Public to have say at City Council meetings
It looks like Chicago aldermen could be forced to clear their calendars for some marathon City Council meetings.
In an abrupt about- face, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration on Friday decided not to appeal a court ruling forcing public participation at City Council meetings.
“The City ofChicago and its City Council will be adding an opportunity for residents, community leaders, stakeholders and others to speak during City Council meetings,” LawDepartment spokesman Bill McCaffrey wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun- Times.
“As such, the City is withdrawing its appeal and will begin drafting a rule to give the public another opportunity to speak during the legislative process.”
Asked to explain the about- face, McCaffrey said, “After the appeal was filed, Mayor Emanuel and the members of the City Council continued to discuss and evaluate the issue. They determined that providing another venue to the already robust public comment structure will benefit the public and enhance transparency.”
In January, McCaffrey said the city was “seeking leave to file an appeal” of Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen’s December ruling.
“We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling and believe it is contrary to the language and the intent of the Open Meetings Act,” McCaffrey said then.
“The City Council already provides a robust system of public comment through its committee meetings, and taking additional comments at the full City Council meeting is duplicative and unnecessary.”
That prompted an angry reaction from plaintiff Andy Thayer. He called the notice of appeal further evidence of Emanuel’s aversion to transparency.
“It’s throwing every taxpayers’ good money after bad. They should just do the right thing, rather than go nuclear on cases like this where they’re clearly in the wrong,” Thayer said then.
“They waste tons of time at every City Council meeting with all sorts of honorary things they could do in other settings. This is clearly a mechanism by which the mayor and his allies pack the chambers with people who do not oppose them so they can have the appearance of public support for deeply unpopular measures. Whether it’s phony reform of the police or one regressive tax measure after another. Or in this case, wasting money on a TIF subsidy to luxury high- rises when people are literally sleeping underneath bridge viaducts just yards away.”
In December, Larsen ruled that the Chicago City Council twice violated the Open Meetings Act last summer when activists were denied a chance to publicly comment on proposed legislation.
Larsen ordered the Council “to establish and record rules allowing public comments at full City Council meetings.”
Larsen cited a 2013 Illinois Appellate Court case when she ruled that the City Council violated Section 2.06( g) of the Open Meetings Act, entitled “Right to Speak.”
The section provides that “Any person shall be permitted an opportunity to address public officials under the rules established and recorded by the public body.”
“Plaintiffs have shown [ the] City Council violated Section 2.06( g) of the Act by not establishing and recording rules for public comment at full City Council meetings,” Larsen wrote.
The lawsuit was filed last July by Thayer and Rick Garcia after both claimed they were barred from Council chambers during a meeting.