DUNCAN CAMPBELL: I'm going to speak tonight about the issue of the potential gag rule and citizen participation and what happened particularly to myself last time at the May 4th meeting. There are two dangers I find in the possibility of trying to unconstitutionally restrain citizens when they come before their government to petition them for any purpose. And as we know, citizen participation during Council meetings is designed precisely to allow citizens to bring information to you that you will find relevant as our representatives in the performance of your duties. That's the first danger, is that certain information that would be relevant to the public education, if censored, will not get to them by any other means. The second danger, and one that I can speak about personally, is that if a person's remarks are unduly abridged, it's entirely possible, as happened to me, that the sense of my remarks will be mischaracterized and misconstrued, and then through letters to the editor, as has happened in this case, concatenated into what amounts to a blame the victim, kill the messenger, assassinate the person who brought the unpleasant truths to your attention in the first place.

So, what I'd like to do now, is to finish the remarks I was going to make before I got cut off at the last meeting, and since I have 10 minutes this time, I'd like to put them in the framework of what inspired them in the first place. They're from a book that we've spoken about in this forum before, called "Who Will Tell the People, the Betrayal of American Democracy", by William Greider, former Assistant Editor, Managing Editor of the Washington Post. Among other things he says: "At the highest levels of government, the power to decide things in America, has now gravitated from the many to the few, just as ordinary citizens suspect. Instead of popular will, the government now responds more often to narrow webs of power, the interests of major economic organizations and concentrated wealth, or an influential elite of power brokers or decision-makers. These are indeed unpleasant truths that many people do not want to hear about our democracy. However the key point in this book will be to illustrate why some interests are allowed to dominate the government's decision- making, while others are systematically excluded. " Finally, he says "No one can hope to understand what is driving political behavior without grasping the internal facts of governing issues and asking the kind of gut-level questions that decision-makers normally ask themselves in America. Who are the winners in this matter, and who are the losers? Who gets the money, and who has to pay? Who must be heard on this question, and who can be safely ignored."

These are things, that, as Mr. Greider points out, afflict our entire country, and of course, we are not exempt here in Boulder. And I was trying to illustrate exactly that point, when I, last time, brought 4 items of information to your attention. I pointed out first of all, that, although it has been said by the University, that they are indeed giving full and fair consideration to all aspects and all alternatives for the Academy proposal, that in our experience, when we attempted to be part of this process, not being part of the inner power elite, we were rebuffed by Mr. Takeuchi in a letter that I would be happy to make available to you, which we received about 7 weeks ago, in which he said the Regents would go ahead and make their decision on this, 2 days from now, May 20th, without any input from the neighbors, and if anything came about that would further invite unsolicited proposals like ours, that he would let us know at that time.

So we have the experience that the citizen's initiatives and participation is in fact not being treated on an even playing field or an even keel with those interests who are familiar with each other, because they already do business with each other. There was no attempt in what I said to suggest anything illegal, or even unethical, certainly not by the standards of the 1980s. What did I say?

I brought 4 facts to your attention. First of all, the fact that a young graduate student in Journalism School, who, as part of her paper on investigative journalism had done a paper on the Academy project, reported that they had spent $600,000 already on that project. There was some remark after my statement, that somehow this might be an unsubstantiated rumor. Well I have distributed to you tonight, all of you, the paper in question that I was quoting from, by Chris Alexander, submitted to the Graduate School of Journalism. On page 5, she makes the following statement, which I have referred to: "Former Boulderite Tom Surgine had organized the syndicate of young Boulder investors for the ADG group. According to Jim Lease, the architect and a professor at the University, the group has spent $600,000 of its own money on architectural and legal fees to date."

