MT. ORAB, Ohio — The Mt. Orab Village Council voted 4-2 on Tuesday night to restrict who may speak during the public comment period at council meetings, limiting the floor to village residents, village business owners and village property owners.
The council amended Rule 43 of its Rules of Council, the rule that governs speaking on the floor. Anyone who wants to address the council must register with the village clerk at least 24 hours before the meeting, and no more than six speakers may sign up for a meeting. The registration requirement and the six-speaker cap were already in place before Tuesday’s vote.
What changed is who is eligible to sign up at all. Under the previous version of the rule, any person could register to speak, with village residents and business owners given first priority for the six slots. The amendment converts that priority into a hard eligibility bar: people who live outside the village and own neither a business nor property in it may no longer speak during the citizen’s comment period. Property owners were added as an eligible category. The amended rule writes in no exceptions.
Councilman Carl Vineyard made the motion to amend the rule, and Councilman Aaron Carnahan seconded it, according to the village’s own recording of the meeting, posted on the village’s YouTube channel. Voting yes were Anna Howell, Carnahan, Vineyard and John Waits. Eric Lang and Chris Peters voted no. Mayor Shane Ogden presided and did not vote.
Vineyard said his first, second and third priorities are “the residents” of the village, and his fourth is “our neighbors.” He said he hopes the change means council hears from more residents.
Lang and Peters, the two councilmen who voted no, argued that village issues affect people who live outside the village limits and that people “have a right to come and talk to their government.” Shutting out nonresidents, they said, costs the village ideas and concerns it would otherwise hear, and they noted that residents “aren’t beating down the door” to speak.
The comment period has recently drawn speakers from beyond the village. At the council’s Oct. 6 meeting, critics of a proposed data center used the visitors period to address the council, and the session ran past 8:58 p.m., according to the village’s minutes of that meeting.
Ohio law does not require the council to take public comment at all. The state’s Open Meetings Act guarantees the public the right to attend and observe meetings of public bodies, not the right to be heard, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Sunshine Laws manual, and a council that chooses to offer a comment period may set its terms. Public hearings required by state law, such as zoning hearings, stand on a different legal footing, and Rule 43 by its terms covers only the citizen’s comment period.
The rule faces its first practical test next week. The council’s next meeting is Nov. 17, and the council will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. that evening before the meeting.
The village re-posted its Rules of Council on its website on Wednesday with the amended Rule 43 language in place. The posted document carries no signature and no effective-date line.
