Hamilton County commissioners will hear you now

Hamilton County Commission meets in this file photo.
Hamilton County Commission meets in this file photo.

Don't look now but the hot place below ground may have frozen over after the Hamilton County Commission last week voted 7-2 to change their 37-year-old meeting rules to allow residents to speak publicly at county meetings before commissioners vote.

Imagine that! Tax-paying citizens of the county now formally have the "right" to stand before their commissioners and make a reasoned appeal about why they do or don't need a Wal-Mart grocery store in their neighborhood or any other issue that county leaders are about to decide. Individuals will have three minutes each to address the commission before votes, and a delegation of people will get 10 minutes. Pro and con sides each will get 10 minutes to speak, for a combined 20 minutes tops.

For 37 years, commissioners hid from the public behind a rule against hearing public comments before a vote. They argued that people can address them publicly at the end of meetings. Certainly commissioners knew that most people understood the futility of wasting their breath after a vote was made.

It's taken about a year, lots of newspaper stories by Times Free Press reporter Louie Brogdon and editorials from both opinion pages in this newspaper -- along with an election -- to get to this vote of giving Hamilton County residents an avenue of citizen participation with our county government.

Still, on the day of the commission's brave decision, two long-time commissioners -- the same two who voted no -- told their colleagues they will rue the day they voted to allow constituents to speak publicly before votes.

photo Greg Beck

Yes, you read that right. District 5 Commissioner Greg Beck and District 4 Commissioner Warren Mackey -- both Democrats -- were, in fact, saying they don't want to hear what you have to say about their upcoming decisions.

Talk about tone deaf.

"I'm telling you, in 11 years down here, I've been badgered a lot from right over there," Beck said pointing at the floor podium. "I don't know if any commissioners up here who just came on really know what they are asking for at this point, because it opens the door for a lot of grandstanding. There are people around who like to grandstand."

Then Beck -- the same commissioner who recently said Tennessee' Sunshine Law "stinks" (the Sunshine Law requires the commission's meetings and votes to be public) -- did some of his own grandstanding.

He said residents already may publicly address the commission at Wednesday "agenda sessions." What he didn't say, of course, was that residents can't know then what the commission's upcoming discussions and votes will be about, since agendas aren't made public until those agenda sessions start at 9:30 a.m.

But it gets worse. Mackey said letting people speak was not efficient: "The people get up here to speak, and they repeat themselves," he said.

In other words, you folks out there coming to talk about how you want your money spent and your roads built and your schools improved will waste the commissioners' time.

District 7 Commissioner Sabrena Smedley, who along with all the other commissioners, voted to allow you a voice, told her colleagues that if meetings get longer, so be it.

"I make a recommendation to the commission that we start eating our Wheaties and packing a lunch, and get ready for some long meetings. But I think to not give the taxpayers an opportunity to speak on issues they are passionate about would be a bad mistake," she said.

During this 20-minute conversation, our commission probably talked more about the pros and cons of a vote than they usually do about day-to-day expenditures of millions of dollars.

Think about it: If just the suggestion of us mere mortals exercising citizen participation in county government engenders this much more public conversation by our commissioners, we should be able to take this new rule as a sign of lots more healthy public dialogue to come.

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