Corning council quashes prayer

The Corning City Council meeting will no longer begin with an invocation.

The decision was made by the council during a closed session on Tuesday.

According to Mayor Gary Strack, the decision was based on information the city received from the League of California Cities concerning exposure to litigation.

“We were opening the city to potential lawsuits,” Strack said. “Under the advice of our city attorney and the league we made the decision.”
He said it was the city attorney and the league’s opinions that the City Council could still have invocations using the name God, but not Jesus Christ.

Since being sworn-in in January, Councilman John Leach has been offering an invocation at the beginning of each council meeting.

“If I can’t use the name of Jesus Christ as instructed in the scriptures to give a prayer, then I just felt I shouldn’t give the invocation anymore,” Leach said. “Since I wasn’t going to give the invocation anymore, we didn’t want to leave it open for just anyone to come and give it so we decided to stop it altogether.”