Air quality district moves to restrict public comment after protesters disrupt meeting
A protest at the June 2, 2017, meeting of the South Coast Air Quality Management District was edited out of the the agency’s webcast and obtained under the California Public Records Act. It includes a confrontation between Chairman William A. Burke
Southern California’s air quality board is moving to cut public speaking time in half and place other restrictions on participation in an effort to limit disruptions at its meetings.
The changes, to be considered by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board at a public hearing Friday, were drafted in response to a protest by environmentalists last month that disrupted the panel’s proceedings and included an obscenity-laced confrontation between board Chairman William A. Burke and a demonstrator.
The proposal by air district staff would cut the speaking time allotted to each member of the public from “at least three minutes” to “no more than one and one-half,” and add other restrictions “to address public decorum and meeting disruptions.”
The new provisions would also:
- Give the chair of the board the power to order the removal of any person “willfully interrupting the meeting so as to render the conduct of the meeting infeasible”
- Prohibit members of the public from approaching the dais unless admitted by the chair
- Bar people from standing in the aisles, walkways or blocking doorways
Air district spokesman Sam Atwood said the new time limit was proposed “to accommodate as many speakers and comments as possible and to help ensure a respectful atmosphere at its meetings.”
William Burke of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, in April 2016.
At the June 2 board meeting, dozens of activists opposed to a planned expansion of oil company Tesoro’s refinery stood up and began chanting at agency officials from the auditorium in Diamond Bar during public comment on an unrelated item. The proceedings ground to a halt.
Video live-streamed by an audience member showed that at one point Burke, who is African American, approached and confronted a man in the audience who he believed had threatened and cursed at him using racially derogatory language.
The panel then recessed to a private conference room to conduct the rest of the business on the agenda without members of the public present. The air district later cited a provision of state law that allows public bodies that have been “willfully disrupted” to reconvene in a private location as long as the media is allowed to attend.
The air district later took the unusual step of editing out more than 18 minutes of footage from the official webcast of the meeting, with a spokesman saying it “did not believe that it was appropriate to place a video on its website showing persons engaged in aggressively disruptive behavior and making inappropriate comments.”
In response to Public Records Act requests, the air quality district released uncut video from the meeting in which members of the board can also be heard using obscenities.
Bahram Fazeli, policy director for Communities for a Better Environment, which organized the June 2 protest, said that activists engaged in “civil disobedience but not aggressive or disrespectful behavior” and that the man who cursed at the board was not one of the group’s members.
Fazeli urged the air district “to create more engagement and participation opportunities, not limit them.”
UPDATES:
7:45 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from an air district spokesman.
This article was originally published at 6:00 p.m.
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