That was the first thing. The 2nd thing I said was that, who are the people that stand to lose some of this money, either already expended or to be expended in additional architectural and legal fees if the project does not go forward. The first person I mentioned was Chris Shears, who is an architect that works on the project along with Jim Lease, and who I stated simply, was a former president and current board member of Historic Boulder. I then referred to the Historic Boulder report, which was already a public record, to the effect that they recommended the ADG report, and didn't even mention our report. That fact is not disputed. The next item I mentioned was that Gary Berg, the attorney for ADG (I recognize that Mr. Greenlee is leaving the room, as is his right. I hope he is watching this on television, and not just ignoring it). The 2nd thing I said was that Gary Berg, the attorney for the ADG group, was a former law partner of Peter Dietze. That is not disputed, and we have subsequently verified that he left Mr. Dietze's firm in the late summer of 1990, 14 months after this project was awarded to ADG.

The last thing I said was that Tom Surgine, the aforementioned financing person, had been a client of Mr. Dietze's firm, and in fact have right here with me today, the minutes from the June 22, 1989 meeting of the Regents. At that meeting, ADG was formally selected by the Regents and given the go- ahead to negotiate a lease with the University, they were picked from a group of several other applicants. In those minutes it says as follows. "Before the vote, the following comments were made: Regent Dietze: `With respect to the matter which is about to be discussed, I wish to disclose that a member of my law office is a legal advisor to the party interested in beginning discussions with the University about the potential use of that property. So I wish to make sure that disclosure, and wish to also abstain. I've been advised by University counsel that myabstention from that matter is adequate for purposes of avoiding any conflicts of interest.'" This was the documentation that I referred to as being a matter of public record. It is simply not in dispute and not actually new information, this connection between Peter Dietze and the ADG group, which existed in June of 1989.

Finally, what I was next going to say before I was cut off, is that, when our group met with Stuart Takeuchi, the Vice-Chancellor of Administration, in July of 1981 with Bill Herbstreit in attendance, his assistant, we were told by Mr. Takeuchi that the ADG group was selected in large measure because "These people were already known to us. They were not outsiders. We felt that since they were known to us and the City officials of Boulder, that this would give a significantly greater chance that their project would be approved." We thought nothing wrong about this, this was simply a decision that they made. However, now, 2 years later, when the MOU has been refused by this city, and we're back on what we thought was an even playing field, we have put forward once again our proposal from the neighborhood, which the University could not consider because it was under contract with ADG 2 years ago, and we are finding that, once again, that particular proposal is getting frozen out. Just exactly as Mr. Greider says in his book, the web of power, the network of people that know each other, make the decisions, without regard to including the initiatives of students or citizens, either.

The next point I want to make, is that with this regard, I bring this information to your attention, not because it is illegal, but precisely because it is legal. Ross Perot and millions of Americans, whether Democrat or Republicans, are concerned right at this moment about lobbying and with special interests in Washington, again, not because it is thought that these activities are illegal, but precisely because they are legal. So not only was there no attempt to make a personal character attack on Mr. Dietze, but the attempt, had you allowed me to go on, as I pointed out on KBOL radio the very next day, was to show that this particular approach to decision-making afflicts Boulder just as much as it afflicts the nation at large. And the question is: how are we going to respond to that as a city? [deletia as videotape is changed.] Not only did the words "conflict of interest" never pass my lips, but as you can see from the papers that I have given you tonight, none of these so-called allegations were unsubstantiated, and, in fact, they weren't even allegations, they were simply statements of fact so we could understand what this web of interconnected relationships is, so that you, as our representatives, could stand up and hopefully assert a need for us to be included in a fair-minded way in the process. He then goes on to attack my own personal character and praise Madame Durgin.

(chime indicates time is up) Is that 10 minutes? Fine. In that light, I'd like to suggest this as a way to help resolve this problem. That this City Council, on their own initiative create a committee, of all the members of the City Council who would like to participate, and all citizens who would like to participate, to meet at least 3 times and discuss all of our mutual concerns about this communication, in a way that would invite in the ACLU, would educate all of us to what the appropriate constitutional standards are, and allow us to reach some harmonious conclusion here, without this continual polarizing. I would recommend that there be a period of at least 30 days dedicated to this, so that the report not come back, and action not be taken, before your meeting on June 15th. I think we would all benefit from that and I hope you'll take my suggestion, and that is concurred in by other citizens as well.

