Do not quietly let a committee chair shut down your testimony. DougCo ends general public comment period. CPW's March Rulemaking
Do not quietly let a committee chair shut down your testimony
I wanted to share something I noted in listening to the hearing on Senator Sullivan’s Red Flag Expansion bill. The committee recording is linked first below. It won’t take long to hear what I reference: it’s right at the start, with the committee chair laying down what she calls “ground rules” for testimony.
Quoting the relevant bit: “... it’s important that we don’t impugn the motives of the members or even the guests that come before us to testify.”
I am not sure what your experience is in testifying (if you have any), but it’s not common for the chair to say much of anything to teh public about the rules from what I can tell. This holds across not only legislative committees but other rulemaking bodies. Frankly, most people are well-behaved, and the few exceptions tend to be mild. I think chairs often build a little grace into the system, something I don’t object to. We all need it from time to time. There are times where I’ve seen people called out of course, sometimes spectacularly so, but it’s rare.
Having been witness to at least one other committee chair saying something similar to a witness in the past (Senator Mullica chiding a witness last legislative session if memory serves), I wanted to give you my thoughts on this particular rule so you can be a better informed witness.
I wanted to hopefully prevent you from needlessly worrying or censoring yourself.
If you want to do some looking on the topic of what kinds of rules there are (and can be) for public testimony, you can Google the topic (”what kind of public testimony can the government restrict?” is a good phrase to start with) and get a bunch of things to look over.
Personally, I think the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) guide on First Amendment protections for public comment linked second below is a great reference to start with. It’s approachable and pretty generalizable.
I can summarize what I understand of the rules, but please note that I’m not a lawyer and what I will share as a summary bound to lose some details. Here are the allowed restrictions as I understand them on public testimony.
--They can restrict the time you can speak
--They can restrict you to speaking on the issue at hand. You can’t show up to the school board and start criticizing how parole decisions are made, for example.
--They can enforce rules involving decorum, not disrupting others, and public safety. This includes not only the obvious like no yelling as others speak or no threats of violence, but it can also include things like no signs allowed in the room where the testimony takes place.
--They are VERY limited as to what kinds of content they can regulate/restrict, almost to the point of not being able to police content at all.
--Any and all rules must be content neutral; they must apply equally to all.
And that brings me to the whole point of this post. While it’s okay for the committee chair here to restrict testimony to 2 minutes per speaker, while it’s okay for her to say that they will not tolerate clapping or outbursts from anyone during testimony, I do not believe that she (or anyone at the legislature) can restrict you from calling a politician by name or characterizing their motives or impugning same.
As an attempt to get more context for you, to help give you something to wave in the face of any committee chair that tries to shut you down, I reached out to the Office of Legislative Legal Services (our legislators’ lawyers) to see if they had prepared any public guides to committee chairs** about rules for public testimony.
I hoped for a guide they send to tell the chairs about what kind of rules they can make, what restrictions they can put on testimony, but unsurprisingly I didn’t get any. They said they had no public guides (and, of course, wouldn’t share anything that wasn’t public because the legislators are their clients). You and I are out of luck in this regard.
Given that, here is my non-lawyer, non-legal advice regarding testimony if you feel moved to mention a legislator by name, characterize their motives, etc.
Follow the rules that conform to my bullet points above. Do not be disruptive. Keep your comments to the issue at hand. Do not refrain from civilly and straightforwardly mentioning a politician’s name or talking about their motives. As you do so, remember to do it in a way that leaves absolutely, positively no doubt about how calm you are (don’t give them any way to hide behind a claim about your behavior--something that’s been tried before by school boards as you’ll read in the FIRE piece).
If you’re challenged, in the same civil and calm voice you’ve used the entire time, ask the legislator who challenges you to explain what rule you violated so it goes on the record. Then remind them that courts have repeatedly rejected the notion that they can silence speech based on viewpoint or content, and that you don’t believe their restrictions are legal. If they persist, tell them you will consider taking this to court.
Then see if you can find a lawyer or get a public-interest law firm interested in representing you. I would share my story far and wide with the media. You may not get interest, but you should try.
What you should not do is let a committee chair prevent you from speaking your piece with what’s likely not a legally enforceable rule.
**It is committee chairs who are responsible for setting rules in our state’s legislature.
Related:
I have written in the past about the group Greeley Demands Better and their fight with Greeley and a developer to let citizens have a voice in whether or not to mortgage city buildings to subsidize an entertainment complex there.
I recently got an email from the group's press person. The developer in this case had sued Greeley Demands Better for defamation and recently a district judge in Weld County struck down the developer's suit.
His order was shared on Greeley Demands Better's site and linked below. There are limits on quashing speech about non-legislators too.
https://greeleydemandsbetter.com/order-to-dismiss
DougCo ends general public comment period
Related to the first post today, I wanted to present you the 7News story linked below. It details how Douglas County Commissioners.
The commissioners did not remove any ability for the public to comment during meetings, rather they have ended the general public comment period (something that, at least to my non-lawyer’s understanding, they’re allowed to do--see the first post today).
Quoting the article:
“Douglas County has turned off comments on its Facebook, X, and Instagram accounts and has now made a change to the public comment procedure during commissioners’ business meetings. Residents can still give public comment on predetermined agenda topics, but general public comment has been removed from the agenda. The county is instead prioritizing feedback for commissioners through direct, non-public outlets like phone, email, scheduled in-person meetings, and events like town halls.”
I don’t think that this is okay.
Some context that you may or may not be aware of here (alluded to in the article) is that DougCo recently failed miserably at becoming a home rule county. There’s likely more to the story, but I can’t help but think, given what I’ve read and what readers have said to me, that part of that failure was the fact that people in DougCo do not by and large trust this batch of commissioners (and this seems to be at least partly across the ideological spectrum).
I don’t know what the thinking is here on the commissioners’ part, but if people don’t trust them, somehow I don’t think that limiting content will help with that. Trying to drive feedback to direct meetings and town halls is a plus, it mitigates this, but why not do that and allow general public comment?
Shortsighted.
CPW’s March Rulemaking
CPW Commissioners will be adopting and debating a whole series of rules and regulations at their March 2026 meeting.
I linked to a web version of the email I got first below. The second link is to the rulemaking notice.
Take a minute and read through it. The things they will be deciding on strike me as nontrivial, especially if you hunt.
Take your chance to speak up! The time to do so is when these are being debated, not after.
https://mailchi.mp/state/january2020pwc-meeting-materials-available-online-7508879?e=9ca1667883
https://cpw.widen.net/view/pdf/bjmzo7wwhl/March-2026-RMN.pdf?u=xyuvvu