(Nov. 20, 2007) -- LBReport.com urges the City Council to restore public speaking rights in Council proceedings erased under Mayor Foster's predecessor and to refer to a Council committee Mayor Foster's proposal that we believe invites abuse without check and balance protections.

Prior Councils collaborated with the prior Mayor in taking away two key public rights. Those need to be restored before the current Council takes away still more public rights.

Much to its credit, Long Beach once had a Municipal Code right that allowed taxpayers to bring to the City Clerk, in writing by a fixed deadline, items for inclusion on their City Council's agenda. LB residents could bring thoughtful matters to the Council for action, not non-agendized ambush...including items that some politicians didn't want to act on.

That right wasn't removed because it was abused. It was erased while LB taxpayers were fighting to protect El Dorado Park from a commercial sports complex.

One day, a benign-appearing item appeared on a Council agenda pretending to revise the Council's order of business. Its malignant details weren't visible (in pre-internet days) unless one made a trip to the Main downtown library. It didn't just reshuffle the order of Council business; it erased entirely the period for items agendized by the public.

Councilmembers who rubberstamped it would later pretend they didn't know what they were doing, which was baloney then and now because none of them subsequently lifted a finger to restore the right they'd just taken away.

Another right previously respected disappeared by Mayoral decree, not Council vote. For years, the public was able to make its points by using the Council Chamber's visual display equipment. That equipment, bought and paid for with taxpayer money, let the public display charts, graphs and photos that could easily convey a thousand words in less time and with more persuasion.

That public ability is exactly what LB's former Mayor want to curtail...unless it was for favored developers and her friends. So, one day she simply decreed that no member of the public could use the visual equipment. The only exception was for an appellant in a public hearing (since denying an appellant the ability to speak using pictures could invite a court challenge...and courts have ruled that pictures are speech).

There was no specific LB Municipal Code provision on this, beyond the Mayor's general control of Council proceedings...and a former cowed Council simply let the former Mayor get away with it...and Mayor Foster hasn't changed this.

Where one stands depends on where one sits. Bob Foster hasn't had the high honor of having his city's Mayor refer to him among unidentified LB taxpayers -- in remarks during the 1996 Demcorats' Nat'l Convention in a Mayoral address to the CA delegation -- as "C.A.V.E. people, Citizens Against Virtually Everything."

It is a continuing tragedy that the former Mayor's attitude, we believe, helped deliver to the current Mayor, the current Council and LB taxpayers the "Pike at Rainbow Harbor" [and before that the "LB Plaza"] and an Aquarium that no longer bears the city's name as it drains the city's money.

Below are a few -- and just a few -- examples of how City Hall has misused its rubberstamp "consent calendar" procedure to try and conceal substantive items in hopes of avoiding public discussion. The items below are among those that City Hall claimed with a straight face didn't deserve separate discussion:

• A report by a now-former Deputy City Auditor in LB's now-former City Auditor's office said the LB Convention & Entertainment Center's operations cost LB taxpayers $2.5 million in FY 2000 (ended Sept. 30, 2000) after posting a $3 million loss in FY 1999 (ended Sept. 30, 1999). It says that since its 1978 opening, the LB Convention & Entertainment Center's operations have caused City financial operating losses of "several million a year" and "cumulative cash operating losses are in excess of $60 million." The report. dated November 30, 2000, was put on the Council's Jan. 23, 2001 rubberstamp "consent calendar." Council action: Receive and file.

• A report by the office of LB's now-former City Auditor showed LB Airport owes LB taxpayers $2.8+ million. The debt -- effectively a LB General Fund taxpayer subsidy for an Airport that's supposed to be fiscally "self-sufficient" -- was contained in a note to the annual financial report of the Airport Enterprise Fund. The audit showed that certain LB Airport operational costs -- which are supposed to be maintained by fees charged air carriers, parking fees and the like -- have been subsidized,by LB taxpayers for a decade. The item was set for no public discussion on the "consent calendar."

