What's behind the sign ban in Riverhead, plus other efforts to restrict debate at town board meetings?

On a Tuesday in early March — just days after the Ukrainian president's contentious Oval Office visit — two Long Island residents weighed in on the Ukraine-Russian war at separate town hall meetings some 60 miles apart.

At North Hempstead Town Hall in Manhasset, Nina Gordon, of Great Neck, wanted to know if board members still stood with Ukraine. At Riverhead Town Hall, resident John McAuliff urged council members to sponsor a resolution affirming support for the country in its war with Russia.

At both meetings, the board members did not respond to either resident's remark. Earlier in the day, Riverhead adopted new limits on public debate. The board restricted the public comment portion of board meetings to topics “substantively relevant to issues concerning the Town of Riverhead.” The town also banned residents from hoisting signs and posters at meetings, which officials have called increasingly disruptive displays.

In February, the North Hempstead Town Board approved a new measure banning council members from authoring resolutions that opine on non-town related issues such as national or international affairs. 

“I don’t want people sitting home making popcorn watching town board meetings,” Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard said in a recent interview. “We’re doing away with that. No more circus ... We’re bringing back decorum.”

The restrictions are an attempt to cool tensions during a time of intense political polarization, according to officials in both towns and political analysts interviewed by Newsday. With national issues increasingly swallowing up attention for local ones, town officials said they hope to steer debate to topics towns have a direct say in. 

Not all residents agree with that stance. Some say town board meetings are a forum for civic participation — the proverbial public square where members of the public can attempt to influence lawmakers on the local, state and federal levels. 

Cindy Clifford said signs have been a tradition at Riverhead board meetings, letting residents express their views concisely and in an attention-grabbing way. Compared with letter-writing and other public campaigns, a sign offers a striking visual that can’t be ignored, she said.

“I don’t know that you’re reading that letter. But if I’m standing up with a sign that says 'no warehouses' and you’re looking at it, I know you’re seeing that I don’t want you to approve warehouses," Clifford said in an interview. "It’s a real short circuit; it closes that gap.”

Debating broader issues

Town boards and county legislatures have long been forums for national debate.

For example, in 2004, the Town of Huntington approved a "sense resolution" that officially condemned the U.S. Patriot Act, a post-9/11 law that expanded the federal government's surveillance powers to investigate terrorism, Newsday reported at the time.

In 2015, a group of Democratic officials in North Hempstead penned a letter urging Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other federal representatives to oppose President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Several municipalities have approved measures barring business with companies that boycott Israel, condemning the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" movement — also known as BDS.

Earlier this year, North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena, a Democrat who caucuses with Republicans, introduced a resolution prohibiting future legislation “offered by a Board member on matters and issues outside the jurisdiction of the town ...” 

The town board approved that resolution on Feb. 4 along party lines, 4-3. That same evening, Democrats on the board had proposed a resolution condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon 1,500 people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Residents debated the merits of the dueling resolutions that night. About 40 residents had gathered in the frigid cold on the Town Hall steps before the meeting to protest DeSena's proposal. The board never voted on the measure to condemn Trump's pardons.

“It reflects, to me, a dumbing down of government, where personal principles and values don’t matter,” Town Councilman Robert Troiano, a Democrat, said in a recent interview. “I feel people have a right to know how their government feels.”

DeSena said the new law is an effort to fulfill a campaign promise to focus on local issues, including “lowering taxes, rebuilding roads, and reforming the buildings department.”

“Hijacking public meetings and asking the board to vote on things we have no jurisdiction over is just political theater, an attempt to foster division,” DeSena said in a statement. “It’s ripe for abuse, and while that may play well for elections, it only fractures our communities.”

The Town of Oyster Bay has a similar policy in place that prohibits "any resolution that stakes a position on non-related town business," spokesman Brian Nevin said.

North Hempstead Democrats’ proposed resolution, however, was not without precedent. In November 2023, DeSena sponsored a resolution to condemn Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel. The vote was unanimous, 6-0. The Town of Oyster Bay also approved a similar measure condemning Hamas in a "special resolution" in October 2023, according to a town news release.

