July 28, 2004

NEWARK — Newark residents filed a lawsuit today seeking an order requiring the Newark City Clerk to place an initiative on the ballot allowing citizens the right to speak at City Council meetings.

In December of 1999, Newark residents presented petitions to the Newark City Clerk with thousands of signatures calling for the City Council to allow citizens the right to speak during regular City Council meetings. The law requires that the City Council adopt the petitioners' ordinance or submit it to the voters at the next election. Instead, the City Council introduced its own watered-down ordinance, which it said was in "substantially the form" as that requested by the citizens. As a result, the City Clerk has refused to place the citizens' ordinance on the ballot in November. The Council's ordinance, however, fails to provide an opportunity for public comment.

"The Council's ordinance continues to bar citizens from speaking at regular Council meetings, except to address ordinances on second reading, which is a very small part of the agenda," said Frank Hutchins, a South Ward Newark resident.

"The whole thrust of the citizens' petitions was the right to speak during regular City Council meetings," said William Stewart, a West Ward Newark resident who was involved in the petition drive. "The Newark City Council should be doing everything it can to encourage citizen participation in its meetings."

"Residents from all wards of Newark circulated the petitions to get the right to speak during regular Council meetings, when citizens would have the opportunity to talk to all members of the City Council at once," said Manuel Lavin, from the East Ward. "At other meetings the Council holds, Councilpersons are not all present. You never know who you will be speaking to, or how many empty chairs there will be."

The Newark residents are represented by Frank Askin of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, Lenora Lapidus of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and Renee Steinhagen of the Public Interest Law Center of New Jersey. The lawsuit captioned, Ras Baraka, et al. v. Robert Marasco, was filed in Superior Court, Essex County.