Urbana City Council Passes Ordinance Restricting Public Comment

On October 12^th, 2020 City Council passed an ordinance that allows censorship of public comment during meetings. Several of provisions in the ordinance are in violation of the Open Meetings Act as they pertain to content-based regulation of public speech.

The passed ordinance can be viewed in full here:

Ordinance No. 2020-09-049: An Ordinance Amending Urbana City Code, Chapter 2, Addition of Section 2-5 Electronic Virtual Public Meetings (Public Comment During Public Meetings)

The proposed ordinance (presented before council) can be viewed here.

Ordinance 2020-09-049, put forward by Urbana Mayor Marlin, came following her new rules for public input during the September 14^th, 2020 Urbana City Council meeting. During that meeting, Marlin disallowed public commentary about elected officials, city staff, members of boards and commissions, and even “negative comments”.

Over the past six months, residents have voiced their criticism regarding police misconduct and actions of City staff. According to Marlin, these criticisms were creating a hostile environment during electronic virtual (Zoom) meetings and the time spent on public input made it difficult to complete City business (article here).

Marlin’s proposed ordinance went through two iterations during Committee of the Whole discussions on September 21^st, 2020 (article here) and October 5^th, 2020 (article here).

Council members Shirese Hursey and Julie Laut were absent from this meeting but sent letters expressing support for the passage of Mayor Marlin’s ordinance.

Council members passed an amendment to the ordinance brought forward by Council member Dennis Roberts, to allow four minutes of public comment per person. The new ordinance had proposed reducing public comment from five minutes per person to three minutes. The amendment, described by Roberts as a “considerate compromise” was supported by Council members Jared Miller and Maryalice Wu.

Residents have voiced concerns about content-based restrictions and the impact the new rules would have on free speech, especially in the midst of discussions on police accountability and reform.

City Attorney James Simon addressed the issue of free speech saying that the courts and Illinois Public Access Counselor (PAC) have held that public input is a limited public forum.

“Limited public forums can be controlled free speech in time, place, and manner. You just amended an ordinance that deals with time, the place obviously is the city council meeting, lack of decorum and incivility is considered manner, and manner can be regulated,” argues Simon.

“We really only get one kind of comment in this kind of meeting, and those are the ones that are critical of us most of the time. And the only reason that this has even been brought up seems to be because people don’t like the way that people are saying those things about it and we are trying to come up with some creative language that allows us to say that … oh these are manner based restrictions and not content based restrictions,” responded Council member Miller.

Meanwhile, Council member Dennis Roberts voiced his support for the new rules.

“I don’t have a problem with that, asking for civility. I don’t think that we are intending to misuse it, but, and I don’t want to make it so broad that we dampen, you know, truthful commentary. But I certainly don’t want to hear people just being called liars without any kind of context or proof, except for an opinion. I mean, well maybe that’s free speech, I don’t know but certainly is not respectful free speech, there’s a lot of other ways to say that you totally disagree with what I’ve just heard.”

Council member Miller also echoed residents’ concerns about the subjective interpretations of what is considered abusive, harassing, and threatening language.

“I think that language is still very broad and can be interpreted in a lot of different ways given the presiding officer… and I really think that we’re putting ourselves in a slippery situation for ourselves, or future members of council to abuse the rules that are in there themselves, because we don’t understand exactly what it is that they mean and I’m still concerned about the fact that we are leaving that language so open in there like that without defining those things,” says Miller.

Council member Bill Brown did not seem to be concerned about the lack of uniform enforcement of the new rules.

“There’s going to be some differences I think between the way presiding officers enforces, just like there are in everything, even when we are meeting in person, people went over the time limit now and then, some people would cut them off right away, some people wouldn’t. So, there’s just going to be some differences,” says Brown.

The proposed ordinance was passed with Council members Bill Brown, William Colbrook, Dennis Roberts, and Maryalice Wu voting yes. Council Miller voted no.

The new rules will apply to all public meetings of the City of Urbana, including meetings of boards and commissions and other City-sponsored public bodies.

Council members discussion prior to passing of Ordinance 2020-09-049 during the October 12th, 2020 Urbana City Council meeting can be seen here: