Big Brother is alive and well in one Arizona town, where an entire department of city employees is paid to monitor the online speech of employees and elected officials — as well as control all government communications online — to enforce conformity with a progressive political agenda.
Though it may sound like a fictional invention of Orwellian fashion, there’s a real place in Arizona where that occurs. It’s an arrangement unlike any other in the state and, by all indicators, the first of its kind in the nation. It’s the Office of Digital Government (ODG) in the town of Gilbert.
At the helm is Dana Berchman, chief digital officer. For over a decade, Berchman has overseen an average of 10-12 employees who ensure that the 30 official government accounts—along with personal online postings of government-affiliated individuals—fall in line with a liberal political outlook: Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ ideologies, and the like.
For their work, ODG employees are amply compensated. Their annual salaries range from over $82,000 to nearly $138,000; only two of the employees make slightly under that range, earning well over $60,000. Berchman receives the highest salary by far: over $200,800 annually.
There were also two employees that left ODG within the 2023 fiscal year: their salaries amounted to about $188,300. Including those positions, all ODG salaries amount to over $1.15 million.
Public records revealed that under Berchman, ODG contacts various departmental leadership about employees’ online speech if it runs counter to progressive ideals or appears to be critical of their department. Leadership is then expected to confront employees about their speech.
Over the last few years of marked social political upheaval due to George Floyd’s death, the 2020 election, and the COVID-19 pandemic, ODG permitted public displays of support for issues like Black Lives Matter (BLM), vaccines, and mask-wearing, but sought out discipline for those whose speech was or appeared to be the least bit critical of those stances — or ODG.
Following George Floyd’s death, ODG led a unified response across all Gilbert departments to show solidarity with BLM: “blackout” posts, a video statement from the mayor, and pictures of first responders bending the knee to BLM protesters.
One former employee that we spoke with on the condition of anonymity said that they left their job in part due to ODG’s control over the other departments.
“When I worked there, they were pushing the chiefs of police and fire to be more liberal. Then there’s those emails about how excited they were about getting the chief to kneel to BLM,” said the former employee.
That former employee added that anything a department wanted to put out on social media had to receive ODG’s complete approval.
“It was difficult to get anything accomplished,” said the former employee. “Everything was so tightly managed. People on the ground there were upset because they couldn’t do anything.”
That could explain the delay in communications on the arguably biggest development to hit Gilbert in decades, one that has now made national headlines: the Gilbert Goons.
Independent investigative efforts by reporters indicated that similar teen-involved assaults in the East Valley go back as early as December 2022; Gilbert police initially claimed that they only discovered a pattern and the term “Gilbert Goons” last month, but later noted that victims referenced their assailants’ association with the violent group.
Other issues have sparked more immediate attention from Gilbert leadership. Public records revealed that departmental leadership would entertain ODG’s complaints about certain employees’ online speech to which they objected, such as a show of support for first responders.
In an August 2020 email obtained through public records, Berchman notified Gilbert Fire Department (GFD) leadership that one of their fire trucks drove by and turned on sirens to support Back the Blue protesters.
The implication was that GFD leadership would instruct its employees to not engage in similar behavior in the future, as they have regarding the displays of thin blue line flags symbolizing support for police. Gilbert fire and police leadership instructed personnel to not fly those flags due to their controversial message related to George Floyd’s death and the BLM riots.
Several days after Berchman’s complaint, Police Chief Michael Soelberg and then-Fire Chief Jim Jobusch issued a joint email and video to their employees directing them to not “choose sides” publicly concerning Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter protests.
“Given the intensity of the debate and strong personal feelings some have about these gatherings, [we] thought it would be prudent to put out a consistent message to the members of both of our departments,” read a joint email notifying personnel of the video.
“We need to be aware not to choose sides and to not leave the perception that we’re choosing sides during large gatherings,” said Jobusch in the video.
Records also revealed that ODG would spend business hours documenting the nitty gritty of Gilbert employees’ social media activity, even down to when they “liked” posts critical of ODG. In another 2020 incident, ODG issued a post to the town’s Twitter (now X) page celebrating itself for winning an award. In an internal messaging group between team members, ODG discussed one employee who “liked” another local’s comment criticizing ODG as a “bloated team of Insta posters” funded by taxpayers.
