The Daily Chronicle published a story about Mayor Cohen Barnes’ so-called apology for dramatically interrupting a woman who was attempting to make a public comment during a recent city council meeting. The mayor interrupted first by arguing with her, then by calling her out of order, and finally by obtaining a motion for recess and cutting the audio feed. The video below will automatically start at the beginning of the scene.
I’m going to analyze the apology and the behavior that prompted it.
A Dishonest Take on What Happened
The newspaper quotes Barnes as saying, “I don’t react well to hate.” So his excuse is he acted the way he did because he found the woman’s speech hateful. Yet the comment, when she was finally allowed to make it, was confined to descriptions of behavior. The substance was criticism of the mayor’s and council members’ inaction on her allegations of misconduct against the city manager, including complaints of discrimination and intimidation against Hispanic residents like herself and her brother. Barnes is equating criticism of job performance with hate speech. Maybe criticism feels like hate landing on an ego like his, but that doesn’t make it reality.
“React” is not quite the right word to use here, either, as it implies impulsive action driven by emotion. The same woman had spoken during public comment at the February 12 council meeting on the same topic. On the same date, the mayor had talked about his wish to make it a rule that “criticism of individuals is not in order.” There’s every reason to believe the mayor’s antics on February 26 were part of a premeditated response to an anticipated comment rerun.
A Disregard for the Rights of the Public
The mayor’s idea to ask for a motion to take a recess during the public comment could have come from a YouTube video. At any rate, I want to contrast what I’ve seen elsewhere to Mayor Barnes’ stunt. In a recording of a school board meeting, a member of the public was actually verbally abusive (e.g., insulting board members’ personal appearance). The DeKalb commenter has not been abusive. And while the school board did recess during the abusive comment, it never cut the audio as the DeKalb mayor did on February 26. The school board commenter had his full say to the full audience. The DeKalb commenter did not.
I’m not recommending the recess maneuver. I’m just saying that if he did get the idea from a viral video, Mayor Barnes failed to notice the nuances that made it successful, or at least less objectionable, than his own execution of it.
What’s even worse — and not speculation — is that our mayor made up his own rule for public comment for this commenter. The video shows he warned her that “criticism of individuals is not in order” before he allowed her to speak. This contravenes the Illinois Open Meetings Act, which allows rules only for time, place, and manner of speech; and the DeKalb Municipal Code, which contains regulations for when and how long. And while both sources indicate a chair can curb repetition, the rule applies to public commenters repeating themselves or each other within one public meeting, not over consecutive meetings.
Also, considering Mayor Barnes equates accusations of discrimination with hatred, his treating this commenter differently from the other commenters was an especially cringe choice to make.
Other Problems with Running Council Meetings
In an interview with Shaw Local News Network, Barnes said he knows that asking for a recess during public comment is not how public meetings should be run. He said he wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Daily Chronicle, “DeKalb mayor apologizes after abruptly ending public comment Feb. 26: ‘I don’t react well to hate,’” 3/12/2024
Cohen Barnes shouldn’t be allowed to try and distance himself from his mistakes. Any finding of a violation of the Open Meetings Act is on him. Any civil rights lawsuit filed in response to his behavior is his fault, too.
Moreover, anyone watching Mayor Barnes as chair can see — three years into his term of office, mind you — that he has issues running meetings more generally. This isn’t the first time the mayor has argued with members of the public, for example. He asks for decorum but doesn’t apply the request to himself. He holds forth in a meeting whenever he chooses and for as long as he likes, not recognizing prudent limits on his own speech. He also appears to have no clue as to when a voice vote will do over a roll call, and he still needs someone to walk him through the steps in handling an amendment to a motion, seemingly every time it comes up.
We’ve mentioned before that Robert’s Rules of Order and other adopted rules help protect the rights of each council member during each meeting. They’re similar in spirit to how the Open Meetings Act protects the public’s participation in meetings. Here we have a chair who appears either unwilling or unable to embrace these protective provisions and procedures on behalf of anyone with any consistency. How much more time does the mayor need to get his act together on running meetings?