The rules that guide public meetings are slowly being eroded in a few East Bay cities from both the dais and the gallery.

In Alameda, all hell broke loose two weeks ago at a City Council meeting when landlords packed council chambers, leaving no room for the angry tenants who wanted to weigh in on a proposed moratorium on rent increases. Two tenant advocates in their 60s scuffled with city officials and were arrested.

The eruption was the by-product of a long-standing, one-sided relationship in which the city has given landlords the power to control rental prices on the conservative island for almost 50 years. City residents doggedly hold on to Measure A, a 1973 ordinance that bars construction of condos and new apartments.

Oakland, too, got into trouble for stifling public speech. This week the city agreed to pay $37,000 to settle a suit by an employees union that objected to the city’s closing of the council chambers balcony in May in an attempt to dampen raucous public meetings. Oakland was sued by the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, a municipal workers union, and $37,000 settled the case.

Trouble has also bubbled up in Berkeley, where the Associated Students of the University of California, the student government group at UC Berkeley, complains that there was a Brown Act violation when the city tried to silence students during a public discussion on an ordinance that would affect student life.

The Berkeley Open Government Commission is looking at whether a Brown Act violation occurred.

In late October, ASUC officials sent a “cure and correct” letter to the city, offering up proof of a violation in the form of a Sept. 29 e-mail sent from Assistant City Manager Jim Hynes to two Berkeley neighborhood online groups, encouraging them to show up early and stay late to counter a busload of students who were expected to attend.

“Since the Daily Cal is reporting today that students are hiring buses to come to the meeting, I suggest you get there early and stay for the entire time,” the e-mail reads. “The Fire Department will be employing crowd control measures, which means restricting access once the chamber is full, hence all the more reason to get there early, like 5 p.m.”

In each of these cases, there is shared blame, alternative reasons and a history of disputes.

The busload of students who headed for the Berkeley workshop had a very specific agenda in mind: to crush any support for a proposed city ordinance that would impose a 10 p.m. curfew on weekday parties serving alcohol, and 1 a.m. on weekends, at all off-campus housing. Additionally, the city would levy stiff fines in cases where emergency responders are repeatedly called to an address.

Matthew Lewis, the ASUC’s director of local affairs, called the city proposal “draconian regulations on student housing.”

In Oakland, the city’s decision to cordon off the balcony came after years of problems with unruly crowds. The city has been besieged for years by protesters, activists and professional occupiers who delayed and disrupted — and at times shut down — public meetings.

Sadly, there are no winners in any of these cases.

Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. His column runs Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: chjohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @chjohnson