Duluth City Council President Janet Kennedy was careful, she said, not to consult with too many of her fellow elected officials, to avoid a quorum and to avoid any violation of Minnesota’s open meeting law.
As cautious and in step with the letter of the law as Kennedy may have been in deciding last week to
do away with remote public comments
at council meetings, “There is also the issue of whether it was a good idea,” as Minneapolis lawyer Mark Anfinson, an expert on open government, said in an interview with the News Tribune Opinion page.
Anfinson was referring specifically to ending public comments made remotely via telephone or online at Duluth City Council meetings. It used to be that only members of the public who were in attendance could speak on just about any subject for up to three minutes. During the pandemic, though, when the council couldn’t meet in person, citizens started being allowed to participate virtually. Kennedy decided to end that after a series of disgusting antisemitic remarks were leveled during the public-comment period at the council’s Oct. 30 meeting. The remarks all were made virtually.
The comments demanded to be condemned — and quickly were, including by the
council as a whole
and in a
News Tribune editorial
. Council President Kennedy responded appropriately and swiftly at the meeting, too, by cutting the calls off short and offering a reminder about the council’s insistence for civility.
The “whether it was a good idea” question applies to the decision to limit public participation and public input in the proceedings of an elected public body. The ability to call in with comments, in addition to offering them in-person, should have been retained — and could have been with just a bit of effort to verify the identities of callers, so bogus names and addresses can’t be used, as appears to have happened on Oct. 30, that anonymity providing cover for the hate speech.
As inexcusable as it was, this incident was also isolated and a rarity. Access to elected leaders shouldn’t have been taken away from everyone as a result. Council President Kennedy’s decision punishes the wrong people. The goal should be more participation in local representative government, never less. That’s just good practice, even if allowing public comments at public meetings isn’t required in law.
“I think one can validly criticize the council (for that),” Anfinson said. “You would think they would want to hear from their constituents.”
Like too many other elected officials, often because they’re more interested in meetings not running for hours than in public input, Kennedy argued there are many other lines of communication with the council, including email, snail-mail letters, and telephone calls.
True. However, “The opportunity for constituents to present their views and concerns in a public meeting is different than all those things because, in part, (public comments) educate other citizens, other residents,” Anfinson pointed out. “They hear what one person’s concern is and they might say, ‘Huh, I never thought of that. That’s a good point.’ And there’s sort of a chain reaction potentially. Whereas if I just go and talk to a council member personally, privately, that never happens. … So you’d think they’d invite that, they’d want that, they’d welcome that.”
Likewise, Duluthians can welcome elected officials who discuss public matters publicly rather than via private conversations. Even if Kennedy didn’t consult with a quorum or more of her council colleagues, her decision to consult them at all in private was a blow to transparency.
Duluthians can insist instead that public matters be discussed and debated publicly, every time — and that our comments are always welcome.
