Commissioners satisfied with draft of comment policy, but vote is on hold

ROCKINGHAM — County Manager Bryan Land asked the Board of Commissioners on Tuesday to hold off on voting on a draft of a new public comment policy for the county pending review by County Attorney Bill Webb, who has been unable to conduct a full review of it himself due to his end-of-year workload.

The draft includes the changes that were requested initially by Commissioner Andy Grooms and supported by the other commissioners, which were that speakers be allowed to discuss topics on the current meeting’s agenda and that the deadline for signing up to speak be extended. If approved, the policy would require that the agenda for the next meeting be released to the public by 5 p.m. on the previous Wednesday before the meeting the following Tuesday, and the deadline for sign-up would by 5 p.m. on the previous Friday.

Under the current policy, speakers had to sign up for the public comment before 5 p.m. on the previous Friday, which would typically be less than five hours after the agenda had been made public.

Additionally, the draft policy broadens the discussion topics for speakers. Whereas they have previously been barred from discussing items on the agenda, the new policy would only limit the discussion to “the business and activities of the county.”

Speakers are a rare sight at Richmond County Board of Commissioner meetings. During the 2020 election, Grooms ran on making the board more accessible for the general public, and the public comment policy was targeted as a major roadblock to that goal.

“I’m happy to see it change, I’m glad to be a part of it but if the last board had done it, or if a future board — however it happened, I just want to see it changed,” Grooms said after the meeting.

County Clerk Dena Cook based the draft on policies from counties around the state and consulted the UNC School of Government. The current public comment policy was initially adopted in October 1997 and has been amended three times since, the most recent being in February 2011.

Grooms took issue with one point in the draft policy presented Tuesday which reduced the time limit for each speaker to 3 minutes, as opposed to the current policy of 5 minutes. He requested that Cook amend that portion of the policy, which was apparently consistent with the policies of the counties Cook reviewed, and Land instructed her to make that change prior to the vote at the next meeting.

“I don’t think there was any mal-intent switching the time limit but I would just rather see it stay the same. That was to mirror a lot of boards throughout the state that have the 3-minute time limit and we were [already] better than that so I’d just rather see it stay the same,” Grooms said. “I’d hate to see it go back, we’re trying to do something to give people more [flexibility] and I don’t want to see it go backward.”

Webb said that he has only briefly looked over the policy, and didn’t want to sign off on it without giving his full attention. Commissioner Rick Watkins made a point at the previous meeting to ensure that the policy is “solid” from a legal standpoint so that it can stay in place for “for years to come … and serve the citizens well moving forward.”

“I’ve just got to look at it, make sure it’s in proper form,” Webb said, adding that he’s confident that there won’t be any issues with the policy but, as a lawyer, signing off on something without looking at it is “just tacky.”