Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-In downtown Los Angeles, Tuesday is when more local government meetings are held, making it the juiciest day of the week for anyone who enjoys seeing aloof politicians and their sometimes unqualified appointees get torched by critics who are keyed-in to civic issues and political corruption.
Brash or not, we owe these critics our thanks because they expose roots of civic problems ineffectively covered by local TV and radio stations, which tend to rely on what is reported by the un-dependable LA (soon to be El Segundo) Times.
Last week, the United States Supreme Court gave such critics a leg up in their freedom of speech with an 8-1 ruling on a case out of Florida (Lozman v. Riviera Beach), in which Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that a citizen’s ability to criticize government without fear of retribution ranks “high in the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”
The City Hall critics -- sometimes denigratingly labeled by the media as “gadflies” -- expertly time their appearances at overlapping meetings by simply walking across the usually sunny, green expanse of Grand Park from one meeting to the next.
In doing so, they maximize their time being seen and heard. And that doesn’t take into consideration their omnipresence at scores of smaller committee and neighborhood council meetings. When elected officials complain about the criticism, the critics declare victory because they have, in effect, publicly gotten under their skin.
Of late, the criticism has been so sharp-tongued that LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez recently implored Deputy City Attorney Strefan Fauble to “do something about these disruptions, or let’s stop complaining about them.”
And therein lies the problem, Mrs. Martinez.
You, your colleagues and peers see “criticism” as “disruption,” and have conveniently forgotten what caused it to get so heated in the first place.
Criticism at LA City Council meetings has been increasingly labeled as disruptive during the tenure of Los Angeles City Council president Herb Wesson, who took it upon himself to misuse the power that comes with his office by severely paring down on the public’s time to participate in the meetings, most outrageously demonstrated when Wesson cut off the speaking time of former Mayor Richard Riordan when he came to a meeting a few years ago.
When Wesson’s predecessor, (now Mayor of Los Angeles) Eric Garcetti, was Council President, members of the public had a chance to speak for a total of five minutes in total on agendized items, plus two minutes of general public comment for items not on the day’s agenda. Seven minutes may not sound like a lot of speaking time, except that the critics expertly used it to skewer the politicians. But multiply those seven minutes by a half-dozen or more critics at each meeting and suddenly government failure is exposed … a lot.
Wesson, who aspires to be LA’s next Mayor despite a record of free speech intolerance on our civic challenges such as homelessness, crime and traffic, pared down that time to a total of 3 minutes for agendized items and only one minute of general public comment.
In doing so, Wesson single-handedly created two problems.
First, this forced the critics to concentrate their criticism with increasingly fiery and taunting language. And second, it severely hampered the ability of all others (including people who have never previously attended government meetings) to get their points across in 60 seconds or less, without the experience of doing so as effectively as the experienced critics.
Since Wesson has now squeezed the life out of public participation at these meetings, he has turned to illegal tactics such as failing to call critics to speak, and randomly ejecting them from meetings altogether, practically begging for another costly 1stAmendment lawsuit, apparently forgetting that it lost the last one in federal court to a colorful Venice street performer named Zuma Dogg.
While the Florida case centers around the threat of arrest rather than ejection from meetings, some LA critics see the potential of a costly lawsuit against the government as winning because forcing the government to spend copious amounts of money defending lawsuits, is a win by itself. In recent months, the only critic arrested at a City Council meeting was a black woman who was quickly “un-arrested” when observers started videotaping the incident.
While free speech is given great tolerance at the LA County Supervisors meetings, the most likely place where it may be legally tested is against the Los Angeles City Council with either Wesson being cited as the antagonist or perhaps more likely Councilmember Mitch Englander.
The irritable Englander, who often appears unkempt – unshaven and without a necktie – at Council meetings, runs them when Wesson is absent or away from the podium.
During a sample of recent Council meetings, Englander was responsible for a larger share of ejections of the critics, and more frequently disrupted their comments, prompting Deputy City Attorney Fauble to frequently turn around and stop Englander from veering into illegality.
Fauble, who has repeatedly told the Councilmembers that the office of City Attorney Mike Feuer is actively looking for ways to legally tamp down on the “disruptive” criticism may, thanks to the Supreme Court, find that Wesson has backed the city into a 1stAmendment corner where it has few options as the attacks are about to get even hotter.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
Tags: Daniel Guss, @The Guss Report, 1stAmendment rights, free speech, City Hall critics, LA City Council, Council President Herb Wesson, public comment, CM Michell Englander, Lozman v. Rivera Beach
