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November 23, 2009
After Rowdy Atlantic Yards Hearings, a Senate Bill to Punish Heckling
NY Observer
by Eliot Brown
Back in May, at a state Senate hearing on the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards project planned for Brooklyn, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery started to launch into criticism of a fellow senator, Marty Golden.
...Ms. Montgomery tried to scold him for disrespecting her in her own district, but she was unable to utter more than a few audible words. Despite holding a microphone to her mouth, the union workers, on hand to show support for the controversial project that eventually might promise work for them, booed, yelled and blew loud whistles until the senator stopped talking.
Ms. Montgomery apparently was not amused.
On Friday, she introduced legislation in Albany that seeks to cut down on such outbursts, barring the employer of anyone disrupting public meetings from bidding on any public contracts for five years, and allowing the state to drop those contracts still in progress.
What's a disruption?
From the bill text:
Disorderly, contemptuous, or insolent behavior, committed during a public hearing, in its immediate view and presence, and directly tending to interrupt its proceedings.
NoLandGrab: No word as to whether or not it will be known as "Bender's Law," after Forest City Ratner operative Bruce Bender, who was clearly the orchestrator of the disruptions at the May 29th State Senate hearing.
Additional coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Montgomery proposes bill to enforce public meeting decorum; why not just simply empower security guards and cops?
I think there's a much simpler solution: announce and enforce rules of decorum. Too often at public meetings related to Atlantic Yards that basic responsibility has been ignored. At the state Senate hearing, someone in charge--either the host Pratt Institute or the hearing chair, Senator Bill Perkins, or both--should have kept order.
And at the 8/23/06 public hearing held by the Empire State Development Corporation, many people talked past their three-minute limit, leading to heckling--and counter-heckling. Several people criticized the ESDC's management of the hearing. Only at the follow-up community forums was the time limit enforced by cutting off the speaker's microphone.
And during the public hearing this past July, security guards and cops were quick to maintain order.
Posted by eric at November 23, 2009 9:39 PM