Nearly three years ago, a city ordinance was proposed that would have limited what people could say to the City Council. This bill ran into so much opposition that it withered away.What did pass was a rule that restrained public comment to five minutes per side for a given agenda item. This theoretically means that if 40 people show up to oppose — or promote — something, each gets under eight seconds. In practice, four or five are delegated as spokespeople. Sometimes, this is all it takes for the issue to be fully voiced. Often, it isn‘t. And sometimes the rule is rigorously imposed, and sometimes it isn’t.It‘s usually imposed on the wide range of opponents of the Playa Vista project. With most of whom I am in great disagreement, but that’s not the issue. More than a dozen anti-Playistas who came to testify on the issue of state housing bonds for the project a couple of months ago had about a half-minute each to say their piece.
Source: Big John’s Mouth | L.A. Weekly