Urbana Mayor Diane Marlin continued her new tactic of actively muting residents for criticizing public officials at City meetings at the November 9th City Council meeting. Since March, Urbana has been holding all of their meetings using the Zoom conferencing app, and in recent months Mayor Marlin has decided that she has the right to hit the mute button whenever she dislikes the content of speech during public input.
The practice began on September 14th when Marlin announced that she would mute people for mentioning elected officials or City staff, or for making “negative comments”. She then proceeded to interrupt and/or mute people more than a dozen times during public input.
At last night’s meeting, Marlin muted two Urbana residents who attempted to criticize public officials. Diane Marlin called for UPTV Production Coordinator Jason Liggett to mute Tracy Chong when she began to criticize Marlin for appointing Julie Laut to the vacant Ward 2 seat. Ms. Chong was only allowed to speak for 41 seconds, instead of the 4 minutes allotted in Urbana’s public input rules. Council member Bill Colbrook, recently appointed to the Ward 6 seat by Mayor Marlin, can be seen nodding his head up and down in agreement when Marlin calls for the speaker to be muted.
Marlin: “This is not the time to be discussing a past decision like that, and it’s not a time to be talking about Ms. Laut, who has stepped down from the Council. Now, is there an issue you wish to discuss?”
Chong: “I’m talking about your decisions.”
Marlin: “Then that’s not for this time, we’ve had that conversation. Jason Liggett, can you mute the speaker, thank you.”
It was not clear what Marlin meant when she said “we’ve had that conversation”, but the Illinois Open Meetings Act does not allow for any content-based speech limitations to be place upon the public at meetings. The Illinois Attorney General has made clear that a speaker can address public officials on any issue, and it need not have anything to do with listed agenda items.
Next, Christopher Hansen attempted to speak about the conflicts of interest and failures of Urbana’s Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB). Marlin had appointed a retired Urbana Police Officer and his wife, Preston James and Monique James, to run the CPRB. During that time, the board became almost entirely dysfunctional and exhibited numerous violations of the CPRB Ordinance.
Hansen then began to question if Marlin’s new appointee, Community Engagement Coordinator Lemond Peppers, would handle the role any better, or if he would also simply serve the interests of his friends. Marlin interrupted Mr. Hansen after 38 seconds, then muted him after less than 2 minutes.
Some clips of the interruptions and mutings can be seen in this two minute video here:
And the full half hour public input session of the November 9th, 2020 Urbana City Council meeting can be viewed here: