Free Speech Survives the NRH City Council!

                        by Ron West

        It appears that the democratic process is not completely dead in North Richland Hills, Texas - yet!  Last night at Council, the proposed gagging of the citizens - including language that would have prohibited even criticism of the Council or city staff was basically gutted.  As opposed to the Mayor's suggestions, the citizens presentations will remain at the beginning of council meetings and criticism was not outlawed.  The council is changing the rules to prohibit what they consider to be "personal attacks" against the Mayor or Council Members and is also changing the rules to allow city staff to immediately respond to comments. 

    Portions of the proposed changes dealing with censoring of council members appears to have been removed and only new "rules" dealing with out of executive session comments on any pending litigation or land dealings will be in the final draft of the new rules.

    Contrary to the comments from the Mayor in the prior pre-council meeting a few weeks ago, the Mayor now is blaming all of the requests for changes on city staff and other council members.  This appears to be him attempting to distance himself from the gagging of free speech.  A video is his prior comments can be viewed here.

    A couple of "improvements" should be noted.  Councilman John Lewis successfully changed the time allowed from 2 minutes per presentation and a total of 20 minutes for all to 3 minutes per presentation and 30 minutes in total allocated.  This was done over the objections of JoAnn Johnson and Suzy Compton.  It also appears that the option of the Mayor to grant 10 minute blocks of time when 10 attendees are present during citizen presentations has been removed.  This option was a rule that related to public hearings but not to the citizen presentation portions of the meeting.  (This is interesting since the Mayor chose to extend the total time for citizen presentations to 40 minutes one time during the recent campaign and then permitted four "campaign speeches" for 10 minutes each supporting the incumbents.) 

    Overall, it will remain to be seen if the current majority on the council chooses to abide by the rules they implement in a fair and equitable manner.  Since they have demonstrated a propensity to even violate their own laws (such as the placement of their political signs on election day) when it serves their needs, their definition of "attacks" may include anything that the Mayor doesn't want to hear. 

    Credit for free speech surviving goes to each of you who talked to your council members.  Without your input, the proposed changes in rules limiting free speech would have probably sailed though this council with a solid 5 to 2 majority.

    Recognition is also due to Councilwoman Nancy Bielik who stood up to the majority and read the following comments (quoted verbatim) into the city record:

    Citizens’ Presentations 

The issue of Citizens’ Presentations was last discussed in 2003.  At that time, this portion of our meetings was moved from last to first. 

I found, online, “An Easy Guide to Participating in the City Council Meeting”, produced by the City of North Richland Hills.  This guide contains information on the Citizen Presentation portion of our meetings.  When reading these guidelines I found inconsistencies between how this portion of our meetings is handled, and how it’s supposed to be handled.  There is no allowance for 10 people to sign a form allowing a single person to speak for 10 minutes instead of two minutes. 

It has been the practice of the Mayor to read a list of guidelines prior to the Citizens’ Presentations portion of the meetings.  One of the rules he always reads is that there may be no personal attacks on any member of the Council.  While, in theory, that is a nice rule, in practice, it has been ignored.  Yes, the Mayor has consistently stopped attacks against a majority of the members of our council that support his political agenda.  However, he allows all attacks against any citizen or council members, including me personally, that do not.   

It is our responsibility, as council members, to set an example our citizens can follow.  It is our responsibility to treat each other with respect, and to treat our citizens with respect.  It is our responsibility to listen to our citizens, even if they have something to say that we’d rather not hear. David Ben-Gurion, a former Prime Minister of Israel, said, “The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.”

Whether they are praising us or critical of us, our citizens have a right to speak without fear of ridicule or derision.   They should not be wary of being called a “trouble maker” if they ask a question, and they should not expect to have unkind comments made about them.  I have watched and listened as these attacks occurred.  I saw a citizen, in tears, giggled at.  I saw a Senior citizen called a trouble maker the first time she ever spoke at one of our meetings.  I witnessed another Senior being berated and literally yelled at when she did nothing wrong. 

During the last election, it became a common practice to read letters at the end of the Council meeting that responded to questions asked by citizens during the prior meeting.  While I approve of doing this, I must insist that it should be done consistently, not just for a few.  Letters were read that responded to questions asked by a specific group of citizens, but not all of them.  If we can’t treat everyone the same, then we should stop the practice.  Who should be the person charged with deciding whether additional information is “of general interest to the full city council, the public at large and to the citizen making the comment?” 

Also during the last election, members of our community were allowed to speak at the podium, and be taped and televised, while wearing political buttons that supported certain candidates.  A Political Action Committee was allowed to introduce itself during Citizens’ Presentations – again, taped and televised. Under the guise of Citizens’ Presentations we have allowed numerous instances of campaigning without stopping them.  One of these was under the guise of a citizen reading a letter from the mayor to another citizen.  The man reading the letter even referred to it as being campaign material, yet no effort was made to stop him.  It remains to be seen if we as a council and city will face any repercussions from the Ethics commission for allowing campaigning to occur during our meetings.

The Citizens’ Presentations portion of our meetings is for the purpose of our citizens to let us know what they see as good and bad in our city.  It is their chance to ask questions and make comments.  We need to hear from them, all of them.  To now impose a rule that says, “…such comments which seek to criticize the City Council or City Staff shall not be permitted.”  Who will define criticism?  Can a citizen no longer get up in front of us and ask that a pothole be filled because the mention of an unfixed problem is critical of the City?  If a citizen asks how much we spent on a project, is that question, in itself considered a criticism?

Nancy J. Carmody, in Family Circle magazine, wrote, “I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech.”   Do we, as a Council have a right to curtail anyone’s freedom of speech?  Do we have a right to take away someone’s right to complain about, us, the government?

    We elect our council members and Mayor to represent us - not dictate to us.  As you talk to them - you might want to remind them of this fact.