Silencing an Outspoken Publisher : Rancho Palos Verdes: Enrica Stuart’s quarterly newspaper often skewers council members. Now Mayor Mel Hughes wants to prevent her from asking questions at council meetings during public comment periods.

Enrica Stuart says the idea behind her Rancho Palos Verdes newspaper, the Monitor, is to jab officialdom.

“You might say I am punching everyone in the nose, right and left,” said the 63-year-old publisher of her feisty quarterly. “I don’t care who they are.”

The paper regularly excoriates council members for alleged misdeeds, sometimes without any response from its targets.

Stuart now finds herself in a personal battle with Mayor Mel Hughes over his recent decision during a council meeting to forbid her to ask a question because she is a member of the press.

Hughes, who concedes that he isn’t much of a fan of Stuart’s newspaper, says the issue boils down to one of journalistic ethics. Stuart, he argues, is trampling on those ethics when she asks questions at council meetings during public comment periods.

Stuart, on the other hand, asserts that her constitutional rights both as a journalist and a citizen are being violated.

“I think he is a bully who tries to intimidate speakers, particularly women,” Stuart said. “It wouldn’t hurt him to read the Constitution before he starts the council meeting.”

Stuart, a native of Italy who speaks with a pronounced accent, said her newspaper was started two years ago at the urging of her neighbors. It was first called “We the People and Our Two Cents Worth” and consisted entirely of letters to the editor. Contributors paid two cents a word for their entries.

The paper was a hit with her neighbors, Stuart said, and it soon evolved into “a serious newspaper because people kept calling me.” She calls the publication “an old-fashioned muckraking newspaper” that reports area issues that she says other local newspapers are either indifferent to or are too lazy to dig into. Up to 5,000 copies are printed four times a year and distributed free to peninsula homes. An occasional small ad appears, but Stuart pays most of the costs.

Although the paper is careful not to make political endorsements, Stuart said, its articles are frequently a mix of opinion and analysis written by Stuart or her friends and neighbors. The paper’s editorial practices have caused some to attack its objectivity.

“I think it is an extremely biased viewpoint on what goes on on the peninsula,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Councilwoman Jacki Bacharach said. “It is like a (personal) letter on newsprint.”

Stuart’s showdown with Hughes occurred last week at a regularly scheduled council meeting. Like a number of other residents, Stuart filled out an application to speak during a public hearing and submitted it to City Clerk Jo Purcell. She then sat down at the press table.

But when Purcell called Stuart’s name to speak, Hughes objected.

“I’m sorry, we don’t give press reports in the middle of council meetings,” he said. “You’re either a member of the public or a member of the press,” he added a few moments later.

Stuart, who says she only occasionally asks questions during council meetings, protested to no avail.

This week, Hughes stood by his decision. He said Stuart differs from other reporters covering the council meetings, who “treat their position with some reverence.” He said Stuart is free to talk with council members and ask questions when the council is not in session.

Stuart has sought guidance from the California First Amendment Coalition, an advisory group for journalists and public officials. Terry Francke, the organization’s executive director, said there is no clear law that applies to Stuart’s situation. However, he said, the state’s open-meeting law, the Brown Act, does require city councils and other public agencies to set aside a period for public comment on matters within its jurisdiction.

Whereas the public agency can establish rules for the public comment period, including how much time each speaker will be allotted, a rule prohibiting press comment is unwarranted, he said.

Francke said he does not see “any constitutionally defensible basis for not allowing a person to ask whatever is relative to city matters in whatever capacity with whatever ax to grind or not to grind.”

The mayor said he might change his mind about allowing Stuart to speak at council meetings on one condition. “If Mrs. Enrica Stewart wants to stand up and say she is an unethical member of the press, then I think we would have to let her report,” he said.

Bacharach said that Hughes’ ban surprised her but that she respects his decision. Stuart, she said, is abusing the system.

” . . . You can’t have someone who tries to have it all different ways,” Bacharach said.

Stuart appears to have at least one ally in Councilman Bob Ryan. He said this week that he would not have acted as Hughes did and will try to persuade the mayor to allow Stuart to speak at council meetings.

“(Stuart’s) also a resident, and she doesn’t lose that right as a citizen because she runs a newspaper,” Ryan said. “ . . . I don’t think she has lost any of her rights by publishing that little newspaper.”

Stuart said she has drafted a letter to council members requesting that they determine under what circumstances she and other reporters will be allowed to speak.

She said that although she doesn’t “want to stand on the flag and preach anything,” she believes that her rights have been violated and that she intends to fight back.

“I don’t scare,” she said.