Oakland’s political feuding hit new depths of dysfunction when a City Council member seized the public-speakers’ microphone for a 40-minute diatribe that ended only when her colleagues pulled the plug on their meeting. Councilwoman Desley Brooks, attending the Rules Committee session as a spectator, refused repeated pleas from the panel’s council members Thursday to surrender the microphone so they could get on with their meeting. [...] McElhaney, the committee chairwoman, ordered City Hall security guards to clear the chambers and ended the meeting. Kalb said Friday that it may have been the worst outburst he’d ever seen from a council member, but that this isn’t the first time a meeting has fallen off course because of “extended interruptions” and “lack of adherence to the council president’s authority.” The uproar started with an agenda item aimed at recrafting marijuana ordinances that the council approved in May, which have caused a continued outcry from many people involved in the city’s cannabis business. At the heart of the ordinances is a program that sets aside half the city’s cannabis permits for people who were either jailed on marijuana convictions in Oakland or who live in one of six East Oakland police beats that saw a high concentration of marijuana arrests in 2013. Opponents say the plan will kill the city’s marijuana business just as the state’s voters are on the verge of legalizing recreational use of the drug. Along with Reid and Councilman Noel Gallo, she has proposed an ordinance that would require all pot businesses — and anyone who leases property to a pot business — to give 25 percent of their profit and at least one seat on their board of directors to the city in exchange for permits to operate. “I have watched this body over and over again attempt to stifle the voices of the community,” Brooks said, eliciting angry jeers from her supporters. “Look, I went to UC Berkeley, I learned all about Mario Savio, and I have never been upset or called for arrests when members of the public tried to shut us down,” McElhaney said. Two years ago, after a civil grand jury concluded that she had hired a contractor for a teen center in her district without taking bids and had authorized $19,000 in payments to a guitar store without city permission, Brooks argued that the investigation had been politically motivated. Kalb, who is among the council members trying to scrap the marijuana permit ordinance, noted with dismay that Brooks’ outburst Thursday had been aired on the city’s government affairs cable channel.

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