The town of Matthews pulled the plug on Zoom comments Tuesday after last week’s meeting drew a handful of people who connected remotely to make antisemitic, homophobic and otherwise bigoted remarks.
Mayor John Higdon was out of town last week. He said he has heard the remote speakers described as Zoom-bombers, but he has a different label.
“With apologies to the insect, I prefer to use the term ‘virtual cockroaches,’ ” Higdon said. “These people scurry about the dark web, away from the naked light of day. They hide behind blank screens and false identities. And they use AI-altered voices to spew their putrid and hateful ideologies.”
Remote public comments were introduced around the country as public bodies stopped in-person meetings during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Matthews Town Manager Becky Hawke told the board the city of Charlotte and the towns of Mint Hill, Pineville, Cornelius, Huntersville, Davidson, Stallings and Indian Trail have since returned to requiring people to make their comments in person. (Read her report here and watch Tuesday’s meeting here.)
Mecklenburg County Commissioners still allow remote comments, but they restrict comments to matters “within the jurisdiction of the Board of Commissioners.”
Although it wasn’t included in Tuesday’s report, Gaston County commissioners require speakers to provide their name and address at the start of remarks, and specify that “speakers shall be civil and courteous in their language and presentation. Insults, profanity, use of vulgar language or gestures, or other inappropriate behavior are not allowed.”
Matthews commissioners talked about whether they should lay out restrictions. Commissioner Mark Tofano asked what would happen if in-person speakers said the same type of things that came in remotely last week.
“If someone were to stand there and actually spew that vitriol, is there something that we can do?” he asked. “Or is it their First Amendment right to let them just continue to speak?”
Town attorney Charlie Buckley and consulting attorney Daniel Peterson told the board it’s difficult to restrict speech.
Commissioners unanimously voted to stop the Zoom comments, as well as written comments that can be read aloud at meetings. They will formalize Higdon’s practice of asking people for their names and addresses before they speak.
Higdon said the new rules may not eliminate the risk but should reduce it. He said in 10 years as a town official “we’ve never had anybody come up during the public comment period and spew the kind of garbage that was spoken at our last meeting.”
The Zoom speakers gave names, and one opened by saying he’d lived in Matthews for about eight years. But it was unclear whether those names were real.
Higdon said the board had to do something.
“Matthews staff members, our residents and most importantly our children to such salacious, disgusting and hate-filled rhetoric is, in my view, unacceptable,” he said. “And for us, as town leaders, to do nothing to try to curb such attacks in the future is a dereliction of our duty.”
Matthews is not the only public body struggling with the balance between free speech, disruption and inappropriate remarks. For instance, parents’ rights groups around the region are using school board meetings to read explicit passages from books they’re challenging. And Charlotte City Council has repeatedly removed people from meetings when speakers have clashed over the Israel-Palestine war.
