particularly rare to get commentary that is at least partly unhinged, that views the time limits as suggestions instead of rules, or commentary that rants about items which have no pertinence to the topic at hand. Sometimes it’s amusing, sometimes it’s irritating, and sometimes (albeit rarely) it’s truly problematic.
But isn’t that democracy in a nutshell? Messy, imperfect, but fully participatory and transparent at its best.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant as the oft-used saying goes, and that extends to council meetings and engaged citizens. We are all better off when our leaders don’t appear to be hiding anything, and many people can benefit from intelligent, knowledgeable statements from an engaged constituency. It is my genuine hope that once the lame-duck legislators are out of the way that this unfortunate rule is reversed as quickly as possible.