Jefferson v McIntyre

By John McDaid | Friday, 15 May 2009

In my previous post, I recalled Jefferson saying something about government listening to the public — not, please note, "the audience" as both McIntyre and Gleason referred to the citizens in the Town Council chambers. I found the quote, and like most of Jefferson's writing, it bears repetition at length.

"I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty."
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, 1787

"Everybody knows how the public comment would have went," he said. "A lot of people would have stood up and spoke for Terri."
— Council President Peter McIntyre, Sakonnet Times, 5/14/09

The citizens of Portsmouth are not an audience who passively sit and watch. Nor should e-mail be taken to represent or replace public comment (as commenter fran ironically suggests here.) But wait, why should the Council bother to listen? How do we know that the people are right? Jefferson goes on to suggest the mechanism for ensuring that when citzens speak, they are not off in the weeds.

"The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
— Ibid.

Democracy. You're soaking in it.

Tags: 
Localblogging, 02871, Town Council

Comments

Viking

Fri, 05/15/2009 - 8:34pm

You are correct, John. I am not a conspiracy nut, and in my last comment I was not presuming there was some kind of “plot.” I was castigating the council president who “forgot” that it is important to maintain at least the illusion of open government: Giving people a chance to speak, even if the decision is really a foregone conclusion.

I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, so I’ll give Peter McIntyre this: He didn’t want to waist a lot of time, and he knew what the final vote would be - so he hurried the process – and may have been a bit taken off guard up by Karen Gleason who started to talk before Peter even finished introducing the agenda item.

Remember: it legal for the President to allocate zero time for public comment. His “forgetting” to even let others on the council speak was a faux pas (at best) but let’s give him this: He “apologized” and perhaps is now on notice that he really didn’t deal with that situation very elegantly - and if this happens again, it will be noticed.

Here’s what I would do in such a situation, and what I would recommend that Peter do next time: (1) Allow time for all on the council who want to speak to do so before calling for a vote and (2) limit public comment time as severely, but allow some time. There is no “rule” that really applies, other than not being discriminatory. One could allocate 15-20 minutes for discussion, ask for a show of hands of those who want to speak, divide 15-20 minutes by the number of people who want to speak and then limit everyone accordingly.

John McDaid

Sun, 05/17/2009 - 9:48pm

Hi, Viking...
Sure, it's legal for the chair to allow zero public comment. But I strongly disagree that there is no "rule" that applies to Council debate. Review of the tape shows that McIntyre called for discussion on the motion. See Robert's Rules of Order, 10th Edition, Section 43, page 374, lines 28-infra, Rules Governing Debate:

It should be noted that, under legitimate parliamentary procedure, there is no such thing as "gaveling through" a measure. The right of members to debate or introduce secondary motions cannot be cut off by the chair's attempting to put a question to vote so quickly that no member can get the floor — either when the chair first states the question or when he believes debate is ended. Debate is not closed by the presiding officer's rising to put the question. If a vote has been taken or begun quickly and it is found that a member rose and addressed the chair with reasonable promptness [...] even if the chair has announced the rsults of such a vote — the vote must be disregarded."

Can someone explain why this does not apply?

Cheers.
-j

Maddie_C

Mon, 05/18/2009 - 11:00am

John:

I've had my share of frustration with Robert's Rules. The section you quote of Roberts rules do apply but they don't help. Roberts rules give council members rights to be able to debate. But if a council member is denied debate by the president "gaveling through" a vote, the only recourse is for a council member to say "point of order" (or something like that) and then make a complaint that his right to debate under the rules was denied.

But then guess who gets to decide whether that parliamentary point is right and whether there is any correction to the process? If you guessed "President McIntyre" give yourself a prize. If the president "rules" that the process was ok, under roberts rules the only thing that council member could do is make a motion to appeal to the solicitor, Andre D'Andrea. First, the motion to appeal the ruling would have to get 4 votes, and then asking the solicitor to overturn the president is probably just an exercise in futility.

So when you have 4 members of the council who want to cram through a vote without debate, and one of them is the president who decides questions of roberts rules, and the only appeal is to get 4 votes to ask the council president's personal friend the solicitor, this isn't going to get any prettier.

So to answer your question, robert's rules apply, but they don't help when the people who want to deny debate are a majority of the council with a willing president and a yes man for a solicitor.