Armando Herman often uses vulgar language and depictions during Downey city council meetings, drawing ire — and frustration — from city officials. Photo by Alex Dominguez.

DOWNEY – You’re sitting in the City Hall council chambers, anxiously awaiting the City Council’s decision on one particular item.

The mayor leans over and pulls his microphone close to him.

“It is now time for non-agenda public comment,” he says, before reading off a laundry list of protocols.

One man gets up and approaches the podium; what he unleashes upon the council floors you.

A flurry of expletives, name-calling, and ranting about LA County, Sacramento, and Washington. Audience members gasp, council members shift uneasily in their chairs.

The man sits. The meeting moves on.

Council members discuss an agenda item. Again, the mayor leans forward.

“Would anyone like to speak on this item?”

The same man rises. Again, he unleashes a fireball.

The next item, the same. Another item, the same. Again and again.

By the time your item comes to discussion, the council and the audience have been exhausted by one man. However, save for a few comments of “Hey,” “C’mon,” and “Knock it off,” no one seems to have actively attempted to stop this man’s fury.

Why?

Every person who steps into a council meeting has an opportunity to speak their minds, voice their concerns, and either support or speak out against a particular agenda item.

Armandy Herman was evicted from a City Council meeting in 2017. Herman threatened to sue but settled with the city of Downey for $5,000.

The rules of engagement between council and a speaker are simple. Per the Downey municipal code section 2105:

“It is requested that all persons wishing to speak to the Council shall state their name, address, and the subject matter upon which they wish to speak for the record. All speakers who wish to address members of the City Council or staff must do so through the Mayor. No person shall address the Council until he or she has first been recognized by the Mayor. The decision of the Mayor to recognize or not recognize a person may be changed by order of the Council. In the interest of facilitating the business of the Council, all persons addressing the Council shall be limited to five (5) minutes unless such time is extended by the Mayor for good cause,”

and

“There will be one oral communication section near the beginning of the City Council Agenda placed after public hearings. During this time members of the public may address the Council on any non-agenda item which is directly related to City business. Each person speaking shall be limited to five (5) minutes per speaker and the maximum time allowed for oral communication shall be thirty (30) minutes. For good cause the Mayor may extend the time for individual speakers or the maximum time for oral communications.”

Council members are not legally allowed to dialogue with speakers, however, the mayor can direct each individual to a member of city staff according to their needs.

For most, this opportunity is taken only once or twice at meetings that are few and far between. Even those who are meeting regulars often don’t have too much to say.

However, there is the occasional exceptional individual - aka a “gadfly” - who seems to choose to get their money’s worth out of the opportunity, speaking at every available moment for every agenda item as well as public comment.

So what exactly is a gadfly?

According to former Mayor Mario Guerra, gadflies are one of the “icky” parts that come with the job of serving on city council.

“Fortunately, and unfortunately, it’s part of the process of democracy,” said Guerra.

Still, not all public speakers are - nor should - be branded with the label of gadfly. That being said, where exactly is the line in the sand drawn?

“The line was if you keep bringing up the same thing when you already know the answer; if you’re bringing it up just to be a pest or something,” said Guerra. “Obviously, we want to listen to the people. We were always very accepting; that was one of my favorite times because I got to hear what the people had to say.

“In open meetings you can’t have a dialogue with people during the non-agenda open comment, but you could direct the conversation to a city staffer to take care of it…those are all legitimate.

“Where it became silly sometimes is there’s verbal threats, name-calling, and the same person coming up more than once in the same meeting, every single subject bringing up the same subject.”

Another former mayor, David Gafin, offered a more cautionary angle.

“You really cannot take a whole subject of a gadfly and put it on one shelf, because it depends on their purpose behind it,” said Gafin. “Are they doing it just because they want the notoriety, because they like to be the fly in the ointment...or do they have a legitimate complaint about a specific subject that is obviously near and dear and should be paid attention to?”

“Most gadflies, except those that are way out there, are not necessarily gadflies. They just haven’t gotten the answers they want to hear.”

Gadflies are nothing new to Downey City Council, and both Gafin and Guerra have had their fair share of experiences with them.

Armando Herman at a Los Angeles City Council meeting. LA Times photo

“We used to have a gadfly, his name was Lenny [Whittington]…it got scary to the point because he felt empowered to walk right up to the dais,” said Guerra. “We literally put up a little courtroom wall type of thing right there up front [so] that you couldn’t walk in there. At least it’s a barrier, it’s a visual barrier…”

“We’ve had those who have come up there because they know they have their five minutes,” said Gafin. “We’ve had people come up there with books and just read a chapter out of the book or until the five minutes were up, close the book and sit down because they can talk for five minutes on anything they want. Of course, you’d rather have it be about city work or something that we want to address or respond to, or whatever the case may be, but we have our First Amendment rights.”

The subject of how and how long public speaking opportunities should be handled has recently been the subject of some debate not only in Downey, but in the local region. This is partly due to gadfly nuisance.

A proposal to bar repeatedly disruptive individuals from Los Angeles Council and Committee meetings for several days at a time manifested early this month after multiple complaints from city lawmakers of disruptions in and out of the council chambers.

The proposal came two days after what can only be described as normal, bombastic meeting behavior from regular LA gadfly Armando Herman, who was removed from the meeting after using vulgar and profane language, then continued to disrupt the meeting even after having sat down.

