We can’t even comprehend having to write the headline that tops this editorial. Ann Arbor City Council members should never be playing on social media during open meetings or public hearings. But they are. Again.

The Ann Arbor Independent has a video taken during a recent City Council meeting that shows one City Council member browsing Facebook as a member of the public speaks during a public hearing. The video shows a second Council member has Twitter open and is browsing that social media site as members of the public addresses Council.

Ann Arbor residents have already gone through one round of Council members who assuaged their boredom during public meetings emailing each other clever, snotty, snarky, insulting and infantile messages. The city’s current mayor, whom the Ann Arbor News endorsed over the incumbent in 2009, just months after his swearing in was lampooned as a baby wearing a beanie in an editorial cartoon published in that newspaper for his part in what would become an email scandal that triggered an Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit. The Ann Arbor News reported that Taylor’s Ward 3 Council colleague Leigh Greden sent an email to his Council allies in which he wrote he was so bored he’d spent an hour “playing on Facebook.” Greden was subsequently voted out of office. Taylor claimed the contents of his many emails sent during open meetings had been taken out of context. It was little but redirection of attention away from the fact that he’d been caught by the newspaper behaving childishly and unprofessionally.

The City Attorney was forced to settle the ensuing Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit filed by a city resident.

Former Ward 1 Council member Sandi Smith, involved in that Open Meetings Act lawsuit against City Council, left Council but continued to serve on the Board of the Downtown Development Authority. During Smith’s term as DDA Board Chair, that group of appointed officials was successfully sued by a city resident (who represented himself) for violations of the Open Meetings Act.

The disdain showed by local elected officials on City Council for both the members of the public and their own Council rules has been ongoing and egregious.

In December of 2013, The Ann Arbor Independent reported that Council member Chuck Warpehoski (D-Ward 5) used email and Twitter on multiple occasions during the months of November and December during open meetings. At the December 2, 2013 meeting, he used his private Twitter account to forward photos of documents contained in the Council’s packet to a small group of followers, as well as  individuals who follow the Ann Arbor City Council meetings using live Tweeting and the hashtag #a2council. Former Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere, likewise, was on Twitter during open meetings. Briere initiated a Twitter conversation with AnnArborChronicle.com Publisher Mary Morgan. The time-stamp of that Council member’s 2013 Tweet reveals Briere was using Twitter while Council debated the establishment of a tax abatement district.

The redesign of Council’s table, which obscures their computers—and in some cases the faces of Council members—affords those who are choosing to browse social media during open meetings the opportunity to do so unobserved, or so they believe.

If listening to the public during open meetings commentary times or during public hearings is such a chore, the Council members in question should not run for re-election and should, perhaps, even resign their seats and allow others who could demonstrate better judgement to step in and serve.

Members of the public who speak before Council deserve the respect and undivided attention of elected officials. D’uh!