Buzzer Beater

Time has long arrived for the county commissioners to swallow the whistle on time constraints for citizen comment during each regular meeting.

Most enter a commission meeting with the understanding that they have three minutes unless granted an extended six minutes and if that is not sufficient commissioners can decide if they wish to hear anything more from the speaker.

Take a wild stab on the time restrictions for a citizen expressing a dissenting view.

Actually most don’t have to because anybody who has seen any of the past three meetings can attest that if the voice is dissenting, when the six-minute buzzer sounds, commissioners’ ears automatically close.

If they were even open to begin with given body language and facial expressions.

But the restrictions on comments from the public goes to the heart of what makes this a representative democracy, though there are certainly a good percentage of the population who feel represented by the Board of County Commissioners on nothing.

Commissioners are elected to serve the people, not an office or a chair on the podium, but the public, the taxpayers who shell out their salaries and nifty benefit packages and provide the power to spend those public dollars.

Commissioners swear an oath to uphold the laws of the state and federal government, as detailed in the respective constitutions.

And the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution attests that government will take no action to abridge, prohibit or otherwise silence public speech.

Part of that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness includes the ability to seek redress from government, but most especially to speak out for or against government action.

Well, taken together, the past month in the county commission meeting room has often seemed like commissioners and constituents were gathered under some kind of cone of silence.

Yes, if the speaker was opining about good things that might happen in the county, lauding county commissioners for their insight and work or in general agreeing with commissioners on a stance they have taken, then they almost certainly have all the time in the world.

Commissioners, in truth, can’t get enough stroking.

But if your voice is a dissenting one, forget it.

There was the attorney who tried to solicit from the commissioners just what actions they were going to take regarding pending litigation and was pigeonholed into a six-minute time frame which he could not extend while being interrupted in mid-sentence when the buzzer sounded.

There was the citizen who was asking pointed questions of a commissioner who was dismissed when her time ran out by the admonishment to “now just go sit down.”

And there was a well-known boat-rocker in the community who so riled commissioners that they gaveled the meeting before he had finished talking, adjourning with the man still standing at the podium.

These are not words in support of any of the positions offered in these circumstances.

Nor is this to suggest that there are not those who simply choose to be irritants – as is their right, under law, a law commissioners have sworn to uphold.

But during several of these meetings citizens were encouraged to be engaged, to understand what is happening in the state regarding a massive deficit in the budget as well as the federal government and the economic mess that roils the country.

This is what should be occurring, citizen engagement in their government, particularly during these particularly tough times.

And maybe sometime that engagement actually requires – thick skin.

But this engagement is vital at the local level, where citizens, taxpayers, can feel they have an actual say in how government operates, how it spends public dollars and how efficiently government operates.

That seems even more true now when commissioners are uttering statements such as that heard last week’s “we’re taking it seriously now” in reference to the budget and ever-tightening revenues.

Balm for the soul of every taxpayer, commissioners are taking the county’s fiscal pickle seriously; sort of like asserting no more golden eggs while wringing the neck of the goose that lays them.

During a month in which Florida is celebrating its Sunshine Laws – which seem to be a source of particular irritant for local elected officials – what exists is a county government that is not truly open to any voices but their own.

To dissent is to be bullied and then timed out.

This is no more clear example than with county-wide voting where commissioners have pledged to resign unless single-member districts are wiped away, other commissioners have symbolic motions forward knowing there were not three votes in favor and where the one commissioner with the power to affect change won’t.

Even though if voiced together the chorus of those 4,500 or so registered voters who favored county-wide voting in 2004 would raise the roof in the commission meeting room.

Only to be buzzed to their seats after six minutes, single-member districts intact.

Commissioners must demonstrate the leadership and professionalism incumbent in their offices when dealing with the public during meetings, even those among the public who can be most difficult, most intransigent.

The term is not the Board of County Bullies. And rightly, commissioners seek citizen engagement, citizen education on the pressing issues facing county.

That engagement, that education, though, will never fully and properly exist as long as commissioners have a six-minute clock on the exercise.