City Commission Mulls Idea of Excluding Public Comment Portion from Broadcasts
The public comment segment would still exist, and would be available to view after the fact, but would not show up in the Commission meeting live streams.
FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) –
The Fargo City Commission is currently undecided on whether or not to allow the public comment section of commission meetings to be broadcast.
Mayor Tim Mahoney made the announcement that the city would stop including that portion in its live broadcasts of meetings.
The public comment section would still exist, it just wouldn’t be shown in live streams.
Mahoney says that decision came about because commissioners were saying they were concerned about derogatory language used during public comments, and they didn’t want that being displayed on a live feed.
Multiple commissioners KVRR spoke to, though, says they were not warned about Mahoney’s decision in advance, and they oppose the decision.
Experts say the move is a bad look for the city government’s transparency, while Mahoney says he is just trying to keep inappropriate content from the broadcasts.
“A couple commissioners came to us, very concerned about derogatory comments made about them, oftentimes concerned about the manner in which people communicated, with the swearing and the cussing,” said Mahoney. “So we wanted to explore different manners in which to manage that.”
Mahoney has said they will discuss the issue again during the next commission meeting and make sure everyone is on board with the final decision.
