Silverstein loses bid to require pre-registration for Zoom speakers Play

Malibu's mayor has lost his bid to put a throttle on public speakers at city council meetings.

Bruce Silverstein proposed that anyone who wants to speak at a city council meeting via Zoom register before the meeting starts.

A new state law requires cities like Malibu to offer the ability to speak over a computer during city council meetings. And here is the important part: to have the exact same opportunity to speak as the people inside the city council chambers.

At Tuesday night's city council meeting, Silverstein complained that he has been the target of nasty comments from people Zooming in.

"During Covid we did have a registration capability, in fact it was required," Silverstein said. "You signed in, you checked the box on what you wanted to speak on. It seems to me we could have pre-meeting registration requirements. When the meeting starts you have to have registered in advance of the meeting to be able to speak online. That would not violate the statute, I believe."

Silverstein has repeatedly demanded to know who the online critics are.

"I think we've got a lot of abuse, that we're all aware of, from people online," he said. "And it would be good to have people to have to register in advance to be able to participate in the meeting."

That went nowhere with the other city council members Tuesday night. The city council did not make that change.

But the practice of allowing people to donate their speaking time to others is ending. The new state law requires the city to allow Zoom comments, as the city has been doing. But the law also requires that Zoom participants have the exact same speaking opportunities as those inside the building. So what do you do about people who want to donate their time to others?

City clerk Kelsey Pettijohn says that is a problem for people participating on the internet.

And the city clerk wants the individual city council members to stop making long, long city council reports. Pettijohn suggests a 10-minute limit on those individual council reports.

One final note, about the Pledge of Allegiance. Mayor Bruce Silverstein proposed that the city stop doing that at every city council meeting.

"You all know that I sit out from the Pledge of Allegiance," Silverstein said. "I think there are well-founded constitutional reasons for doing it. I may be the only person who does that. Other cities have eliminated that from their agenda. I would be proposing that if we are looking at the policies that we should throw the Pledge of Allegiance out as a requirement. Those are my comments."

That recommendation was also quietly dropped by the other four council members.