Mayor Kaur Attacks Council Member Priforce From the Dais
Flashing Anger and Denunciations Directed at Priforce for His Questions
Citizens' Access to Their Government Ratcheted Down to Get Priforce
News Analysis
Kalimah Priforce, being the only progressive on the five member Emeryville City Council, gets a lot of knocks and worse from his colleagues on the council but few can be seen as so petty in its histrionics as was delivered against him by Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur on Tuesday. Mayor Kaur was extremely angry that Councilman Priforce asked a question of a staff member before he was ready to cast his vote on an action item before the Council. Where normal people saw a Council member doing his duty, asking a question before a vote, Mayor Kaur saw chaos or perhaps nefarious intent. Surprisingly, Council members asking questions about details of an impending vote is over the top in its audaciousness according to Mayor Kaur.
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| Mayor Sukhdeep Kaur Angry. A conservative, by her vote, she is in favor of a ceasefire in Ukraine but NOT Gaza. |
Readers may have trouble understanding what transpired at the council chambers Tuesday because how Ms Kaur’s tirade against Mr Priforce seemed so unbelievable. Why was she so angry? Surely there must be some back story, readers are likely to think. Surely the politics at the Emeryville City Council chambers have not gotten so dysfunctional that a Council member can’t ask a question before a vote. But to those readers who are having trouble, understand that there is no back story other than a moral panic if not pure hatred by the four members against the one. That is what is driving the dysfunction in our Emeryville government.
The problem as stated by Mayor Kaur is meeting protocol. Mr Priforce asked to ask a question during the “deliberation period”, and that is not permitted said our Mayor. Ms Kaur quoted from Robert’s Rules of Order: deliberation periods are not a time of asking questions, Ms Kaur says Robert’s Rules says. Her anger came from Mr Priforce violating her interpretation of Robert’s Rules. However what Ms Kaur, being a new member and a relatively new Emeryville resident, doesn’t realize is our 40 year precedent of letting citizens address the Council and letting the Council ask questions of the staff (or the presenter at the meeting) about things related to citizen comments.
The way council meetings are run in Emeryville with regard to action items or public hearings is as follows (approved by California’s Brown Act):
1) A presenter makes a presentation for a proposed new thing for the Council to vote on.
2) The Council asks ‘clarifying’ questions of the presenter.
3) The citizens are heard.
4) The Council deliberates (including asking questions about citizens’ points made during public comment).
5) The Council then votes.
It has been set up this way for decades because the City of Emeryville has been sensitive about not just allowing citizens to speak, but also about the notion that a citizen could conceivably bring up a good idea that a Council member might want to explore. That might require additional questions by Council members after the public had their three minutes to speak before a vote could be taken.
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| Council member Kalimah Priforce The object of Mayor Kaur's disdain. A progressive, he is in favor of a ceasefire in Ukraine AND Gaza. A 'peacenik'. |
Democracy Takes a Backseat in Mayor Kaur's Emeryville
Mayor Kaur has a problem with the way Emeryville has conducted meetings for at least 40 years. She sees a new way, a Robert’s Rules way, that means the citizens’ comments will have no effect on the Council member’s decisions. Citizens are allowed to speak as the law dictates, but they don’t have the power to change a Council member’s mind in Mayor Kaur's view. In a word, Ms Kaur will let citizens make comments as before but she is putting forward a new way that means public comments are free floating and not connected to actual public policy. It's an autocratic way of looking at the role of government.
What exactly is Mayor Kaur’s point (never mind her anger)? She wouldn’t say on Tuesday and we doubt she will ever say because the truth is probably too embarrassing. There is nothing for the people to gain by the Mayor's new way of running our meetings. In fact there is only downside for the people. It makes public comment unnecessary. It locks the public out of the deliberation. The up side is for the four conservative Council members. They don't have to listen to the public and they can excoriate and berate the progressive Council member Kalimah Priforce for listening to the citizens as the Mayor did Tuesday.
For his part, Mr Priforce seems to be just continuing on as Council members have done for the last 40 years, as if this new undemocratic polity at the council chambers angrily stated by Ms Kaur is not the actual new paradigm.
The law, interestingly, is rather mute on this subject. Citizens have a legal right to be heard (the Brown Act guarantees that). But the Council doesn’t have to listen to them. They can put in their ear buds and zone out when the citizens are addressing the Council if they want (as Council member Courtney Welch frequently does). Notably, Mayor Kaur’s reading of Robert’s Rules of Order do not carry the force of law here. However the Brown Act IS law in California and any fair reading of that suggests that citizens’ rights to speak can be extended to where they could conceivably have an effect on government decisions.
The democratically concocted Brown Act does posit in its highfalutin preamble the following poetic prose:
The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.
Notwithstanding that, it is seen as problematic that Emeryville’s mayor, an attorney, cannot seem to wrap her head around this basic concept of citizen empowerment and engagement (that is also law). Either that or she sees tamping down citizen engagement as a smaller price to pay in order to do the essential work of public admonishment of Council member Priforce.
The people of Emeryville have a right to expect a functioning government without petty squabbles among the Council members erupting and subverting their interests as does this new set of rules issued by decree from the mayor.
How long before one of the four conservative Council members violates the mayor’s new rules? We know they have all been ‘violating’ it for years before Tuesday night, including Council member Kaur herself. Will Ms Kaur be a fair and faithful arbiter of her new rules, assuring all Council members be equally constrained by her loudly slammed gavel? We will see and the Tattler will report.
Mayor Kaur was contacted for comment for this story but she did not return calls.
Not that it matters much to his colleagues on the Council but Council member Priforce is the most popular Council member in Emeryville with the people, having won his election with 23.9% of the vote. Every other Council member won with a lower percentage. Interestingly, Ms Kaur won her election (after having been appointed by former City Council member John Bauters) with 20.7% of the vote. The people's choice is Kalimah Priforce. In a better Emeryville, our conservative Council member majority would acknowledge this basic if difficult for them fact.