“Yeah [this individual] has had a few bad tweets and likes the past 24 hours,” one ODG employee wrote in a group message.
Gilbert Digital is humbled to receive @GovernmentSM's 2020 Social Media Team of the Year Award! 🎉
2020 has been a challenging year, but your likes, shares and feedback (yes all of the feedback 😉) has made it all worth it. Thank you, #GilbertAZ!
The same day of the Jan. 6 breach at the Capitol, Berchman sent an internal group message tasking her employees with hunting down and tracking the personal social media posts of one town employee critical of them. In that same conversation, Berchman alluded that she maintained a dossier of other town employees’ social media posts.
“Do you all have a folder or compilation of all of [this employee’s] tweets? Or posts?” asked Berchman. “I just looked in my social media files and I had most of these [posts other ODG members sent]. It makes me sick to look at these [posts] especially TODAY.”
Yet, Berchman’s personal social media often delves into the political. Her posts over the years openly declared her support of Democratic candidates and progressive issues such as abortion, gun control, and same-sex marriage.
“A bunch of old white guys? Not interested,” wrote Berchman, in response to former President Trump’s potential cabinet selections.
“Today I feel hope, joy, and relief. To those who thought it couldn’t be that bad — it was worse than I ever imagined,” said Berchman on President Joe Biden’s inauguration day. “Watching the past four years and particularly the last one and explaining to my children the things they’ve seen and heard. Never again.”
Today I feel hope, joy & relief. To those who thought it couldn’t be that bad – it was worse than I ever imagined. Watching the past four years & particularly the last one & explaining to my children the things they’ve seen & heard. Never again. ❤️#InaugurationDay
“Every single word of this – especially ‘coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego,’” said Berchman.
Every single word of this – especially “coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego.” https://t.co/avvIOULMH8
Berchman reposted controversial tweets from then-presidential candidate Joe Biden urging people to vote out then-President Donald Trump, then a post from Biden announcing a mask mandate. Berchman also shared a post blaming parents for school shutdowns over COVID-19 case spikes.
Berchman was behind the new town logo that stoked controversy last year, with many left dissatisfied with the end product of a two-year process. Both Mayor Brigette Peterson and council noted they were kept out of the process for developing the logo, with Peterson receiving resistance from town manager Patrick Banger: a common pattern for ODG.
Public records revealed that those town employees who criticized the logo were the subject of ODG documentation and internal messaging.
This appeared to be a frequent exercise for Berchman and her ODG members, though relatively new for the department.
ODG didn’t exist until 2012, when Banger came up with the idea for the department: the first of its kind in the nation. Banger credited former Democratic New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his media empire for coming up with the idea. The year before, Bloomberg hired the nation’s first chief digital officer, Rachel Haot, and together they crafted the nation’s first digital roadmap.
“One of the things that I’d been doing for quite some time is following what Mayor Bloomberg was doing in New York,” said Banger in an early episode of the town’s now-defunct podcast, Government Gone Digital.
Haot’s oversight of online governmental communications resembled the centralized approach that ODG has undertaken. Haot identified her team as the authority on what was published online across city departments, in one interview using Hurricane Sandy as an example.
“24/7 we were working to ensure that all of those channels were working in lockstep,” said Haot. “Say the public housing agency had a new update they needed to get out to their constituents — we had a streamlined process to make sure the information was accurate and could get out there as soon as possible.”
Bloomberg is the liberal billionaire behind the nonprofit Bloomberg Philanthropies. What Works Cities (WWC) is a project of the nonprofit; Gilbert joined them in 2017. WWC’s Results for America awarded ODG in 2020 for public communications that facilitated community trust during COVID-19. Then-WWC Executive Director Simone Brody remarked that ODG exemplified the ideal approach for government communications.
“This recognition honors her life by celebrating cities like Gilbert that exemplify how governments and residents can collaborate to build a better future for us all.”
The following year, 2021, Brody became the senior advisor of Biden’s American Rescue Plan Implementation Team. The primary focus of the team was to ensure the trillions in federal relief funds were issued equitably, not equally.
Banger hired Berchman, a Gilbert native, in 2012. Like his inspiration, Berchman launched her career in New York, where she interned for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign before working for MTV and then MSNBC.
