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L.A. County supervisor moves to restrict speakers at board meetings

By Jason Song and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times

January 21, 2012

The weekly meetings of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors tend to drag, with some lasting five hours or more.

And Board Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky thinks he knows why — members of the public talk too much.

So earlier this month, he proposed placing restrictions on how often constituents are allowed to speak.

Of course, many government boards, including the county, set time limits on how long speakers can talk. His proposal, however, would go significantly further by limiting the number of times a Joe or Jane Citizen could address county leaders during the course of a single meeting.

The proposal is drawing howls of protest — and not only on free speech grounds. Some argue it's the supervisors themselves — with their tardiness, endless proclamations and general long-windedness — that make the meeting drag, not the taxpayers.

They may have a point.

At the Jan. 10 meeting, for example, when Yaroslavsky made his proposal, the board took 23 minutes to rattle off the names of about 60 people in whose honor they would adjourn the meeting. By contrast, members of the public rose to speak only 23 times during the four-hour public session, taking a total of about an hour.

"There's a lot of fluff" at supervisors meetings, said Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at Cal State L.A. "Cutting public comment just creates the impression that the board is secretive."

To critics, that Jan. 10 meeting offered a window into the real reasons the meetings take so long. First, it started late. Twenty-three minutes late, to be exact, at 9:53 a.m.

After the invocation and pledge of allegiance, the five officials — each representing nearly 2 million constituents — spent most of the next hour on non-legislative items.

They gave certificates of recognition to, among others, the new Sri Lankan consul general, welcoming him to the area; world famous tenor and Los Angeles Opera general director Placido Domingo, whose birthday was in 11 days; and reserve Deputy Sheriff Shervin Lalezary, who identified the man now suspected of starting a recent string of fires in Hollywood.

And, as he does almost every week, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich held a Doxie-mix puppy named Heidi from a local shelter and asked that anyone interested in adopting her call the county.

At 11:11 a.m., with Sheriff Lee Baca waiting to discuss a report on violence in the county's overcrowded jails, the supervisors went through their unusually long list of adjournments. Antonovich had the most, with 30 names, while Supervisor Don Knabe came in second with 16. (At another recent meeting, Yaroslavsky delivered a 1,165-word panegyric commemorating five people, including former Czech president Vaclav Havel and writer Christopher Hitchens, neither of whom had significant dealings with the county.)

Supervisors didn't get down to business with Baca until 11:36.

By that point, community activists in the audience were seething over what one later termed "a dog and pony show" of delays. Over the four hours that supervisors met that day in public session, comments from residents took up perhaps 60 minutes.

Critics of the Yaroslavsky policy, which has been sent to county's lawyers for review before a potential vote, say it threatens a basic democratic tradition: The 1st Amendment right to petition government for a redress of grievances.

The board oversees the largest county government bureaucracy in the nation and has long been criticized for its detachment. Part of the reason is the lack of turnover.

Three of five members have been in office at least 17 years; a fourth has been in office 15 years.

"Increasingly, the Board of Supervisors is acting in ways that make it look removed from the public," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause. "Tinkering with public comment rules in a way to limit them ... really moves in the direction of disrespect for public involvement."

Under current board rules, anyone has the right to speak for up to three minutes on each item on a meeting's agenda.

Yaroslavsky, however, wants speakers to be limited to no longer than three minutes, even if they wanted to talk about more than one topic. They could be given more time or less at the chairman's discretion. And those wishing to speak about issues not on the agenda could have two minutes at the end of the meeting.

When his resolution came up this month, Yaroslavsky defended the board's right to curtail public comment. Indeed, California's open meetings law — the Ralph M. Brown Act — gives officials leeway to adopt "reasonable regulations" over comment including limiting "the total amount of time allocated for public testimony ... and for each individual speaker."

But the law also requires that "every agenda for regular meetings shall provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the legislative body on any item of interest to the public, before or during the legislative body's consideration of the item." And officials must not prohibit public criticism of policies or procedures.

"It's clear what you're trying to do here. You're trying to weed out scrutiny," said Jon Nahhas, who frequently criticizes the supervisors' development plans at Marina del Rey.

"This is our only opportunity to talk to you," added Lynne Plambeck, a Santa Clarita environmentalist who frequently appears before the board. "And so this idea that you're going to limit speaking time on some sort of arbitrary basis that really isn't very well explained is very concerning to us."

Plambeck also said many speakers felt disrespected by supervisors, who often appear distracted during meetings.

For example, during Baca's presentation, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas left his seat to speak with aides.

After listening to criticism of the plan, Yaroslavsky postponed a vote to give the county's lawyers a chance to review it.

Ridley-Thomas defended Yaroslavsky's efforts, and noted the public can always reach supervisors through their websites or other means.