Power and access in the public hearings of city council meetings

This article investigates the public hearings of a northeast Ohio city’s council meetings. Using grounded theory, conversation analysis (CA), and critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article examines the discourse exchanges between government officials and the general public during public hearings, access to the legislative process leading up to the public hearings, and access to the agenda that controls the topics and method in which the meetings are run. Results demonstrate that although the public has access to the public hearings, their access is controlled and restricted not only during the hearings but in the entire legislative, agenda-setting, and decision-making processes preceding the hearings.