The Los Angeles City Council earlier this month quietly changed its procedures regarding public comment at council meetings, limiting who is allowed to speak on agenda items before the panel votes.
The move, designed to make meetings more efficient, has drawn criticism from the city controller and rankled activists who called it “anti-democratic.”
The change comes as the council wrestles with major issues — from homelessness and renter protections to government reform — that have drawn at times hundreds of people to the council chambers. Some meetings have turned raucous, with people being removed for screaming and interrupting the proceedings.
“This change makes it harder for the people of Los Angeles to have their voices heard by their government,” City Controller Kenneth Mejia wrote last week on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“For people and community groups without influence and connections to get private meetings, general public comment is one of the few tools they have to speak directly to their elected representatives,” he wrote. “We urge City Council to reconsider this change to public comment.”
How the change will work
Under the previous rules, if someone was unable to attend a committee meeting on a particular topic, they could speak on it during what’s known as general public comment at a full City Council meeting, where presumably all of the elected members would be present.
This was particularly important because the council could take public comment over the telephone in meetings. That doesn’t happen at the committee level.
Under the new procedures, general public comment has been moved to the end of the meetings — after the council has voted on all of the agenda items.
The decision to move general public comment was…
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