Herman is also a regular at Downey meetings. His language there is often sharp-tongued, fiery, and profanity laced as well, however his actions don’t seem as exaggerated once seated as in LA.

Still, former Mayor Fernando Vasquez, who is currently serving in his last few months as a part of the council, locked horns with Herman last year in a controversial spat that saw Herman ejected and threatening litigation against the city.

“I was frustrated, and I was concerned that there were children in the audience and you had somebody what I perceived as making a mockery out of the public comment process,” said Vasquez. “He used profanity, I warned him and he did it again. So, I elected to have him removed from the chamber.”

In fact, it seems as though profanity is where most on the council – past and present - takes the most issue.

“Relating to the council issue or any comments in there, I would not allow vulgarity,” said Gafin. “If you’re coming out with four letter words and this and that and whatever else, that is not proper public speaking; you’re not getting your point across you’re just getting your vulgarity across, and that we would stop. Once or twice – not while I was mayor, but when I was on the council – we had a couple of people ejected because they would not stop using vulgarities.”

Unfortunately for Vasquez and the other former mayors, vulgar language is not enough to legally eject a speaker from a meeting, as explained by City Attorney Yvette Garcia after a recent, typical Herman tirade.

“The profanity that the community has heard is not one that goes unnoticed here,” said Garcia at the Aug. 28 council meeting. “Unfortunately, the State and Federal courts have said that members of the public who come to public comment and make the unfortunate decision to use profanity during this public meeting are allowed to do so until or unless there is actual disruption of the meeting. It’s not that we’re not doing anything, it’s that legally we cannot unless there is actual disruption… that is essentially the city’s position so that we can avoid lawsuits, and wasting taxpayer dollars on lawsuits.”

Since last year’s controversy, Vasquez has had an opportunity to reflect and learn from the incident.

“You certainly want to give everybody the opportunity to voice their concerns or their opinions on things. I’m a firm believer in due process,” said Vasquez. “I have a philosophical difference when somebody is shouting profanity in a derogatory manner where they’re intentionally doing it just to get attention. Having said that, I now understand what the legalities are. I disagree with the law, but I have to respect the law.

I’m not above the law.”

Vasquez says that there are ways to express their dissatisfaction or concerns without using derogatory or vulgar language.

“If you have somebody constantly doing it in a way that they’re making a mockery out of democracy, I have an issue with that,” said Vasquez.

Vazquez says that he had opened up discussion on potentially cutting down Downey’s allotted speaker time from five minutes, however was not able to garner the support.

Guerra, Gafin, and Vasquez all shared the thought that regardless of time allotted, the Mayor is the one who holds control over the time and flow of public comment.

“I think the control over them, or how you try and lead them more or less, is up to each mayor,” said Gafin.

“You have to try, you have to keep decorum,” added Guerra.

With the end of the year approaching and an annual mayoral transition due in just a handful of months, that duty may very well fall to current Mayor Pro Tem Rick Rodriguez in 2019.

Like many of his council associates, Rodriguez - who was elected in 2016 - has seen, heard, and been the target of bi-weekly gadfly scrutiny and attack.

It is of Rodriguez’s opinion that the mayor’s gavel currently may be underutilized.

“I think that gavel is a powerful tool. That gavel is not used enough in my opinion,” said Rodriguez. “That gavel can be used to draw attention…there’s no need to have a lack of respect, so I think that gavel Is an underused tool for the mayor.”

Respect is high on the priority list for Rodriguez, and he has indicated that he is not afraid to take a stand for it.

“If the mayor is strong enough to be in control of the situation, I think that certain people who speak out of turn may be a little more willing to obey the rules,” said Rodriguez. “If the mayor is not as strong and he just allows things to keep going for five whole minutes, then it’s going to go and go and go and now the speaker feels empowered.”

“I give a lot of my time, my heart, and my energy to our city because I love our city so much, but at the same time – it could be inside the city council chamber, it could be on the street – I will not allow anybody to disrespect our city; it’s not going to happen on my watch.”

Like Vasquez before him, Rodriguez has concerns about the current length of time given to speakers, especially if they seem to abuse the right. With that considered, there is a possibility that an old conversation may be resurrected.

“We’re one of the only organizations, the only agency that allows five minutes. Go to the county, go to the state, it’s never more than three minutes,” said Rodriguez. “It’s an option… I think that the gavel is a tool that can direct that flow of [verbal] traffic, wherever it may go. If that doesn’t change things, then yes three minutes should be an option.”

When asked about the possibility of cutting time down, both Guerra and Gafin pushed back.

“For many years we’ve had this five-minute limitation; I don’t see that needs to be altered any,” said Gafin. “Just because you don’t like what somebody is saying doesn’t mean you should shorten them.”

“I caution anything that hinders free speech,” said Guerra. “Cutting the time, I think that’s a purgative. I wouldn’t cut it too much. Five minutes might be too long or too short, but you’ve got to give the opportunity to speak.”

Instead, Guerra offers the difficult situation as a “balance.”

“It’s a balance – free speech, the constituents, gadfly, nuisance, safety – those things, it’s a delicate balance,” said Guerra. “But I think you always have to err or lean on the free speech.”

Downey gadfly tests the boundaries of free speech