Statement before the Glenn
A. Walsh
Board
of Directors
Allegheny
Regional
Asset District: Telephone: 412-561-7876
Public
Comment Electronic
Mail: < gaw@planetarium.cc >
Limitations
at Internet
Site: < http://www.planetarium.cc
>
RAD
Board Meetings 2007
April 30
Good evening. I am Glenn A.
Walsh of
Today’s agenda includes
consideration of adding a 24-hour registration notice to your current public
comment policy. Although adding such a
notice is in
compliance with the
Pennsylvania Sunshine Act, adding such a notice will not solve the problem you, apparently, are trying to solve.
The main problem with your
current policy is the allocation of only 15 minutes for public comments. At
three minutes per speaker, this only allows five county residents,
in a county with a
population of more than 1.2 million, to speak at any one meeting!
In the past, I have
commented to the staff that I believe that this policy is in violation of the
spirit of the Sunshine Act. And, considering that people register on the
speakers’ list on a
first-come, first-served basis, if a speaker is denied the opportunity to speak
due to this policy, and that speaker wishes to comment on a matter that
you will vote on that
evening, then you would be in violation
of the letter-of-the-law! And, since people reading your policy on-line are
not guaranteed they can speak,
this discourages them from
even trying to participate!
It seems the reason for
this policy is to prevent delays in the meeting agenda—despite the fact that
the “Public hearing and comment period” is part
of the agenda! I could
be wrong, but it seems that
this policy was instituted shortly after I, and ten other members of Friends of
the Zeiss, testified on August 27, 2001 in opposition to a
Children’s Museum request
for $4 million in RAD capital funding.
This delayed the beginning
of that evening’s annual budget hearings and meant that certain “high-profile”
civic leaders, such as then-Carnegie Institute
President Ellsworth Brown,
had to wait longer. So, I understand the problem that you were trying to solve,
but my response to that problem is: welcome
to democracy!
This problem is no
different from the problem City Council has to deal with weekly and County
Council and other municipal councils have to deal with monthly. They
do not try to find some way
to limit public comment. They simply listen to everyone who wants to make a
public comment, before proceeding with the rest of the agenda.
Your Public Comment Policy
also says, that for people who cannot fit into the fifteen minutes, “the
Board may either extend the time or schedule the remaining speakers to
appear first during the
next public comment period.” So, if the time is not extended, these people have to wait a month—often longer
since you do not meet every month?
Will these people then
crowd-out people who want to comment at the next meeting?
About ten years ago, the
Pennsylvania General Assembly purposely
changed the Sunshine Act, so that public comments at the end of public meetings
were no longer
practically meaningless.
The General Assembly wanted all public bodies to listen and pay attention to
what the public had to say.
A lot of the time, I am the
only one who even speaks. However, on the rather rare occasions when some
hot-button issue brings out several people to speak, it is in
your best interests to
listen to each of them—even if budget hearings are delayed. A 24-hour notification should not be
instituted and the 15-minute comment period
limitation should be
rescinded.
Thank you,
gaw