Carson’s ‘mute’ problem

City Council meetings in Carson can be raucous to the point of slapstick, making the city briefly world famous in 2007. That’s when a former mayor was caught on videotape swatting an audience member with a bundle of papers, and the victim’s oddly exaggerated reaction -- after a brief pause, she made a slow-motion fall to the ground and acted as if she’d been beaned with a baseball bat -- made the video a You Tube sensation. With all that raw talent on display, maybe it’s not surprising that Mayor Jim Dear is now being accused of acting more like a judge on “American Idol” than a public servant.

Dear controls a “mute” button on the microphones at council meetings, and critics accuse him of using it not just to cut off speakers after their three-minute public comment time has elapsed, but to silence those who disagree with him. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is conducting an inquiry into the charges, which, if confirmed, could violate the state’s open meetings law. City Councilman Mike Gipson says the situation has gotten so bad that he once brought a megaphone to a meeting in case the mayor cut him off.

Carson has had more than its share of governance problems. Former Mayor Daryl Sweeney was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in 2004 on charges related to a bribery scandal that ensnared three other council members and another former mayor. Among other things, city officials conspired to extort $600,000 from trash haulers competing for a $60-million municipal contract.

The scandal seems to have scorched the city’s political landscape. So suspicious of corruption have community activists become that they launched a recall campaign in 2008 against Dear even though there was no evidence of wrongdoing on his part; some residents didn’t like the fact that he accepted campaign contributions from real estate developers and sided with builders on high-profile projects (if that were a crime, most municipal politicians in California would be in jail). The recall failed and Dear was subsequently reelected, but the ill will hasn’t diminished.

We don’t know how to repair Carson’s fractious political environment, but we’ve got a solution to the immediate problem -- one that Dear himself might appreciate. After singer Michael Jackson’s death last year, Dear was caught up in a controversy when he ordered City Hall’s flag lowered to half-staff. People who didn’t think Jackson merited such consideration objected, and Dear introduced an ordinance that stripped himself and future mayors of the power to lower the American flag. Similarly, it might be a good idea to officially hand over the mute button to the city clerk.