City council cancels “negative comments” from public before election

In a recent community survey, 60 percent of participating Oronoco residents responded negatively to the question of whether the city government is trustworthy and transparent. Hardly a resounding vote of confidence in local government. But after the Oronoco City Council’s latest meeting, it wouldn’t be surprising if that percentage shot even higher were citizens to get another crack at the question.

At the beginning of the October meeting, city council member Paul Pendergrass made a motion to outright cancel the regularly scheduled public forum in which citizens get the chance to speak their mind on city matters.

“I’d like to remove the public forum for tonight,” Pendergrass said. “If anybody’s got any comments, they can write them and we’ll read them in November.”

Five-time Mayor Ryland Eichhorst, who’s up for reelection against city councilor Jim Phillips, appeared rattled by Pendergrass’ suggestion and pushed back.

“We don’t ask them to write them. They come and they speak,” Eichhorst said. “…We’ve always accepted positive or negative comments. So why wouldn’t we continue that process, that’s a public forum.”

Yet Pendergrass, who’s also up for election but faces no opposition, maintained it’s too close to the November 5 election for elected officials to take a chance that someone might make a disparaging comment that could, apparently, somehow influence the outcome.

“It’s election time. Anybody’s got any negative comments they can save them til after the election,” Pendergrass said. “…Thirty days won’t hurt anybody.”

There’s no state law requiring local governments to hold a public forum at city council meetings. But the notion of shutting down residents’ comments, in order to control what’s said about public policy and officials before an election, also rubbed the city administrator the wrong way.

“I think that puts a suppression on people’s free speech and their opportunity to speak,” Oronoco City Administrator Jason Baker said. “And that’s not appropriate.”

Only Eichhorst opposed the temporary ban on public comments that was quickly approved by the city council. It’s just the latest free speech controversy, the Post Bulletin points out, to rock the southern Minnesota community near Rochester.

In March 2023, Andrea Johnson was removed from an Oronoco City Council meeting after making comments during a public forum.

In July 2023, a federal lawsuit was filed alleging that Phillips, Eichhorst, and council members Jim Richards and Carl Krause violated her constitutionally protected speech at council meetings. The lawsuit also alleged that government officials caused disruptions during a public forum period during a March city council meeting.

At one point, Phillips instructed an Olmsted County Sheriff’s deputy to remove Johnson from that March 2023 meeting.

Hours after Johnson’s removal, Richards complained about Johnson, saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to come into the meeting and criticize Oronoco’s political leaders.

The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court.

The latest controversy isn’t going away any time soon. Pendergrass was put on the spot about cancelling the public forum by fellow members on the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) this week. No attempt was made to quash the regularly scheduled public forum at the EDA meeting, even as no member of the public rose to speak.