THE REPUBLIC IS LOST IN SMALL SURRENDERS

Aug 7

BKFD Considers Reaffirming Its Unenforced 3-Minute Citizen Comment Rule

Public Comments | Yorkville Herald

The Bristol Kendall Fire Protection District (BKFD) is considering incorporating into its updated meeting policy a three-minute citizen-comment restriction that has been on the books since 2017 but, according to citizens who have attended BKFD meetings, has not been enforced in practice. [1][2] The existing rule limits citizens to no more than three minutes of public comment unless additional time is granted by the Board and provides at least fifteen minutes for public comments before allowing the Board to limit additional time when it determines that other business warrants doing so. The draft now repeats those restrictions. These restrictions may appear routine because so many public bodies have adopted similar rules, but their prevalence should not keep us from asking a more fundamental question: Is this really how government should operate in a Constitutional Republic?

Illinois law does not require a time limit. The Open Meetings Act simply provides that any person must be given an opportunity to address public officials “under the rules established and recorded by the public body.” The law permits reasonable rules, including reasonable time restrictions, but it does not command public bodies to reduce every citizen’s opportunity to speak to three minutes, five minutes, or any other arbitrary number. [3] That means this is not merely a legal question. It is a question of governing philosophy. The law establishes the boundaries within which government may act, but elected representatives must still decide what government ought to do within those boundaries.

Our constitutional system was not designed with government officials at the top and the people beneath them. Civil government exists under God’s authority, and within the American constitutional order governmental power is delegated through the people to representatives entrusted to administer it. The Declaration of Independence says governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and the Constitution begins with “We the People.” [4] Those words describe a structure of government that is easily forgotten when citizens are treated primarily as people to be managed rather than as the body from whom delegated civil authority proceeds.

When a citizen takes the time to study an issue, gather records, attend a public meeting, and address elected representatives, that person is participating in self-government. He is not appearing before his king as a supplicant asking for the privilege of being heard. Consider how strange the relationship would appear in almost any other setting. If an employer approached his employee to discuss the operation of the business and the employee responded, “You may speak to me, but you have three minutes to say everything you need to say,” everyone would recognize that the relationship had somehow been reversed. Yet the equivalent has become so routine in government that few people stop to question it.

Orderly meetings are certainly necessary. No board should be required to tolerate genuine disruption, endless repetition, threats, shouting, or deliberate attempts to prevent the transaction of public business. A chairman should have the authority to preserve order and deal with actual abuse when it occurs. But there is a meaningful difference between controlling genuine disorder and presuming beforehand that every citizen, regardless of the seriousness or complexity of the matter being presented, should automatically be silenced when a stopwatch expires. Republican government should begin with the broadest reasonable opportunity for the people to participate and impose restrictions when circumstances actually require them, rather than beginning with restriction and requiring citizens to ask permission for additional time.

BKFD’s own practice may be the most relevant evidence of all. Citizens who have attended District meetings report that the three-minute cutoff has not been mentioned or enforced, yet the Board has still been able to transact its business. [2] That experience should carry more weight than the fact that restrictive policies have become common elsewhere. Before reaffirming a rule that has gone unenforced in practice, the trustees should ask whether the rule has proved necessary at all. If ordinary judgment, relevance, and decorum have been sufficient to maintain order, there is little reason to replace a working practice with a more restrictive one simply because the restriction already exists on paper.

Yorkville provides another valuable example because it shows that a local government does not have to accept restrictive public-comment rules simply because they are common or legally permissible. In 2020, the City Council considered a proposal that would have limited citizens to five minutes each. Rather than treating that restriction as routine, Mayor John Purcell kept the matter under discussion while concerns and revisions continued to be raised. The official record later identified the “time limit on length of comments” as one of the unresolved issues, and the proposed five-minute limit was not incorporated into Yorkville’s codified meeting rules and does not appear in its current meeting ordinance. [5]

That history deserves attention because Yorkville was not operating in some imaginary world where every citizen spoke briefly and every meeting proceeded perfectly. Attorney Kathleen Orr explained that the Council had previously experienced individuals speaking for approximately twenty minutes about matters unrelated to city business. Yorkville’s response had been to structure its agenda so actionable business could proceed while the public still retained an opportunity to speak. Agenda-related comments were heard earlier, while comments on other subjects came later. Orr had previously told the Council that this two-part system was working well because it allowed City business to proceed while still preserving public comment. [6]

There is a lesson worth preserving in that example. Orr was functioning as legal counsel rather than as an unelected policymaker. She explained the law, identified procedural concerns, provided institutional history, and helped the elected representatives understand their options. The Council remained responsible for deciding what its rules should actually be. That distinction has become increasingly important in local government.