[later in the meeting, early morning of 5/19/93]

COUNCIL MEMBER BJ MILLER: Another item that was brought up, well obviously we had a lot of people speak to us about First Amendment concerns tonight and I just really would want to suggest that, I don't think any of us ever had any intention or desire to limit debate or eliminate First Amendment rights. I think that sometimes we get a little frustrated because there a` re some people who are so convinced that they're right that everybody else either has hidden meanings, or is dumb, or is liar, or is the devil incarnate or whatever, and that creates a sort of negative tone and so we do sometimes not maybe react as totally neutral as we ought, and, but we don't have any desire to change basically the way we do business, and I would say that we should simply move on with business as usual with the recognition that there will be a few people who will be extra angry or extra nasty and that's part of the thing, and if they get really personal occasionally, or as Barry Satlow said, really obnoxious, then we have a potential right to say, hey, cool it, but otherwise, hopefully, the tone of most of our public testimony is good, is fine, and people are courteous about sticking within their 3 minutes and trying not to repeat too much and so we should just simply not pursue at this point any kind of statement on decorum, but simply continue to try to work in a kind of a positive manner with our public.

MAYOR DURGIN: I agree with you BJ, and Duncan, I'd like to say to you that BJ and I have been in a very difficult and emotional , I think, training session for the last 2 days, which wasn't on this topic, but I thought a lot about your interaction and my interaction, and it's, I'm sorry that it happened. I resent terribly, and you didn't do this, the notion that I am a proponent of the gag rule. I was one of 4 people that took the gag rule to the US Supreme Court. And, we lost in the Supreme Court. We ultimately won when the Clinton administration replaced the Bush administration. It is something that I believe more deeply in than anyone in this community could possibly know. I am sorry that, what happened between us. I do feel strongly that citizens in our community have a right to ethical communication and I feel strongly that when people get up and criticize other people, there is some question and danger, and I don't know the answer, I was just asking the question, I do not know the answer, how do we balance first amendment, which has to be held sacrosanct, Robert's Rules of Order, which for me is something legalistic and doesn't get at the real issue, and protection of citizens, and the opportunity to address your government and speak openly and honestly. I don't know the answer to that. I was just asking the question. Cause I struggle with it all the time. You struggle with it all the time. I think we're all caring and committed people to make this community work. You are, I am, members of the council, people we heard tonight. But I think it's an issue that's, we're going to have to keep working on, so, I, I,

if an apology is needed, I do apologize to you for snapping at you and yet, I think the question was a legitimate one to ask. I just don't know the answer.

COUNCIL MEMBER SALLY MARTIN: It was I think an unfortunate circumstance, and I'm sure that the apology is certainly accepted by all of us too, and sent out to the public as well. I think the suggestion by Carla Selby of the ACLU to do a forum, if they want to do that, sounds like it'd be fine with me. When these unfortunate circumstances happen, and you get misunderstandings, it's often a time to do a little re-evaluation and I think we've all done that on all different sides, so, my concern is two-fold. One, because of the way things were characterized...

[COUNCIL MEMBER ALLYN FEINBERG speaks in favor of a forum]

COUNCIL MEMBER BOB GREENLEE: Well, I think you were very gracious, Mayor, in offering an apology. My personal opinion is you did not need to do that, but knowing how gracious and open you are, it should be accepted in that way and it was very nice of you to do that. I don't that think you were off-base, I don't think you did anything that was wrong, you certainly didn't do anything to challenge the First Amendment to the Constitution in my opinion. I think that you simply reminded an individual that this is a place where we attempt to avoid the kind of venomous and malicious statements that are often times directed at individuals including our staff and other individuals in the community. I found nothing inappropriate about that whatsoever...

[DURGIN AND CAMPBELL shake hands and agree to go out for coffee as a first step]