Since childhood, I have loved a movie night with the family.  My dad would take me to the corner store where he always got my mom a Bit-O-Honey and then he would look at me and say in his deep voice, kid you can pick a sweet treat too.  I am sure I smiled ear to ear the whole way home looking out the window of the old truck with my $100,000 candy bar in my hand.  Today the candy bar is called 100 Grand and I still pick one up every Friday with a quick pick lotto.  In the movie Other People’s Money (1991), Lawrence Garfield said, “I love money more than the things it can buy…but what I love more than money is other people’s money.”

Our lives center around other people’s money, and we don’t even realize it.  The bank owns the home until you make the last payment.  The car belongs to the lender until you make the last payment.  The new furniture you bought at Nebraska Furniture Mart that is financed over 24 months is not yours until the last payment.  By now you see the connection, until we make the last payment the thing we love is not really ours.  Politicians LOVE other people’s money because it helps pay for costly campaigns.  The more campaign contributions they bring in, the less they will have to take out of their own pockets or through a loan.  Political contributions are a time-honored tradition, and some would say “The Cost of Doing Business.”

In 2019, Sharon Grigsby with the Dallas Morning News did an article about Phillip Michael Carter, who was accused of taking advantage of elderly investors for million dollars, and the relationship he had with both Cheney and Keating’s campaign. Cheney received $15,000 and Keating received $5000 from Carter, both said they were returning the donations which was the right thing to do.  She interviewed Cheney for about 45 minutes and Cheney told her he met Carter sometime after he became Mayor in 2017 and Carter later visited his office at City Hall about a sign-ordinance provision that was causing him difficulties at his Preston Road commercial property. Cheney said it was not unusual and most developers reach out to the mayor and ask for help. Cheney confirmed he helped resolve the issue but was steadfast that the 2018 campaign contribution was not tied to that case and said, “there was never a this for that.” 

Cheney also told Grigsby that his “reputation is everything to me.”  He regrets not looking deeper into the allegations but he is “so busy every single day, from sunup to sundown to the weekends.”  The article goes on to say Cheney first learned of Carter’s state charges and arrest relating to fraud charges on November 14, 2018.  He immediately linked the $5000 donation from Carter but said he had completely forgotten about the entire case until he began reviewing his campaign finance reports in anticipation of his interview with Grigsby.  He admitted in the interview much of what Grigsby was laying out in regard to charges was news to him.  The article was riveting but it never discussed the timeline between his donations and when the “issue” got fixed so we did some research.    

May 24, 2018:  Cheney $10,000 by Carter Family Office LLC (Phillip Carter)

October 10, 2018:  Cheney $5,000 by North Forty Development (Phillip Carter)

October 15, 2018:  Keating $5000 by Texas Cash Cow (Phillip Carter)

October 23, 2018:  P&Z holds a public hearing for Sign Variance: Preston Wade Crossing by Frisco Wade Crossing Development Partners, LLC (Phillip Carter)

**Interesting fact the P&Z Commission in 2018 was led by Robert Cox who was appointed to the Commission in April 2016 with the first motion by John Keating and second by then councilman Jeff Cheney.

January 2019:  SEC Files Charges against Phillip Carter for a multi-million dollar fraud scheme that took place from May 2015 to Feb 2017 and totaled around $45 million dollars and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

In 2019, Frisco’s population according to the US Census was about 200,907 people. It is hard to believe that someone who is the mayor of a booming and bustling town and also an extremely successful businessman could just “forget” about a fraud case that involved a real estate developer and millions of dollars. At the time it was plastered in local DFW papers and the top story on most local news stations.  To be fair, Cheney and Keating accepted a campaign donation and nothing illegal occurred. They were never named in allegations that involved Phillip Carter and both returned the donations.  Again, this is just another situation that “doesn’t look good” and could lead many to believe that something improper was happening, even if it wasn’t.  That old perception is reality for many folks is a stinker.

Another thing we learned from Grigsby’s March 2019 DMN article was Cheney’s personal policy of not accepting more than $10,000 from a single donor when it comes to campaign contributions. I am not sure when that became his policy because he accepted $20,000 in 2017 plus $6000 in 2020 from Ali Kahla who we believe was a representative for IGO-USA, The Gate developer. I guess he also must have been ridiculously busy and forgot his personal policy almost 9 months after his interview with Grigsby and the article because in 2020 he accepted $15,000 from Fehmi Karahan (Fields).  Again, we want to say there is nothing illegal about the donations (we don’t want to be sued) other than they seem to break his personal policy.  I guess it is good to have a flexible policy that benefits you when needed.

Philip Anthony Hopkins who played Odin in the movie Thor said, “Even with two eyes, you can only see half of the picture.” If that is true, then we should all go to the Ophthalmologist to get our eyes checked out. The problem is repetition, the action of repeating something that you have already done or the recurrence of an action or event.  The repetition of “it just looks bad” starts to become a theme and that can have a detrimental impact on the citizen’s perception of you and the city. The conversation becomes about the lack of trust and confidence in our city, the city council members, and our mayor.