Lawyers have a legitimate and necessary role. They are trained to identify legal exposure, procedural requirements, liability, and the outer boundaries of what government may lawfully do. Those are valuable functions. The trouble begins when legal advice quietly becomes governing philosophy and elected officials cease asking for themselves what liberty, representation, and republican government require. When representatives do not know their own governing documents, statutory authority, constitutional duties, or the principles underlying their offices, a vacuum develops, and counsel naturally begins filling it. Government then becomes driven by risk management rather than principle. The cure is competent, informed representatives who understand their own authority well enough to use lawyers as counselors rather than allowing counsel to become unelected governors.

America’s founding documents were never intended to be proprietary manuals belonging to a legal priesthood. They were publicly debated political documents written for a people expected to participate in their own government. The survival of a republic therefore depends upon more than electing good candidates every few years. It requires citizens who read the documents, understand the structure, attend meetings, question officials, examine records, speak when something is wrong, and insist that delegated power remain accountable. It equally requires representatives who understand that public scrutiny is not an inconvenience attached to government service. It is part of government service. Every township meeting, school board meeting, city council meeting, county board meeting, and fire district meeting is a small school in republican government. The habits practiced there eventually become the character of the nation.

Bristol Kendall’s trustees therefore have an opportunity to consider something larger than whether a three-minute public-comment rule should be reaffirmed and enforced. “Everyone else does it” has never been a sound principle of self-government. Yorkville’s experience shows that a neighboring public body can confront long speakers, manage its agenda, preserve orderly proceedings, receive legal advice, and still decline to make an automatic numerical cutoff part of its codified meeting rules. [7] The more important standard is not what has become customary in government, but what best preserves meaningful access between citizens and their representatives. A board can maintain order without treating every citizen as a potential disruption, and it can manage genuine abuses when they arise without designing its ordinary rules around the worst possible participant.

The American Republic will not disappear all at once if BKFD begins to enforce its restrictive policy, but republics are preserved or diminished through thousands of seemingly small habits. When citizens become accustomed to asking permission to speak to their own representatives, when representatives become accustomed to viewing citizen participation primarily as something to manage, and when lawyers rather than elected officials begin supplying the philosophy by which government operates, the constitutional form may remain while the habits of self-government slowly disappear. The opposite is also true. Every citizen who becomes informed and participates, every representative who remembers the source and limits of delegated authority, and every public body that voluntarily chooses openness over unnecessary restriction strengthens those habits again.

The Bristol Kendall Fire Protection District has an opportunity to make that choice. Maintain order. Preserve decorum. Structure meetings intelligently. Deal firmly with genuine disruption when it occurs. Listen carefully to legal counsel about what the law requires and prohibits. But where the law leaves room for judgment, exercise that judgment in favor of the people whenever reasonably possible. The goal should not be to determine the maximum restriction government can lawfully place upon its citizens. It should be to preserve ordered liberty and the habits of self-government upon which the American Republic depends.

Endnotes

[1] Bristol Kendall Fire Protection District, “Rules for Public Comments to the Board of Trustees,” adopted and effective Aug. 10, 2017.

[2] Based on accounts from citizens who have attended Bristol Kendall Fire Protection District meetings, received by Yorkville Herald, 7 August, 2026.

[3] Illinois General Assembly. “5 ILCS 120/2.06: Minutes; Right to Speak.” Illinois Compiled Statutes, Illinois General Assembly, https://www.ilga.gov/Documents/legislation/ilcs/documents/000501200K2.06.htm. Accessed 7 August, 2026.

Illinois Attorney General, Public Access Counselor. Binding Opinion 19-002. 2019. Illinois Attorney General, https://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/Page-Attachments/FOIAPAC/2019-Binding-PAC-Opinions/19-002.pdf. Accessed 7 August, 2026.

[4] Jefferson, Thomas. “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. Accessed 7 August, 2026.

“The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription.” National Archives, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. Accessed 7 August, 2026.

[5] 2020 proposal:

https://www.yorkville.il.us/Archive/ViewFile/Item/3618

July 28 minutes:

https://www.yorkville.il.us/Archive.aspx?ADID=3625

August 25 minutes:

https://www.yorkville.il.us/Archive/ViewFile/Item/3644

Current Yorkville meeting code:

https://library.municode.com/il/yorkville/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TIT1AD_CH15ME_1-15-2SECO

[6] July 28 minutes:

https://www.yorkville.il.us/Archive.aspx?ADID=3625

August 25 minutes:

https://www.yorkville.il.us/Archive/ViewFile/Item/3644