EDITORIAL

The Newport Beach City Council last week unveiled a tentative new

policy that shows both promise and potential problems.

The plan, suggested by Mayor Gary Adams, would give the council and

staff five minutes to respond to remarks made by audience members during

the public comment period of council meetings.

The idea, Adams said, is to be “responsive to answering people’s

questions.” In that respect, it’s a promising one: Government should be

responsive to its constituents, nowhere more so than at the city level.

Clearing up misunderstandings or just providing a resident a bit of

information -- a phone call to get the full answer, perhaps -- should be

the goal of public servants.

Adams also said the policy is “not intended to be a debate.” And

that’s where the idea could run into problems, but not because of the

potential for the council meetings to degenerate into juvenile bickering.

It’s because giving the city -- both elected leaders as well as paid

staff -- the final say is a chilling precedent, one that would stifle

comments from the audience.

The five-minute response time also has open-meeting law implications.

The state’s Brown Act, which governs public meetings, allows officials to

respond briefly to public comments. But whether five minutes is truly

brief, especially compared to the three minutes audience members get, is

highly questionable.

City Atty. Bob Burnham, who agrees that five minutes wouldn’t be

considered brief in this case, said he does not expect anyone to abuse

the response time. But there is a great divide between expectations and

potential abuse. And so city leaders, if they decide to go ahead with

this plan, should lay out crystal clear guidelines that will keep a

worthy idea from turning into a city-sanctioned bully pulpit.

One way to do this would be to give the mayor five minutes to respond

to all the comments made. As the city’s symbolic leader, the mayor could

gather the necessary information from staff or other council members and

deliver them to the audience. Doing so would create a responsive

government that also is responsible.