You’ve Been Blocked

While we know there are a few who don’t care for Frisco Chronicles (guess who), every day our viewership and website traffic continue to grow.  We are getting more emails from fellow whistleblowers tired of the way the City of Frisco staff and leaders continue to operate behind closed doors.  Obviously with our popularity growth you can imagine some leaders don’t like the attention and decided to block us from their official and unofficial social media pages so we 1) can not comment, call them out, or ask questions and 2) because they think that it will stop us from finding out what they are doing. 

According to the ACLU, one of the core purposes of the First Amendment is to allow people, regardless of their views, to hold the government accountable through expressions.  That means if an elected representative has an official Facebook page where they invite comments, they cannot block you from the social media page.  In 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the interactive portion of a public official’s Facebook page is a “public forum,” so an official cannot block people from it because of the opinions they hold.  However, in recent years the question of blocking or deleting comments has gone back to the Supreme Court for further review.  

In March 2024, the issue again was before the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled public officials who post about topics relating to their work on their personal social media accounts are acting on behalf of the government, and therefore can be held liable for violating the First Amendment when they block their critics, only when they have the power to speak on behalf of the state and are actually exercising that power.   The key is in bold lettering “when they have the power to speak on behalf of the state (or city).   Jeff Cheney can block us from his personal page or business page claiming that he is not speaking on behalf of the city, and it is his personal comments.  If you ask us, he uses both his personal and business page to post at the mayor which is clear from just two recent posts in 2024.

On an official page it becomes a very slippery slope.  Can he block us from his official Mayor Jeff Cheney page – we would argue no because he is clearly using that to speak from his position as Mayor on behalf of the city.  The city has not told the council to shut their OFFICIAL PAGES down because they have no authority to speak on behalf of the city and communicate city information.  So technically by them allowing them to have official pages they are in essence approving each one of them as a spokesman for the city.

We decided to file a PIR this year on May 11th that reads, “Copy of the list of “BLOCKED USERS” which can be found under Settings & Privacy, then “Blocking” related to the city council’s official “Social Media” pages or personal pages used for political purposes or posts: Any pages in which they communicate any official city business or city news. For Example: Brian Livingston For Frisco, Official FB Page for Angelia Pelham, Frisco City Council Place 3, and her page Angelia Pelham Official Page for Mayor Jeff Cheney Official FB Page and personal page Jeff Cheney, Bill Woodard serves in Place 4 on the Frisco City Council Tammy Meinershagen Official FB Page, John Keating For Frisco Official Page and John Keating personal page Laura Rummel, Frisco City Council Place 5 and personal page Laura Rummell.

The city then waited until May 24th to send us a message asking for “CLARIFICATION” of our request.  They always wait out the 10 days to respond to delay PIRs.  On May 30th we wrote back and attached a clarification letter that reads:  Per your letter “requesting” clarification we hope this helps: 1. Platform: Facebook 2. Accounts: Any FACEBOOK account that a current City Council Member or Mayor has where they post topics related to their work (on city council or for the city) that are effectively communicating or acting on behalf of city government as that one would assume the information presented is being done so by a representative for the council.  For example, Mayor Jeff CheneyAngelia Pelham, John Keating for Frisco, Laura Rummell, Bill Woodard, Brian Livingston and Tammy Meinershagen.   Then we provided instructions on how to find the “blocked list” of users on their pages so they would not have to search for it. 

Well as you can imagine our CITY and CITY LEADERS who claim to listen to their constituents, be transparent, and work on our behalf and not their own selfish interests turned over the blocked list for each of their pages with no issue!  JUST KIDDING!  Of course they didn’t turn them over.  Instead, we got the following note back from the City Secretary that reads, “Following a request for clarification, the scope of the request was narrowed to Facebook platform only. The City of Frisco has reviewed your request and has determined that the information you are seeking does not fall within the definition of public information as defined by the Public Information Act.  As a result, there are NO DOCUMENTS responsive to your request.”

To be fair we didn’t expect they would turn over anything from their personal Facebook pages, but we were hopeful they would be transparent and turn over the blocked list from the official pages of council members. Ask yourself, why would City Council leaders block any constituent or resident they represent?  Why would they block Frisco Chronicles?  Why would they block anyone who spends money in Frisco which is tax revenue for them?  Direct from the horse’s mouth “Jeff Cheney” we heard over the last two elections “we listen to our residents, and we are totally transparent” yet he has blocked numerous people from his official mayoral page.  In fact, he has blocked almost everyone who disagrees with him or calls him out.   Residents should be asking if you are really working hard for us, then WHY WOULD YOU BLOCK ANYONE?  They block those who disagree or want to speak out against something like the upcoming Performing Arts Center that they plan to shove down our throats for $500 million dollars.  They don’t want you to see those who disagree or argue that what they are doing is wrong.   If that does not concern you, it should! 

We believe it is very humorous that city leaders have blocked Frisco Chronicles aka Whistleblower because in their private comments to other city leaders and citizens, they say Frisco Chronicles is no big deal, they are not worried about us, we are not important, no one is reading and following along with our reports.  Truth is they are scared to death, and they are questioning every day who they can trust.  Newsflash folks … people in the inner circle are singing like canary’s.  Have something to say reach out to us by email FriscoWhistleBlower@protonmail.com – we protect all sources and never reveal identities.

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