Political branding at play

Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, said the current level of political polarization is among the top three examples of it in the nation’s history, alongside the Civil War and the Gilded Age.

“We’ve been seeing it for a while now,” Neiheisel said in an interview. “People are demanding politicians talk about the news they see day in and day out. That’s necessarily going to ensnare local politicians in national issues. They’re going to be pushed to take a position on that.”

Kenneth Cosgrove, a political science and legal studies professor at Suffolk University in Boston, said both North Hempstead resolutions were rooted in political messaging in an election year.

“It’s partisan messaging, they’re communicating with their voters,” Cosgrove said in an interview. “A good way to build branding.”

Richard Schaffer, the Babylon Town supervisor, said North Hempstead and Riverhead’s moves called to mind “sense resolutions” considered by the Suffolk County Legislature in the late 1980s and early ’90s when he was a member. The resolutions would address various state and national issues, Schaffer said in an interview.

“I thought that it got a little crazy, because it took away from the real business of the legislature,” he said in an interview. “Three quarters of the meeting was spent debating the sense resolution. The meetings would go until 2 or 3 in the morning.”

Signs a North Fork tradition

Riverhead residents have packed Town Hall meetings for years when a contentious issue is up for consideration. Often they tote handmade signs — a do-it-yourself way to convey messages in magic marker.

At least they used to. Last month, the all-Republican town board voted to ban signs at town meetings. The new meeting rules limit the time for public comments from five minutes to three.

Hubbard said in an interview that board members had grown increasingly frustrated over conduct at meetings.

In November, Riverhead police ejected an Aquebogue resident from a town budget hearing following a heated exchange with Hubbard. Town public access video shows the resident, Ron Hariri, calling Hubbard “an absolute disgrace” before the audio and video cuts out and a “technical difficulties" message displays.

Hariri filed a $10 million notice of claim against the town, alleging the town violated his First Amendment rights, court filings show.

Then, in January, a packed public hearing on plans to retroactively approve a racetrack and other activities at a Calverton adventure park grew contentious. Speakers frequently veered off-topic and heckled the handful of residents in the room who criticized the plans.

The Town of Brookhaven has, since January 2020, banned members of the public from displaying signs at town meetings when someone is speaking. The Town of Hempstead also prohibits signs at meetings, spokesman Brian Devine told Newsday.

In January, the Suffolk County Legislature banned signs at meetings. The measure came after demonstrators repeatedly showed up with signs referencing the Israel-Hamas war. Protesters would sit in prime seats hoping to appear on the video feed, Newsday has reported. 

Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey (R-Lindenhurst) said lawmakers were hoping to discourage the protesters.

“I guess they wanted us to speak out against it or pressure people to make public statements ... and that’s really not what we’re there for,” McCaffrey said. “Call your congressman."

Legal challenges

Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard cited a case in upstate Ulster County as part of the legal rationale for the new rules.

In 2021, eight activists were barred from bringing signs into a hearing in the City of Kingston to protest its planned purchase of an armored rescue vehicle, federal court documents show. They had held up signs, including one that read, "No Tanks No Thanks!" The activists sued the city after officials barred them from bringing the signs into the meeting.

City officials said they were allowed to “reasonably restrict speech” at council meetings, according to court documents. In 2023, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court ruling that found the city had not violated the First Amendment when it adopted the sign ban. That court had ruled the city's actions were “reasonably related to keeping the tenor of the meetings from devolving into a picketing session inside City Hall,” federal court filings show.

Eugene Volokh, the Thomas M. Siebel senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said Riverhead's sign ban does not violate the First Amendment.

“People have every right to display signs and posters when they’re protesting; that doesn’t mean they can bring that demonstration into the town meeting,” Volokh said in an interview.

The state’s Open Meetings Law does not require local governments to accept public comments at meetings at all — a technicality Hubbard and other town officials have emphasized.

The law says the public must be “fully aware of and able to observe the performance of public officials and attend and listen to the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.”

With Carl MacGowan, Joseph Ostapiuk and Ted Phillips