Public comment - New York versus Richmond

(Editor's note: The following article was published Friday, March 10 by the Finger Lakes Times of Geneva, NY... It contrasts the difference in elected officials' attitudes about public comment at meetings between the City of Richmond and Seneca Falls, NY, the birthplace of the women's suffrage movement.)

The law that Seneca Falls, New York really needs

By Michael J. Fitzgerald, FLT columnist

   The town of Seneca Falls needs to adopt a new local law, one that requires the town board to include a robust public comment segment at all public town meetings.

     In the week prior to the just-completed regularly scheduled town board meeting, the chairman — elected town Supervisor Greg Lazzaro — declared there would be no public comments allowed at the session.

    About anything.

    He opined that any speakers would likely want to comment on a proposed law — Local Law 2 — designed to negate Local Law 3, which was adopted in December 2016. Because the town has a public hearing scheduled on Local Law 2, he said comments at the just-past meeting would be repetitive and clutter the board’s busy agenda.

    It’s hard to measure how prescient the town supervisor might be about what the public would want to comment on.

    But his precognitive abilities are irrelevant.

    Whatever town of Seneca Falls’ citizens want to say about town matters are the heart of participatory democracy and the democratic process itself.

    The Town Board was elected to work in the best interests of the people, by the people and for the people of the town.

    That includes listening to what citizens have to say, not just processing sewer, water and planning concerns at once-a-month meetings.

    By contrast, last month at a Richmond, Calif., City Council meeting, dozens of local residents offered up thoughts, suggestions, criticisms — and even a smattering of praise.

    The City Council’s policy encourages public comment on every action item on its agenda, with speakers limited to two minutes of verbiage, a time limit carefully watched by the city clerk.

    That’s public comment on every single action item, not just a one-time, grudgingly given time bloc in the meeting.

    Would-be speakers in Richmond fill out a card and give it to the clerk at the beginning of the meeting, indicating on which agenda item (or items) they want to comment.

    In discussions immediately following public comments, council members frequently refer to what the public said.

    Rather than taking the high road on citizen input, Seneca Falls might be taking a cue from Schuyler County’s town of Reading, where that town board’s disdain for its citizens — particularly citizen comments at meetings — has been routinely demonstrated in the past few years.

    Reading officials proudly tout that while New York state law does not require them to allow a single word of public input at meetings, they allow the public commentary anyway. Sometimes.

    But in recent years Reading officials have often severely limited any comments — even forbidding that some topics be mentioned.

    The dueling laws in Seneca Falls that prompted the town supervisor to shut down public comment deal with the ever-growing Seneca Meadows landfill and the community controversy over whether the facility should be shut down by 2025 (Local Law 3 passed in 2016) or not (Local Law 2, under consideration).

    It’s a critical issue that certainly requires as much discussion as citizens desire — whether impatient town officials want to listen or not. The elected officials’ time, after all, is really the public’s time.

    Perhaps at the upcoming public hearing on Local Law 2 citizens could demand a shift in the conversation to also talk about the need for a new local law, one that would codify public comments into the legal framework of all town of Seneca Falls meetings.

    Such a law might even spawn copycat legislation in other towns.

    Perhaps the state legislature would give the matter consideration too.

    It’s a law that would be popular with the public, those same people who the town boards are actually representing.

(Fitzgerald worked for six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for several news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, Calif. You can email him at Michael.Fitzgeraldfltcolumnist@gmail.com and visit his website at michaeljfitzgerald.blogspot.com.)