Public comments made during the county’s COVID-19 updates have included hours of angry yelling for months, but the statements made on Tuesday crossed a particularly nasty line.
One of the nearly 70 people who spoke out against vaccine mandates not only wished three out of five district overseers were killed or killed, but also threw a racist slur against the area’s top public health officer.
Supervisor Nora Vargas interfered during the comments and refused to sit still during the hate speech, which contained body-damaging comments about her. When Dr. Wilma Wooten, the black director of the county’s public health department, made a racist remark that Vargas couldn’t help but respond.
“You can call me fat as often as you want, but you can’t tell her that,” Vargas replied.
Later, during the deliberations of the board, after hours of public commentary, Vargas drew a line between the right to be heard in a democracy and the untenable words that came from the podium.
“The comments today are hate speech, not free speech, and this has to stop,” said Vargas.
Board chairman Nathan Fletcher, who had temporarily stepped off the podium during the brutal back and forth, returned to request a higher level of courtesy going forward.
“Some of you have legitimate and fair points that deserve to be heard, but they are completely degraded and completely erased with this fun or sport made mindset of how racist can I be, how rude can I be to the staff how absurd can i be? I am? “Said Fletcher.
But it was clear that the comments that the superiors so sharply condemned met with many in the audience on Tuesday. Cheers can be clearly heard in the video recording of the meeting, which was streamed live over the Internet.
Fletcher had a few extra words for those who laughed and cheered.
“Anyone who cheers him on, you’re just as guilty,” he said. “The reality is, you can get up here and say what you want, that’s your first amendment to the constitution, but it’s disgusting, it’s hideous, and it doesn’t add anything to what we’re doing here.”
The atmosphere at district supervisors’ meetings, especially those containing COVID-related items, has been dominated by comments from residents who have become angry about how leaders have dealt with the pandemic since widespread restrictions began in 2020.
Many have publicly questioned everything from the validity of positive test results to the effectiveness and safety of coronavirus vaccines, which prompted the county health department to recently launch its own misinformation website to refute false or misleading statements made during Government meetings were made. But Tuesday’s meeting seemed to have reached new levels of vitriol.
At some point, a person from the audience who kept interrupting the public discourse was removed from the county council meeting room on Harbor Drive.
The county’s continued maintenance of the emergency status of the pandemic response has been one of great frustration, especially at times over the past two years when case numbers have declined and fewer people with COVID-19 have ended up in hospital beds.
District officials have often said the emergency status votes are necessary to maintain access to state and federal funds for anti-COVID action, but some, including overseers Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson, have objected it is incorrect to continue to call the pandemic an emergency when the virus is better under control than in the past.
Anderson and Desmond also voted Tuesday against an item aimed at “curing and correcting” an earlier board decision mandating vaccination for all new hires of the county government. So far, the district board has not issued a vaccination mandate for current employees; they retain the option of staying unvaccinated and getting tested regularly for coronavirus infection.
The board made the hiring decision with a 3: 2 vote during its monthly COVID-19 update on October 5, with Fletcher adding it to a list of five other actions on the board’s agenda. However, the board subsequently received a letter from La Mesa-based Mary Davis demanding the removal of the agenda item alleging that it violated the public assembly law because it was not specifically listed on the agenda, which was at least 72 Must be published hours before a meeting.
Actions on Tuesday included a 3-2 vote to “cure and correct” the situation by overturning the previous vote. However, managers also confirmed that Helen Robbins-Meyer, the district’s chief administrative officer, already has the option of making vaccinations a condition of employment.
Prior to the vote, County Counsel Lonnie Eldridge stressed that the previous vote was conducted “in accordance with the Brown Act,” referring to the common name of the legislation that enshrined the law for public gatherings.
“This item was taken to address the COVID-19 pandemic, which was item 10 on the agenda,” Eldrige said. “Still, the Brown Act offers a flawless way to rework an item if a question arises.”
The board’s decision to heal and correct its previous decision is “not evidence that the act was not followed”.
However, this attitude is clearly open to some interpretation. It drew boos from the crowd on Tuesday and some comment from Monica Price, a lawyer with the California First Amendment Coalition.
After looking at the agendas and a transcript of the comments made at the last minute of the board’s deliberations on October 5, Price said it seemed clear that the spirit of the law advocated the change of mind specifically List the five other specific COVID-related items on the agenda for consideration.
The standard is a “brief description” of the items to be voted on.
“A county employee or member of the public who thought about this one way or another wouldn’t have known he was coming to this meeting to comment,” Price said.
The District Attorney’s claim that the article did not violate the Brown Act because it was in a larger article that largely focused on COVID could not hold up if the request for correction were denied and the matter brought to court.
Although the case law on this particular issue is thin, she said, there is one case where an appeals court ruled against a community that voted on the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act while considering what an agenda listed as a subdivision motion is. While the CEQA requirements were clearly an integral part of the subdivision’s approval process, it was found insufficient as they were not specifically mentioned.
“The court said, ‘No, no, no, this item is not enough to talk about CEQA,” Price said.
In such situations, it is customary to insist that the offense has not been violated, because if such a violation is proven in court, government agencies can be asked to bear the legal costs for the other side.
“While you don’t want to admit that you did anything wrong, I think the fact that you withdrew the article shows that you were at least a little nervous,” Price said.
Vaccination, meanwhile, is advancing as Rady Children’s Hospital is scheduled to begin vaccinating children ages 5-11 on Wednesday after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved Tuesday. The recordings are only by appointment.
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