Public Participation and Discussion in Local Government.

My job requires me to do lots of work in various municipal buildings and town halls around the state. I am pretty well-acquainted with what is happening in town governments as a result of my travels. (As an aside, I can also tell you the best places to get a sandwich or a coffee in many out-of-the-way places in the Nutmeg state).

            I have made several recent observations about how the world has changed recently and how those changes are reflected in our public places. One Connecticut city recently finished a complete remodel of its city hall. The new building is beautiful. I expected it to be a beehive of activity the first time I entered as all of the city’s business now takes place in one central hub.

            What I found instead was an office building where you could hear a pin drop. Every office is locked. You cannot just walk in to the town clerk’s office or the registrar’s office, or the tax collector’s office. You have to be buzzed in.

            This has occurred ostensibly for “safety” reasons. The result however is that workers do not communicate with each other between offices and folks struggle to get their business resolved.

            In another town hall in the western part of the state, I was walking down the main quiet hallway last week and I passed the town clerk’s office. A great deal of municipal business occurs at the town clerk’s office, particularly as it relates to property transfers and real estate title searches.

            Anyway, I was walking past the locked office door and there was a sign posted on a stand-alone post that read “absolutely no discussion of politics in this office.” “Huh,” I thought. “This is a public building handling governmental business. How could they possibly command visitors not to discuss politics. This is the place for politics and government.”

            And then in my own town, I have been monitoring a public discussion about restraints that the Town Council has sought to place on public speakers at Town Council meetings.

            In Watertown, any citizen who wants to speak at a Town Council meeting must now sign a contract agreeing to “not raise my voice,” “not use lewd, slanderous, or libelous language;” and “not speak about Town personnel matters” including the “performance of named Town employees.”

            This all seems like a clear restraint on free speech rights.

            So what is going on? Why are we trying to squelch public participation and public discussion about local government?  

            The First Amendment is first for a reason. If we are going to be a self-governing nation made up of self-governing communities, then those of us who live and work here have to be able to speak our minds and that will sometimes involve unpleasant conversations. Restraining those conversations only serves the interests of those who would pursue authoritarian interests.

            In its seminal case, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1964 of our “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

            Our town governments can do better. And if they refuse we can hold them accountable.