By 2017, ODG had gained significant control over which departments could have social media platforms and what they could share. In the town’s podcast, Berchman explained that ODG had centralized oversight but would give “social media ambassadors” the ability to post and share.
“We don’t just give every [department] a Facebook account because they want one. Who’s going to run it? What are you going to put there? Are you going to have someone monitor it 24/7?” said Berchman.
It wasn’t until 2019 that ODG revoked that limited autonomy and fully took over communications for every department. Berchman discussed the plan in the town’s podcast, in an episode that described the approach as “building the city of the future.”
“We are going to have a truly centralized communications team, we’re going to have people embedded in the other departments: parks and recreation, police, and fire, which is what’s really unique about this, I think, and economic development,” said Berchman. “It is important for us to be streamlined, all on message together, all on brand.”
We are so excited to open our Police Department PIO position. The PIO will be a key member of the Police Department and Town of Gilbert. To learn more about these positions check out @GovGoneDigital podcast (Episode 67) on iTunes. @GilbertPolice@GilbertYourTownhttps://t.co/w5LXz0acaZ
Public records indicate that 2019 was also the year that ODG began ramping up oversight of employee’s personal social media content.
Kelsey Perry — then ODG’s community engagement coordinator, now a public information officer — sent an internal message that August flagging the personal Instagram story of a town employee that “could be deemed culturally insensitive.” The video was passed on from ODG leadership to that employee’s superiors.
In a recent interview, Berchman alluded to her limiting input to those who agree with her perspective, calling those who have grievances “pitchfork people” that didn’t qualify as the average Gilbert resident.
“Let other people come in, invite them in and let them tell you what they think about what you’re doing,” said Berchman. “Not people that show up at council meetings or, I say, the pitchfork people that have a grievance, but the average person who’s busy living their lives.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
When you’re hired to do a job, it stands to reason that you should actually do the job you’ve been hired to do. Think about it. If a company hired you to be a writer, and you never did any writing for the company, you probably wouldn’t keep your job too long. That is, of course, unless you work for the government.
For quite some time now, federal, state, and local governments across the country—including right here in Arizona—have been engaging in the practice of “release time.” If you’re unfamiliar with this term, it means that certain people are hired to do a specific job for the government, but instead of doing that job, they are “released” to work full-time for their union. This could be someone like a teacher, for example, who instead of teaching students, spends all his or her time doing work for the teachers’ union. But here’s the thing, even though these employees don’t actually work for the government, they still get a paycheck from the government—all funded by your tax dollars.
Is this practice unfair? Yes. Is it unconstitutional? Absolutely.
That’s why the Goldwater Institute has been challenging this practice in our state in a case that has made its way to the Arizona Supreme Court…
Democratic lawmakers staged a last-minute boycott of the joint committee on free speech at Arizona’s universities.
On Monday, hours before the hearing began, House and Senate Democrats announced their boycott in a joint statement. They claimed that the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities had no purpose other than to allow lawmakers to grandstand and to sow misinformation and division.
GOP legislators formed the committee following a controversy earlier this year concerning Arizona State University (ASU) faculty members and a T.W. Lewis Center event featuring prominent conservative speakers.
The Democratic lawmakers also accused their Republican colleagues of furthering lies, and of endangering university students and faculty. Specifically, the caucuses cited an altercation last month between ASU professor David Boyles and Turning Point USA journalists.
“It was made clear that Republican elected officials continue to prop up falsehoods and possibly undermine the safety of students and faculty, as happened when an alt-right camera crew subsequently harassed and assaulted a professor who is a member of the LGBTQ community on the ASU campus,” said the caucuses. “We do not think that this committee will objectively help ASU to take the necessary steps to ensure respect for all speakers to be heard.”
PRESS RELEASE: Senate & House Dems say no to grandstanding, divisive committee attacking universities pic.twitter.com/Js1o1A9OL0
One of the Barrett Honors College (Barrett) professors who opposed the conservative speakers earlier this year, Alex Young, praised the Democratic lawmakers’ boycott. Young indicated that right-leaning lawmakers and other public figures had engaged in hypocrisy by similarly opposing an event featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) earlier this month.
