Impertinent speech is our sacred right
It’s good that Santa Fe City Councilor Carmichael Dominguez has delayed action on proposed new procedural rules for the City Council. We like the parts about trying to get council members to keep it short as opposed to rattling on and on during meetings. But the new rules also expand on existing language about appropriate behavior and spell out when someone can be thrown out of the council chambers for making comments councilors don’t like.
Among the supposed sins speakers aren’t supposed to commit is making “any personal, impertinent and or slanderous remarks.” It turns out — and we’re glad that Dominguez has brought this to light with his rules change proposal — “personal, impertinent or slanderous remarks” while addressing the council are banned already as the procedural rules now stand.
The existing rules say the council “chair” — the mayor, mayor pro tem or some other sit-in replacement — “may prohibit any person who is acting improperly from continuing to speak.” The proposed changes permit the chair to also “direct their removal from a meeting.”
The big problem with both the existing and proposed rules is trying to stomp out “impertinent” and “personal” commentary. The Santa Fe school board once tried to ban so-called personal speech when a member of the public specifically criticized the superintendent — the board backed off quickly after a wave of criticism, some of which may have been impertinent.
Many of us remember Charlie “The Greek” Griego, who, as a retired city worker, showed up regularly at City Council meetings for years before his death in 2003 to excoriate councilors or others at City Hall. He usually asked them, “When are you gonna wake up and smell the coffee?”
Was Griego impertinent? Former Councilor Matthew Ortiz, on the occasion of Griego’s death, coined the term “blisterly” to describe his booming commentaries, adding, “We lost a unique voice of criticism.”
The council later named a baseball field after “The Greek” in a resolution calling him “an outspoken advocate for neighborhoods and the disadvantaged in the halls of city government.” In Griego’s honor, the council should now drop its ban on personal and impertinent remarks, and instead worry more about encouraging open and vigorous public debate.