The General Assembly made two major changes to the Open Meetings Act this year. One new law requires that county and city legislative bodies provide an agenda 48 hours in advance of the meeting. The agenda must "reasonably describe" each agenda item. The other requires all governing bodies set aside a period for public comment, allowing citizens to speak about items on the agenda.
Public comment periods would be required at governing body meetings under a bill filed by Knoxville state representative Elaine Davis and Calhoun senator Adam Lowe. The bill allows governing body members to set rules around public comment periods, such as limiting the amount of time of the period and the amount of time of each speaker. The bill requires a public comment period for citizens to comment on items "that are germane to the items on the agenda for the meeting."
Governing bodies such as school boards and county commissions should be careful about their rules on public comment. They may regulate the public comment period to protect the safety and the orderly flow of a meeting. But barring someone just because they are critical or express antagonistic views violates free speech rights and is repressive.
A citizen cannot be thrown out of a public meeting simply because he or she offends, antagonizes or harshly criticizes a governing body or members of a governing body during public comment period, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said this month.
The Hamblen County Commission has decided to exclude the public comments from the videotape of its meetings, which is shown on a public education channel. Linda Noe, an attorney in Morristown, posted on her blog her own video of the meeting in which she questioned commissioners about the decision. In the video, County Mayor Bill Brittain responds to a question from a commissioner about telling the videographer to turn off the equipment when the public comments portion of the meeting started, saying it was "in the best interest of the meeting." Later, the commission chairman says that not taping the public comments was a "compromise" to ending the videotaping of [...]