“Good call. The far-right forces waging a disinformation campaign against Barrett faculty in the name of ‘free speech’ never had any credibility, but their cheering the cancellation of @RepRashida definitively revealed their attacks to be nothing but a politically motivated farce,” said Young. “This hearing, as ridiculous as it was, should clarify for everyone what the entire disinformation campaign being waged against Barrett faculty is all about: an attempt to restrict free speech on campus, not an effort to protect it.”
Good call. The far-right forces waging a disinformation campaign against Barrett faculty in the name of “free speech” never had any credibility, but their cheering the cancellation of @RepRashida definitively revealed their attacks to be nothing but a politically motivated farce. https://t.co/UYwmTpgbtn
ASU issued a 75-page report summarizing its investigation into the state of free speech on its campus, namely concerning the controversy that occurred earlier this year, in compliance with the legislative committee’s directive issued at its last meeting in July.
The committee asked ASU to investigate whether Barrett faculty or administrators ran a national condemnation campaign, violated policy with actions in the classroom, censored speech or interfered with advertising or attendance, or publicly attacked T.W. Lewis Center donors. The university said it couldn’t find evidence to support the accusations.
Monday’s hearing lasted nearly three hours. The committee heard testimony from Tom Lewis, the principal donor of the now-dissolved T.W. Lewis Center, the entity behind the controversial event featuring conservative speakers that prompted the committee’s creation; as well as Lin Blake, the former events operator for ASU Gammage Theater; Brett Johnson on behalf of ASU; Jake Bennett, a policy director with the Israeli American Coalition for Action; and an ASU student identified as “Zack.”
Lewis noted that he began giving his millions to ASU years ago in the hopes of establishing a center to teach courses about success and entrepreneurship, but he reportedly discovered that faculty were reluctant to teach the content and that leaders were more interested in increasing enrollment than ensuring curriculum quality.
“I’ll say about the universities that they don’t take any responsibility for the classroom, but they are willing to sign gift agreements where they receive significant amounts of money from donors,” said Lewis.
In her testimony, Blake linked her termination from ASU with her involvement in allowing two conservative-oriented events to occur at the Gammage Theater. Blake claimed that the theater’s leadership reprimanded her for allowing those events, and that following the events her responsibilities were slowly sapped until she was fired. Blake said the fact that the controversial event still occurred didn’t mean the existence of free speech at ASU.
“If free speech was truly free at ASU, producing events with unpopular viewpoints would not have cost me my job,” said Blake.
Johnson disputed that claim entirely. Johnson also disputed the claim that Ann Atkinson, formerly the head of the T.W. Lewis Center, was let go from her position due to her arranging the controversial speaker event. Johnson indicated there was an impasse over Atkinson’s retainment on condition of her T.W. Lewis Center salary of over $300,000.
Atkinson didn’t testify at this meeting, but she did testify at the previous meeting.
In his testimony, Bennett touched on the trend of local and college student activists engaging in pro-Hamas activity. He suggested the employment of anti-terrorism statutes to defund and deactivate student organizations providing material support to Hamas, which is the designated terrorist organization that governs Gaza. Bennett also suggested the deportation of those terrorist sympathizers on student and temporary visas, as well as the enforcement of Civil Rights laws to secure college campuses.
In closing, the ASU student and self-described conservative political activist “Zack,” claimed that pro-Palestine students protesting the Israel-Hamas War were making general death threats to him and others protesting on behalf of Israel. This included threats like how Adolf Hitler “should have finished the job gassing the Jews,” and students mimicking throats being slit. Zack said that his Jewish friends reported these instances to campus police. Lawmakers encouraged Zack to bring copies of the police report(s) during their next meeting on Jan. 4, 2024.
State Rep. Austin Smith (R-LD29) said that this entire ordeal has made him lose faith in the Arizona Board of Regents’ (ABOR) ability to oversee the universities, which he called “a rubber stamp” for ASU President Michael Crow.
“Our job is not to have to govern the universities. Our job is to implement the laws that the board of regents enforces at these universities. I don’t think that they do,” said Smith. “The Democrats specifically do not want competition. You’re gonna go exactly where we tell you to go to school, and you’re gonna learn, and you’re gonna sit down and you’re gonna shut up and you’re not gonna question anything. And Michael Crow, who thinks he knows better than the Founding Fathers.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Two Arizona State University (ASU) professors are demanding an end to free speech rhetoric, as it tends to align with right-wing political agendas and undermine experts.