• The Council was asked to extend an arrangement in which LB taxpayers pay roughly $100,000 a year for a LB city management employee to work at the "Gateway Cities Council of Governments." (Then-city management told LBReport.com at the time that it viewed having a LB city employee at the Gateway Council of Governments an asset to the City of LB on the I-710 issue and other matters.)

• An item appeared on the Council "consent calendar" quietly seeking Council approval to draft an ordinance reversing LB's dog breeding ban. It sneaks through the first time...and by the time it returned for the second of two votes, animal activists are up in arms and a major controversy ensues.

• City management (in a memo that didn't mention Mayor O'Neill by name) quietly agendized an item for the Council's "consent calendar" to amend the city's FY 2006 salary resolution by adding "Mayor" to three other citywide elected offices (City Auditor, City Attorney and City Prosecutor) who receive retirement credit for 50 hours sick leave/years of incumbency. The "golden handshake" clears the Council without public discussion.

These aren't consent calendar anomalies. LB City Hall has also manipulated the regular City Council agenda. It agendized the infamous 2002 pension spike for non-public safety city employees (that also benefited Mayor O'Neill) for the last day of the outgoing Council and the first day of an incoming Council (when attention would be focused on ceremonies, not substance). The pension spike became an issue in the 2006 Mayor's race...when candidate Foster sandpapered Councilman Frank Colonna with it.

Then there was the infamous 2001 Council vote changing LB's flight slot allocation rules (not affecting the number of slots but changing the rules for allocating them). After the Council voted 8-1 (Carroll dissenting) to extend the time in which a air carrier could hold flight slots before flying them, JetBlue took all of LB's then-vacant large-aircraft flight slots, instantly maxing them out. That came after JetBlue execs and City Hall officials communicated before the city staff recommended action and Council vote.

Against this record of LB City Hall abuses and usurpations, Mayor Bob Foster -- who wasn't part of it but has now inherited it -- has agendized the following:

Recommendation to amend the common practice used during the City Council Meetings so that only the Mayor, Councilmembers or the City Manager may remove items from the Consent Calendar. In addition, provide an opportunity for any member of the public to speak on any item or items on the Consent Calendar for up to 3 minutes.

Currently, the common practice of our City Council meetings permits members of the public to remove items from the Consent Calendar and to speak to them separately. I recommend that this be modified to reflect the practice used in many other municipalities.

Prior to voting on the Consent Calendar by the Council, the public will be given the opportunity to comment on any item or items on the Consent Calendar, so long as such comments taken as a whole do not exceed a total of 3 minutes.

The Mayor's proposal came after a member of the public pulled for discussion multiple consent calendar items on which, we believe, the resident ought to have done some homework before taking so much public's time.

We aren't inherently opposed to dealing with this...but we are strongly opposed to acting without restoring he public's rights that were erased under the prior Mayor and without sending the current Mayor's proposal to a Council committee where it can be seriously discussed, hopefully with inclusion of checks and balances to protect the public from the kinds of mischief of which LB City Hall has shown itself capable.

Mayor Foster is proposing to institutionalize a new policy...and checks and balances to accompanying it can't simply be entrusted, they should explicitly institutionalized.

The Mayor's proposal was agendized two days before the passing of veteran Council communicator Thomas Murphy. This was awful timing but as best we could tell, Mayor Foster treated Mr. Murphy with respect.

Mr. Murphy didn't consume time for nothing. He didn't want spending items announced, moved, seconded and approved in a rubberstamp rush. His actions were more of Council Chamber public interest broadcaster than a bloviator.

Bloviating is protected by the 1st Amendment, but it's not in the interest of taxpayers or activists or officials to applaud it.

It is in the public interest to restore public speaking rights that LB taxpayers lost, and to include checks and balances to accompany any attempt by officialdom fiddle with those we have now.

We urge the Council to send restoration of those lost LB public speaking rights, and Mayor Foster's agendized recommendation, to a Council committee -- one that's not afraid to deal with them and do something about it. That involves hearing from the public -- and hopefully returning with proposals of which Mr. Murphy and the public would be proud.