So long Zuma and Mike and Matt and the rest of you homeless, crazy druggies who come to every City Council meeting and waste your time shouting, singing and preaching to deaf ears.
Next week the council will unanimously to approve a change in Rule 12 proposed aptly enough by Smith & Wesson banning you for up to 10 weeks without a warning if the Council President decides you have been disruptive or your actions cause others to be disruptive.
In discussing it Wednesday, Richard Alarcon was inspired to mock you as pitiable in his own sardonic way by feigning to find find inspiration to work harder for a better world because he sees you wasting your time and lives by coming to every Council meeting to speak your minds when none of the members cares or listens to what you have to say.
This measure was designed by the Council’s lawyer, Deputy City Attorney Dion O’Connell, a nervous and irritable man whose sense of decorum is easily offended by anyone who strays for a moment for the issue at hand or in any other disturbs his need for strict orderliness.
Questioned about what the measure would do, O’Connell stammered in confusionwhen it turned out that the change to Council Rule 12 is simple enough: The Council President can ban a speaker for up to 30 meetings (at least 10 weeks) instead of 30 days without any warning necessary.
Whether the warning is given or not or how long the ban is and what constitutes disruption of decorum or who is responsible for it are solely up to the discretion of the President
Here’s how Councilmen Greig Smith and Herb Wesson, authors of the Smith & Wesson Rule, explain their motives:
The man Smith praised as the kind of regular Public Commenter that’s OK, Eastside activist Dr. Clyde Williams, takes issue with the Smith & Wesson Rule as arbitrary and illegal and offers to fund a legal challenge to it.
Does he mean homeless dogs, too?
Alarcon was utterly beyond out of line Wednesday. This is the same man who has spent his career preying on the less fortunate and cultivating his own illegal Mexican Mafia empire. What a shameless piece of filth you are Richard. You will fry in hell at the hands of your victims.
So Alarcon was saying, basically, that he feels sad for the regular public speakers at City Council meetings but he also thinks they have drug and mental health issues.
Well it’s a good thing they are going to institute this new rule because now that the CA State Budget is going to cut even more health services for the poor and unemployed, the City Council may have even MORE upset, mentally depressed, and mentally off-center people living in the city and some of them might get the idea to come and speak to the Council about their life circumstances.
Gosh, that would be terrible. To have the constituents come and speak about how terrible it can be in the Big City after funding cuts? Why can’t people just suffer in silence? Why do they have to bother their elected officials?
The efficient thing to do is this: If the Council thinks a person is nuts because they speak too often at a meeting, they need a mental health professional at every meeting. He or she can have those plastic cuffs ready and at a nod from a Council appointee the psychiatrist can cuff the suspected crazy person, with the help of the police, then the psychiatrist can evaluate him right after the meeting and refer him to city services, help him get a job, refer him to a drug treatment plan if needed, and get that citizen so busy and well cared for that he won’t have anything to complain about anymore.
So I’m all for it if the City Council is going to follow through and help people and not just ban free speech. If that’s the plan I say go for it.
Ah but here is the rub. The follow through is the tough part. Follow through takes money and jobs and a coordination of services.
I don’t know. What do you think? Do you think the Council will follow through and take care of people who come to them with problems, or do they just want to control the conversation?
I think Skid Row tells the answer to that question. There is no money for follow through.
Interesting how Trutanich and his people used Zuma extensively and according to his blog, called and pushed him to do and say more more during the campaign on Ch. 35. Zine also used Zuma and egged him on when Zuma’s comments suited him.
But now Trutanich, who Zuma counted on to back him up, and Zuma says praised his blunt manner before, supports banning Zuma. Clearly unhappy that Zuma is telling people about how Trutanich promised him a job in gratitude including calling him on Thanksgiving day to say so, and praised him effusively, but dropped him like a hot potato right after the election.
Since what Zuma says and does is unpredictable, he’s become a potential embarrassment. But I’m sure it’s purely a coincidence. Even though Hunt has pulled exactly the same stunt before, more than once, and the rest of them have done what they do for years being given “the widest latitude” as Garcetti puts it.
12:12,
There is an article on Mayor Sam about the Nuch-Zuma situation from yesterday morning. One commenter really nailed down exactly what your last paragraph is getting at:
“This is about Tru’s integrity not Zuma’s, who’s been “out there” for anyone to assess for some time. He couldn’t hide who is if he tried.”
The point being that Zuma has always been Zuma. It’s Nuch who has decided Zuma is an embarassment now that he is Mr City Attorney. Shameless exploitation is really ugly.
First, Alarcon is a bully, often setting up people who appear before the council on official business and loves to correct them in a demeaning tone when unsatisfactory answers are made to his questions. “Well, I was the author to that bill and I know what it says…” or “I do know the language of that statute…,” etc.
This acting he did was another example of the shifting of attention to a lot of minor items to take heat off other things. But the proposed rule change will be voted in unanimously, as the CMs vote in lock step with each other for most things.
The whole KKK thing with Nichael Hunt was just something that made the time right to pull this move. Garcetti’s comparison with the more generous allowances to speakers compared to that offered by the County Bd. of Supvrs. does not mean the Council rules change is a proper move.
It’s another device to cut-off what has become very confrontational presentations to the council, challenging their motives and credibility, and rightly so.
What Alarcon did reveal with his smart ass recital was that his comments about the speakers talkig about a thing that “we don’t care about” and “will not act upon it” is SO right about the rest of the public’s comment on AGENDA items. Everything is a done deal, settled by the unspoken agreement to make votes unanimous, and all the comments of the public might as well have been made as a mime with no spoken words whey you see they all ignore comments at that stage.
The Council could use their own rules of decorum and NOT speak while the public speakers are at the podium and NOT leave to do whatever else they consider more important. The rudeness of CMs remains something that is only obvious when visiting in person. The rules change will have a chilling effect on any real expressive speech.
Finally, what recourse, aside from injunctive relief that only the courts can give, will be available to challenge the Garcetti decisions against speakers or the votes against speakers who you know are ready to lay it on for Zuma Dogg? And HOW LONG is the appropriate time for each banishment from the apparent kingdom of these “public servants”? It can be manipulated to silence critics at just the times that an open and vigorous discussion is called for to fully examine issues.
I don’t like it, but the council, as Alarcon so aptly stated, doesn’t care.
The poor treatment of public speakers is just one part of an “efficient” rubberstamping machine created at the hands of the Council and City Attorney. The entire City Council Committee system is designed to conduct short, disrespectful “in-depth” hearings on matters in Committee. Then, having afforded the public no meaningful hearing at the Committee level, the matter goes onto the Council meeting agenda where matters can be approved WITHOUT further public discussion (we certainly would not want the public to see any discussion on television).
BUT, these public speakers disrupt the “rubberstamping” machine administered by Eric Garcetti. They take up time that City Council members could be spending lunching with lobbyists, attending fundraisers for their next office, or plotting with union leaders the next huge ripoff of the City’s treasury. Our City leaders are corrupt. Not just a little. A lot. They are bullies — arrogant and petty.
Where is Carmen Trutanich? I heard him promise his supporters that the first thing on his agenda was to conduct some tutorials on the Brown Act. He could start with Dion O’Connell — a sad little man who is an important cog in the “rubberstamping machine.”
If our public speakers are unlawfully excluded from City Council, then I think they should spend their time organizing the signature gathering process for an initiative to require City Council meetings to be held at night time like other cities. And to place in the Charter a provision that specifies what actions constitute a breach of decorum and then prohibit the City Council from enacting any ordinance or Council Rule that is more restrictive.