Are my rights being violated?
Three years ago I was told attending city council meetings, in person, on Monday evenings was no longer legal for me to do because of a civil restraining order. This was NOT a violation of my rights to make public comment, I was told by the judge, because I could still attend meetings virtually and make comments with my phone.
As long as the other half of that toxic relationship wasn’t present, though, I was still able to attend other public meetings, meetings which, by law, MUST BE HELD for entities like the City Planning Commission, which met last Wednesday, and the Police Commission, which met the day after.
For more on the actual law dictating what must be done to be in compliance open meeting laws, here’s a screenshot from Montana Code Annotated:
When Missoula’s 4th District bathroom judge allowed another civil restraining order from a state legislator to be issued for the next decade of my life–with one of the four exclusion zones of 1,500 ft removing my ability to go anywhere downtown until 2036–my ability to attend ANY public meeting, in person, effectively ended.
That’s why I tried attending the Police Commission virtually, which I quickly realized would be impossible, since the conference ID was missing a digit.
The only evidence I’ve found so far that this meeting even happened are the minutes. No video or audio recording appears to be available, which itself seems legally dubious to me.
One reason I wanted to attend this meeting was to see if any public comments were made about Lucas Bighouse’s taser skills after he got scared of that tiny woman in her little yellow car and lit her up. Would keyboard warriors, like Kevin Hunt, show up to make good on their endless Facebook commentary?
According to the minutes, no, it would appear that no one from the public showed up, so no one made a stink about Missoula’s violent cop problem. The absent public also missed the minimal cost of reloading the new toy cops have to play with, the GRAPPLER!
The Police Commission and City Planning Commission may have been spared the annoyance of dealing with me, a member of the public commenting on their public business funded with public dollars, but at what cost? Because there are lawsuits now, and I know from at least one background source that getting caught violating open meeting laws is a very sore subject for Missoula’s dominant political party.
Unlike the Police Commission, the City Planning Commission did post a video, so here’s a clip about the “data center” amendment I found relevant to the mostly rabid frothing happening elsewhere on this subject:
After my double-failure to public comment I did finally got through to what I’m sure was the dismay of the MRA boardroom when they realized how I was struggling to interpret a legal term, as applied to murder investigations, or lack thereof, that will be the focus of tomorrow’s post.
If I get point-of-ordered by Miss Better Big Sky trying to comment tomorrow, which I’m currently planning on doing, then it will just add to the multitude of tiny little transgressions here and there when it comes to the rules that double-standard town expects selective enforcement of.
If you appreciate my curated attention to local processes and attempt to inform those processes with my delightful commentary, please consider donating to my new GoFundMe page. Any little bit helps.
Thanks for reading!