On April 29, the El Paso City Council voted 7-1 to amend the Rules of Order such that public comment on agenda items will be confined to a 60-minute period in the morning.
Up until now, members of the public spoke to agenda items at the moment they came up for discussion and action, just after staff presentations and shortly before the vote, maximizing their impact. The media was present for important agenda items and often incorporated statements from public speakers into their reports.
But with this reform, the public will only be permitted to speak during the morning public comment period, long before the agenda items come to the floor and well before the media typically arrive.
City Reps. Art Fierro and Deanna Maldonado-Rocha co-sponsored the amendment with the intention of not only restricting public comment to a one-hour period, but also decreasing the time allotted to speakers from three to two minutes per agenda item. Thankfully, Rep. Chris Canales swooped in with a successful motion to maintain the current limit of three minutes.
Fierro reasoned that the public will benefit from the convenience of speaking at a fixed time rather than waiting hours for a specific agenda item.
City Rep. Josh Acevedo was the only member of City Council who insisted that public comment not be changed. He claimed the amendment would “lessen the impact that public comment can have on decisions” and went on to cast the only vote in opposition.
RECENT CHANGES TO PUBLIC COMMENT
The last time City Council moved to restrict public comment was June 27, 2017, the day Dee Margo was sworn in as mayor, when 32 speakers, most of whom came to express their opposition to the demolition of Duranguito, were told they would be limited to only one minute each.
At the next city council meeting, Margo proposed that any group of five or more speakers wishing to address the same topic select a single speaker to represent them, denying the rest of the group the opportunity to address their elected representatives.
For the El Paso Times editorial board, the suggested change raised “First Amendment concerns because it limit[ed] someone from speaking solely based on the content of that speech.” Nevertheless, it passed on a 7-0 vote, over the objections of three members of the public who spoke in opposition.
It was not until the first day of Oscar Leeser’s second term as mayor, January 5, 2021, that City Council voted 8-0 to eliminate this requirement. Since that time, public comment at City Council meetings has proceeded smoothly and without controversy over procedure, which makes one wonder why Fierro and Maldonado-Rocha seemed so passionate about introducing new restrictions.
PUBLIC COMMENT CRITICAL IN COMING MONTHS
Between now and August there will be intense debates over the FY 2026 budget, which will almost certainly include a tax increase (in spite of Mayor Renard Johnson’s promises to the contrary). There will be heated exchanges over the proposal to build a deck plaza atop Interstate 10 and the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be needed to pay for it. There will be arguments over how to increase funding for maintaining and repairing our streets from the current allotment of $7 million to $45 million, the threshold for meeting our essential needs.
However, with the recent change to public comment, our City Council has diminished the public’s ability to influence the outcome of these discussions. One wonders whether the restriction on citizen input is a matter of public convenience, as Fierro claimed before the vote to amend the Rules of Order, or a political strategy aimed at curtailing dissent.
LILY LIMÒN MOVING TO REVERSE AMENDMENT
Fortunately, Rep. Lily Limón placed an item on the agenda for May 13 that would “allow for public comment on all agenda items as they are heard during the meeting,” reversing Fierro and Maldonado Rocha’s amendment, which she had supported.
She now regrets that vote and texted me: “My hope is my colleagues are open to the restoration of the people’s voice.”
Let’s hope they join her in striking the recent amendment to the Rules of Order so the taxpayers may fully participate in the democratic process, no matter how contentious; for in the words of George Orwell, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Max Grossman, El Paso Taxpayer Revolt