Just over a week ago, professors Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell wrote an opinion piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Dear Administrators, Enough With the Free Speech Rhetoric!: It concedes too much with right-wing agendas.” The pair argued that a greater focus on freedom of speech, or intellectual diversity, would ultimately undermine the true purpose of higher education, which they claimed was imparting the minds of experts, or “academic expertise.”
“Our contention is that calls for greater freedom of speech on campuses, however well-intentioned, risk undermining colleges’ central purpose, namely, the production of expert knowledge and understanding, in the sense of disciplinarily warranted opinion,” said Amesbury and O’Donnell. “A diversity of opinion — ‘intellectual diversity’ — isn’t itself the goal; rather, it is of value only insofar as it serves the goal of producing knowledge. On most unanswered questions, there is, at least initially, a range of plausible opinions, but answering questions requires the vetting of opinions.”
Amesbury teaches and serves as the director for the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS). He joined ASU in 2019. Prior to ASU, Amesbury chaired Theological Ethics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and chaired the Philosophy and Religion Department at Clemson University.
O’Donnell also teaches for the SHPRS, as well as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Lincoln Center Applied Ethics, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and SST American Studies.
In their article, the professors wrote that academia is restrained by “intellectual responsibilities,” and that the social costs of unfettered free speech were too great to merit entertainment. They argued that academia has a fiduciary responsibility to the public and therefore must vet speech, dismissing the notion that the marketplace of ideas converges on truth.
“[C]olleges are under no obligation to balance warranted, credible, true opinions with unwarranted, discredited, false ones,” stated the professor. “Only by disavowing pretensions to be the public sphere can colleges perform their critical role in relation to it.”
Amesbury and O’Donnell then argued that free speech deprived faculty of academic freedom and deprived the public of the faculty’s “regime of expertise.” They lamented that experts “enjoy no special public esteem,” and that the scholarly expertise has come to be viewed as further opinion equivalent to a “flattened-out theory of knowledge.”
“When free speech drowns out expert speech, we all suffer,” said the pair. “‘Free speech’ is what we are left with when we recognize no experts.”
Ultimately, the pair said that free speech arguments weren’t about truth-seeking but a guise for the lucrative fulfillment of particular, unscholarly, and inexpert interests. As examples, Amesbury and O’Donnell cited the University of Tennessee’s Institute of American Civics, the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute.
“[T]he institutions themselves are peopled by faculty who serve on each other’s boards, invite and re-invite each other to give talks, appeal to the same funders, and even publish in each other’s journals and book series,” stated the professors. “[A]lthough such efforts are frequently portrayed as making colleges democratically accountable to the wishes of the public and their elected representatives, the logic of intellectual diversity arguments is toward ever greater mistrust between colleges and the public they serve.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego continues to govern as a tyrant. Just look at item 37 on the next agenda she set for the November 1 Phoenix City Council meeting. The item calls for the City of Phoenix to accept a grant from a Rockefeller-sponsored entity headquartered in Copenhagen to implement meat consumption mitigation. But it’s not just the item alone that’s the problem.
In the dark behind closed doors, the Mayor of Phoenix told city staff to limit public comment to only 5 agenda items per person. By doing so, she possibly went against city code and violated state open meeting law and her loyalty oath to uphold and protect both the Arizona and U.S. Constitutions.
The Mayor suppressing voices of constituents was imposed without the other city council members being informed. Although this regulation was discovered at the September 6 meeting, city staff admitted at the October 18 meeting that the Mayor is the one who directed them to limit public comment to a maximum of 5 total agenda items per person.
During the Call to the Public at that October meeting, I called out Mayor Gallego for her policy.
Before we delve into the destruction to public opinion that the Mayor’s regulation causes, the Phoenix City Clerk’s site says, “Citizens may… express their views on any published agenda item.” Phoenix City guidelines on public comment say people have the ability to speak for two minutes on agenda items outside of the public comment section.
While the limitation of commenting on 5 agenda items may not sound like a big deal, city meetings can have anywhere between 20-200 agenda items plus a general public comment agenda item. To put that into context, 5 out of 200 items is only 2% of the meeting.
Furthermore, Mayor Kate’s restriction prevents the public from petitioning their elected officials if there are more than 5 agenda items that need public input.
