Two weeks after the Long Beach City Council took away the public’s right to pull items from its Consent Calendar Agenda — typically, a couple dozen issues supposedly so routine that they can be grouped together and approved with one vote — Bill Pearl of LBreport.com has discovered that a major spending provision has been quietly [...]

It’s not until the next-to-last paragraph of today’s Press-Telegram editorial — not surprisingly, anymore, but still sort of amazingly — against free speech at Long Beach City Council meetings that it becomes clear how a First Amendment-dependent newspaper could take such a position.  The P-T doesn’t really think the public’s point of view is worth very much.

Long Beach City Council changes its policy on public comment

After much discussion and comments from a dozen members of the public–the largest number of audience members to comment on any item on last night’s city council agenda–Long Beach City Council voted 5-3 last night to change, and very likely restrict, the public’s ability to open [...]

Long Beach’s Fifth District City Councilmember Gerrie Schipske announced on her blog today that she will vote ”no” tonight when the City Council considers a proposal by Mayor Bob Foster that would restrict the rights of citizens to participate in council meetings.
Foster wants to eliminate the right of citizens to remove an item from the council’s consent calendar — a list [...]

Only three days after the death of 90-year-old Thomas Murphy, a lifetime Long Beach resident and loyal city government watchdog, the City Council will vote on an item Tuesday that would go a long way toward killing his legacy of citizen participation –and prevent others from following in his footsteps.
The item (No. 22 on the [...]