San Luis Obispo county supervisors are putting time limits on a group of activists to give other citizens a chance to address the board. Time limits are permissible under the Brown Act so long as no citizen is singled out for exclusion. -DB
San Luis Obispo Tribune
April 17, 2009
By Bob Cuddy
County supervisors verbally spanked some Los Osos activists during a terse exchange this week, after the Los Osans lectured the board for cutting back on their speaking time.
“Our constituency is the entire county, not just Los Osos,” Supervisor Jim Patterson told the agitated townsfolk during the Board of Supervisor’s meeting Tuesday.
The tense exchange took place after Chairman Bruce Gibson limited discussion on Los Osos water and wastewater issues to 10 minutes in the morning public comment section and 10 minutes in the afternoon.
Gibson cited the “chairman’s prerogative” and said he was invoking it because many others in the audience wanted to speak on other subjects. In addition, numerous people were there for award presentations.
But Richard Margetson and others who regularly speak every Tuesday about Los Osos issues sternly criticized Gibson for, among other reasons, being anti-democratic. Los Osos regular Linde Owen suggested he and his colleagues were unethical.
Gibson replied that Los Osans had been given “unprecedented access” to speak their minds at public meetings.
Patterson, who faced the same sort of attack from Los Osans last year when he was chairman, noted Tuesday that there were “people who are here for agenda-ized items who have been waiting for an hour and a half.”
He said people from Los Osos spoke “Tuesday after Tuesday.”
The skirmish was the latest in a long string. Plans for a Los Osos sewer has occupied county government for decades, and those with an opinion on it have been sharing those opinions regularly and at length during public meetings.
This has placed supervisors in a bind. As they said Tuesday, citizens get to express their views to local leaders. But allowing them to speak without limit — Los Osos residents sometimes go on for an hour or longer — can cause others who are taking time off from work, for example, to leave without saying their piece.
In addition, the lengthy comments can make other parts of a meeting run late, and KCBX, the radio station that carries the discussions, stops broadcasting them at 5 p.m.
Los Osans have a special afternoon time exclusively for them the first Tuesday of every month. But they also can speak at times when the meeting opens up for general comments that are not on the agenda. Many, including a core group of 10 to 15, which includes Margetson and Owen, do so.
Deputy County Counsel Tim McNulty said the Brown Act and the board’s own rules of procedure allow Gibson to legally limit testimony in the way he did Tuesday.
“By specifically identifying 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon for non-agenda Los Osos water and wastewater items, Chairman Gibson was managing the agenda in an appropriate and legal way,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Tribune.
In fact, McNulty wrote, the current rules allow only 15 minutes of the entire agenda to be allocated for the public to comment on non-agenda items.
“After all, someone needs to take charge and run the board’s meetings,” he wrote.
Copyright 2009 San Luis Obispo Tribune