Steven Choi made the right call at last night’s city council meeting, but his opponents will easily twist this into “opposing free speech.”
At last night’s City Council meeting PR maven Alan Ziegaus of San Diego’s Southwest Strategies attempted to astroturf the Public Comments in an unusually innovative way. As part of his PR contract with Yehudi Gaffen‘s Gafcon, he wanted to screen his nine-minute PR video. To do so he brought employees — I counted eight — to file public comment cards. Each one, in turn, was supposed to, as their public comment, screen the next piece of the video.
The first Gafcon employee spoke, and showing the usual Gafcon grasp of reality, made a key statement [1] that had already been directly contradicted in the Auditor’s Update [2]. Next Alan Ziegaus got up and requested the video be played as his public comment. No problem there — the video ran for three minutes. Next up was a Southwest Strategies employee (or perhaps a contractor) who requested the next three minutes of the video as her public comment.
And that’s when the fun began. Mayor Steven Choi ruled that the speaker had three minutes to say whatever she wanted, but that particular video was part of Alan’s public comment and thus had already gotten its three minutes of public time.
Larry Agran objected that Choi was trying to “regulate the content” of the Public Commenter’s speech. A thirty minute back-and-fort ensued, with motions, amendments, and shocking lack of comprehension by Larry Agran about the plain language of the relevant city ordinance. [3]
In the end, Choi’s ruling prevailed, the woman got say whatever she pleased [5] for three minutes, but not show that particular video. Subsequently, the next handful of Public Commenters, all apparently Southwest Strategies plants, withdrew their time.
No public commenter’s time was curtailed. Indeed, a half-dozen other public commenters used their three minutes to bash away at Steven on everything from yard signs to the Five Points deal. YAY for Democracy!
Steven made a difficult call, one which I applaud. However, for my own self-interest, I wished he had ruled differently. As I said during my three minutes of public comment:
I wish [Larry Agran’s motion to allow the entire video] had passed.
My friends have been looking for a venue for our movie night. Had the motion passed, we would have used the next city council public comment period to watch Top Gun with Tom Cruise in its entirety.
THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME.
Dan C may bleat that “Steven Choi hates free speech” or whatever. But consider the possibilities: what movie would you want to screen at your next city council meeting?
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[1] “Gafcon is not the subject of an investigation”
[2] Gafcon is at the very heart of the Sam Allevato conflict-of-interest investigation. More on that later.
[3] Even after explication by city staff, Larry kept insisting that public comment speakers are entitle to three minutes, and the mayor may extend that. FALSE. We public speakers are entitled t”Up to three minutes,” but the mayor may reduce that at his/her discretion. Indeed, the Comment Period typically reduced to two minutes when there are more then 10 Public Commenters,
[4] She recited an unusually boring written statement defending Gafcon.
Sorry, Tyler, but I think that you’re wrong about one or two important details.
First, you can’t read too much into the “up to” language. This is a Brown Act matter. Choi may presumably reduce the time for speakers to make their Public Comments from three to two minutes if there are a lot of them — I don’t think that it has been challenged in Irvine — but even if so he’d have a hard time reducing it further than that. Obviously, 15 seconds, for example, would be ludicrous.
I think that his decision makes little substantive sense because the overall video could simply be divided into 3:00 (or 2:50 minute) “episodes.” Next time, they’ll do that. The notion that minutes 4-6 of a film are forbidden because minutes 1-3 have been shown is bizarre anyway; they contain different material. And Choi faces a more serious problem, in that he has to treat everyone equally.
Cool. So what movie should we screen at the next Anaheim city council meeting? I’m thinking “Chinatown.”
Chinatown works better in Huntington Beach where we’re fighting Poseidon.
Let me think. Zenger? Ryan? Diamond?
I’m only participating if it’s a scene from Monty python.
Some scenes from local government are so similar folks might not know the difference.
@ Ryan
Google “Benjy Bronk” + “Footloose”
Comedy gold.
Koyaanisqatsi. Although, to be frank, I don’t actually know of any requirement that City Councils permit recorded broadcasts as a public comment at all, except perhaps as an accommodation for people incapable of speaking. But if they do it for one person other than as an accommodation, then they have to do it for them all.
I see your point, Greg.
A “no video unless you have a special needs” is probably a smart way out of this.
However the Brown Act actually works — and I’m certainly no expert — this was some pretty brazen Astrotrufing.
Weird that someone with Agran’s rock solid Progressive bona fides was pushing so hard for a corporate shill job. I thought that was supposed to be Republican expertise ?
The weird thing is that this expensive astroturf effort brought in from San Diego was completely unnecessary. The pro-Agran speakers, all of whom I am pretty sure were Irvine citizens attending because they cared, outnumbered the pro-audit speakers by more than two-to-one.
“Weird that someone with Agran’s rock solid Progressive bona fides was pushing so hard for a corporate shill job. I thought that was supposed to be Republican expertise ?”
You have obviously never met Dan Chipmunkski, the biggest corporate shill job of all.
Gafcon’s protecting its own ass(ets) here. I doubt Agran dragged them in, though he may have welcomed them.
actually, the best one for an Irvine City council meeting is the 1995 documentary “SPin”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(1995_film)
This interview would be fun to screen, as well.
http://www.c-span.org/video/?26331-1/larry-agran-interview