{"id":586,"date":"2017-10-29T21:53:48","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T02:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/?p=586"},"modified":"2017-10-29T21:53:48","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T02:53:48","slug":"open-meetings-act-plaintiffs-respond-to-city-councils-proposed-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/2017\/10\/29\/open-meetings-act-plaintiffs-respond-to-city-councils-proposed-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Meetings Act Plaintiffs Respond to City Council\u2019s Proposed \u201cReforms\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted June 21, 2017<\/p>\n

By Andy Thayer<\/a> and Rick Garcia<\/a>
\nCo-plaintiffs, Thayer & Garcia v. Chicago City Council<\/a>, <\/em>No. 2016\u2010CH\u201009212<\/strong><\/div>\n
 
\nAfter insisting for months that it already scrupulously followed Illinois\u2019 Open Meetings Act, the Chicago City Council is now scrambling to \u201creform\u201d itself. <\/strong>
\n 
\nOr more precisely, being forced to reform, trying only to appear <\/em>to reform, while in fact doing very little of substance. As with police \u201creform,\u201d education \u201creform,\u201d parking meter \u201creform\u201d and much else, Rahm Emanuel and his City Council allies have turned the word \u201creform,\u201d a once noble term, into a swear word.
\n 
\nOn Wednesday, June 21 at 9 am in City Hall Room 201A, the City Council\u2019s Committee on Committees, Rules and Ethics will discuss the City Council\u2019s proposed rules regarding public comment at its meetings.
\n 
\nLet\u2019s be clear about a few things:<\/u><\/strong>
\n 
\n1.<\/strong>  Were it not for our lawsuit<\/strong>, the City Council would have continued its illegal practice of barring public comment, as it has done so at virtually all of its meetings since the Illinois Open Meetings Act was enacted more than 20 years ago;
\n 
\n2. Only when ordered to by a judge<\/strong>, did the Council \u201cget religion\u201d about allowing public comment. Now it is attempting to allow as little of it, and policed as to content, as they think they might get away with;
\n 
\n3. Even though our suit and a judge\u2019s order are what spurred tomorrow\u2019s actions, we only found out about the City\u2019s proposed rules the way most others did<\/strong>:  through the press and the City Clerk\u2019s website. At no time did the City or its attorneys bother to reach out to us or to our attorneys about whether their proposed \u201creforms\u201d addressed at least in part our objections, let alone solicit our own suggestions for improvements; and,
\n 
\n4. We have communicated to the City Council through their attorneys that their proposed rule changes are still in violation of Illinois\u2019 Open Meetings Act and are unacceptable to us.<\/strong> If the City passes them, they won\u2019t be stopping litigation, they\u2019ll only be inviting more of it. Council members should ask themselves if it\u2019s better to waste more taxpayer money on lawyers, or do the right thing:  just follow the law and enact genuine reform.
\n 
\nHere are the several problems with the Council\u2019s proposed rules (see R2017-389.pdf at the City Clerk\u2019s website<\/a>):
\n 
\n1. As we and others have previously commented, limiting public comment to 30 minutes total <\/strong>and a maximum of 3 minutes per person means that 10 people would be tasked with representing the voices of 2.7 million people. Most Chicagoans would probably agree that 50 council members and one mayor already do a poor job of that, let alone only 10.
\n 
\nThe Council currently spends sometimes nearly two-and-half hours of its meetings on purely honorary resolutions, as it did at its April 19<\/a> (00:04:40 to 02:27:51) and May 24<\/a> (00:06:15 to 02:35:16) meetings. This is activity that could be moved to another venue or scaled back so as to make more time for public comment.
\n 
\n2. There are no rules making sure that even those 10 chosen ones <\/strong>are selected in a fair and transparent manner. This means that the Mayor and his allies could pack the roster with their chosen allies, just as they\u2019ve previously packed the Council chamber seats so as to exclude dissenting voices from the general public. Like with police reform, they\u2019re saying \u201ctrust us\u201d and we\u2019ll do better. Given their history of demonstrated contempt for transparency and democracy, only the most foolishly naive would think that this is a real reform.
\n 
\n3. Little commented upon, but perhaps most chillingly, Rules #3, 4 and 6 attempt to illegally, and unconstitutionally, govern the content of speakers\u2019 comments<\/strong>. Specifically,
\n 
\n* Rule #3 states that speakers will \u201climit his or her remarks to the subject matter appearing on the agenda of the meeting.\u201d Section 2.06, subsection (g) of the Illinois Open Meetings Act states simply that \u201cAny person shall be permitted an opportunity to address public officials under the rules established and recorded by the public body.\u201d It does not<\/u> give said officials license to violate the 1st Amendment of the Constitution by governing what<\/em> is said.
\n 
\nIn recent weeks we\u2019ve already seen the deleterious effect of allowing Council members to determine what is, or is not, appropriate subject matter. At a recent Zoning Committee meeting, for example, Alderman Solis repeatedly interrupted and talked over a public commenter who attempted to point out how real estate industry contributions to aldermen were corrupting how city zoning decisions are being made.<\/strong>
\n 
\n* The latter part of Rule #6 allows the chairman to \u201callow reasonable variances from the three-minute time limit in appropriate, non-discriminatory circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just what constitutes \u201creasonable\u201d? <\/strong>At the November 1, 2016 meeting<\/a>, one of the few in the history of the Council that allowed public comment, the President of the Civic Federation was bumped to the front of the speakers list, as the chair announced that the Civil Federation President \u201chas a long time history and tradition of being our first witness at our public hearings and I think he is here to support our budget today.\u201d (01:56:35) The Civic Federation President, who admitted that \u201cour primary funding comes from mentors that are executives at some of the major corporations, institutions and service firms\u201d \u2013 i.e., the city\u2019s 1% \u2013 spoke and was questioned for well over an hour. All other speakers were admonished to keep their remarks to within 3 minutes. Opponents of the budget were shunted to the very end of the speakers list, when only a handful of aldermen, and certainly not a quorum, remained in the chamber.
\n 
\n* Rule #4 prohibits speakers from using \u201cprofane language, obscene conduct, or disruptive comments.\u201d Disruptive comments?!? <\/strong>Talking about campaign contributions influencing legislation is apparently considered \u201cdisruptive.\u201d This amounts to what is known in constitutional law as a \u201checkler\u2019s veto,\u201d and banning \u201cdisruptive comments\u201d has been ruled unconstitutional over and over again. Certainly these prohibitions don\u2019t apply to Aldermen who stand on top of their desks<\/a> and berate their fellow council members at the top of their lungs. Nor to elected city officials who always confine themselves to speaking only the King\u2019s English<\/a>.
\n 
\nIn summary, the Council\u2019s proposed rules amount to an attempt to illegally and unconstitutionally stifle Chicagoans\u2019 voices in what purports to be \u201ctheir\u201d government<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted June 21, 2017 By Andy Thayer and Rick Garcia Co-plaintiffs, Thayer & Garcia v. Chicago City Council, No. 2016\u2010CH\u201009212   After insisting for months that it already scrupulously followed Illinois\u2019 Open Meetings Act, Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,27],"tags":[20,22,24],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politicians","category-rahm-emanuel","tag-chicago-city-council","tag-mayor-rahm-emanuel","tag-open-meetings-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}