Council member Bill Brown earned an opportunity to wield Urbana’s new speech restrictions at the November 2nd City Council Committee of the Whole. The past president, and current steering committee member, of the Champaign County ACLU showed the public that not only does he believe in content-based speech restrictions, but he believes in applying them in a discriminatory fashion.
Urbana’s new speech restrictions for public meetings have been in effect since October 12th, when they were supported by all sitting Council members except for Jared Miller. The rules allow the presiding officer to make content-based speech restrictions and mute speakers if they determine their speech to be “abusive”, “harassing”, or “defamatory”. It is also a violation of the public input rules to utter the name of any elected official or City employee.
Brown allowed several members of the public to specifically name and criticize Governor J. B. Pritzker, whom they called a liar numerous times. Those same speakers were also allowed to specifically name and thank both Diane Marlin and Bill Brown for various reasons.
The moment I mentioned City Administrator Carol Mitten in my own public input, Bill Brown cut me off and told me that I had to direct my comments to the City Council as a whole. This requirement would make my public input impossible since I needed to describe to the Council why Carol Mitten was so frequently lying to the Council, and how Carol Mitten was going to be lying to the Council later in the meeting. It couldn’t possibly make any sense for me to complain that the Council was lying to the Council.
Brown justified his stipulation by pointing out the City of Urbana Organizational chart:
“Could you try to make your comments less personal, and try to direct your comments to the Council as a whole. If you look at the organizational chart, you’ll see the Mayor and Council at the top, so we’re actually responsible for staff. So if you have a complaint against staff you can direct it to us”
The problem here is that Brown was being willfully dishonest in order to justify an illegal speech restriction. Here is the City of Urbana Organizational Chart, which clearly shows who is actually at the top:
This is a good example for how the City’s new speech restrictions will result not only in obvious Open Meetings Act violations, but also in nonsensical and absurd disturbances to the content and meaning of a speaker’s message.
The big question here is why is a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union not only condoning this type of abuse, but actively engaging in it? After Bill Brown claimed at a public meeting on October 20th that the ACLU had approved the City’s new speech regulations, I personally asked Brown for details.
After several attempts, Brown was not able to verify any claims or statements by the ACLU. My email exchange with Brown can be viewed here (click for full PDF):
At the same time I was communicating with Bill Brown, I attempted to gather the same information from the current president of the Champaign County ACLU, Carol Leff, but Leff was not able to answer in any meaningful way. I also contacted the Illinois ACLU about this issue and after 4 days have not received any response whatsoever.
Therefore, I find Brown’s claims that the ACLU approved of Urbana’s new speech restrictions to be disingenuous. I also find Brown’s actions at the November 2nd to be contrary to the stated values of the ACLU, a moral wrong, and a violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act. It is unfathomable to me that a representative of the ACLU is engaged in this kind of behavior, and my opinion of the ACLU is now significantly lowered because of it.
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
The public input portion of the November 2nd, 2020 Urbana City Council meeting can be viewed here: