Re “Beverly Hills limits time for public comment,” Aug. 3 issue

The Beverly Press quotes Beverly Hills Mayor Julian Gold as saying that he will continue to limit oral communications to council to 90 seconds and keep in place other practices that limit public participation.

“We need to try this for a while,” he said of his new policy which was affirmed “without objection” by his fellow council members.

I say that we don’t need to try his experiment any longer because the public has expressed an opinion: we don’t like it. I cannot recall anybody who stepped up to the mic to approve of limiting the people’s voice in the people’s business.

The reality is that our five council members run the city according to their own interests and needs.

Agenda after agenda features pro-growth and pro-business items with each teed-up for passage regardless of what the public says. That the mayor limited public comment to 90 seconds only added insult to injury because we had no effective voice anyway. Beyond the principle behind public participation, does it really matter whether we speak at all?

Indeed for me the key question is not who is speaking or for how long, but who is really heard by our policymakers. The fact is that the stakeholders with the greatest voice don’t use the mic, they whisper into the ear of a council member. Just follow the money.

In 2020, we saw a new PAC spend more than $100,000 to reelect candidates Gold and Lili Bosse. From where did that money come? A dozen commercial property owners contributed almost $10,000 each to the Beverly Hills United to Support Bosse and Gold PAC. That funded a never-ending stream of mailbox flyers featuring Gold and Bosse. That support effectively doubled the reach of either candidate spent under the city’s voluntary spending limit. If political contribution is speech, as the supreme court says it is, then those PAC donors spoke the loudest in that election.

Moreover, half of the PAC contributors separately maxed-out individual contributions to candidate Gold. And they bundled contributions from family and friends to maximize that impact. The Mahboubi family bundled $4,500 for the mayor and the Frems bundled $3,150. The Megdals and the Massmans bundled $2,250 and $1,800 (respectively). What was interesting is that those donors didn’t individually contribute to Bosse’s campaign.

Candidate Bosse didn’t need their help to get elected but candidate Gold needed her coattails. The PAC contributors shrewdly associated the two candidates and that apparently eased Gold into a second-place finish.

When we follow the money we can infer who has the mayor’s ear. It is not the stakeholders who queue up at the council mic. On the contrary, it is those who have a direct line to the mayor. That’s all-hours access with no 90-second time limit.

Mark Elliot

Beverly Hills Renters Alliance