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
as a private citizen representing no organization.
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