Let’s say there are the following 7 items on the agenda for the next meeting:
Issue a $200 million bond that is backed by raising taxes
Road diets where the city reduces traffic lanes
Mitigation of meat consumption
Implementation of facial recognition technology
Solidifying the 15-minute city framework
Recommitting to red light surveillance cameras
Reducing parking around the city with the goal to get people to stop driving less
A person from the public is limited to speak on only 5 of those 7 items. Furthermore, that person cannot sign up to give public comment, which is protected in city code. Not only does this regulation restrict content from being brought forth by the public, but it also inhibits the ability of the people to petition their elected officials to let them know which way the people desire them to vote on specific policies.
Petitioning the government is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 2, Section 5 of the Arizona Constitution. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting the right of the people to petition the Government.” The Arizona Constitution also states, “The right of petition, and of the people peaceably to assemble for the common good, shall never be abridged.” Restricting people’s right to petition their elected officials is a direct infringement on both constitutions.
Not only is petitioning the government protected, but content is also protected. The Arizona Attorney General states, “Public bodies may impose reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on speakers, but any content-based restrictions must be narrowly tailored to effectuate a compelling state interest.” The Arizona Ombudsman Guidance further solidifies the opinion from the Attorney General. When discussing what could be a compelling state interest in court of law, the Military Leadership Diversity Commission of the United States Department of Defense states, “Only important, specific goals may satisfy this level of judicial scrutiny.”
As stated at the beginning of this article, the loyalty oath is swearing to protect and uphold both the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions. Because Mayor Kate has won multiple elections, she has sworn multiple times to the loyalty oath. If the oath is found to be violated, the maximum penalty is a class 4 felony and removal from office.
For public bodies and elected officials like those at the City of Phoenix to avoid possibly breaking the law, the Arizona Attorney General says, “The best practice is to decide [public comment changes] in advance [of the meeting] so that speakers have prior notice about the restrictions that the public body has set. In this way, the public body may be able to prevent allegations that it either treated speakers differently or used content-based restrictions.” Mayor Kate’s public comment limitation was not published, not written down, and staff has no idea where it came from other than her mouth.
While we have covered the possible content and petition limitations from the Mayor, another interesting issue stemming from the Attorney General’s recommendations is the potential targeting of specific voters. Since Mayor Kate’s regulation is not written down, it appears the Mayor decided to implement this policy after the June 28 Phoenix meeting. At this meeting, members of the public and Mayor Kate’s 2020 opponent showed up to speak against the Phoenix water rate hikes, water allotment reduction, and mismanagement of funds. It was at the next meeting, after summer break, that the public discovered the 5-agenda-item limitation. It looks like Mayor Kate may be targeting specific speakers and is treating members of the public differently.
Instead of allowing folks to freely express themselves, people like Kate Gallego will do anything to silence anyone in the mission to obtain all the power and control they possibly can. They are tyrants that use their power to implement radical policies and agendas to control others.
Limiting the number of items someone can speak on is way outside the bounds of Phoenix City Code, Phoenix’s public comment guidelines, the Attorney General’s opinion, Arizona state law, Ombudsman Guidance, the Arizona Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution. The Mayor of Phoenix crossed the line with her latest shenanigans by suppressing the voters of Phoenix, and in doing so, denied the city council members from considering their constituents’ views before voting. Kate Gallego has completely disgraced the sanctity of the institution and democracy. This public comment regulation is a violation of the bedrock of our Republic – consent of the governed. By limiting public comment content from her constituents, Mayor Kate exposes her true self. Her policy restricting free speech needs to be abolished.
Further, Arizona state law says, “A member of the public body may not knowingly direct a staff member to communicate in violation of [open meeting law].”
Elected officials and city staff work for us, not the globalist organizations. It’s why they swear an oath to protect and uphold the State and U.S. Constitutions. By restricting the ability to address officials through public comment, Mayor Kate is preventing the people from having the last say to stop bad policies. The Arizona State Legislature needs to take this up, review the open meeting laws, and codify public comment as a guaranteed First Amendment right to guarantee the public can petition their elected officials. In the meantime, we’ll see what happens at the next Phoenix City Council Meeting on November 1.
Jeff Caldwell currently helps with operations at EZAZ.org. He is also a Precinct Captain, State Committeeman, and Precinct Committeeman in Legislative District 2. Jeff is a huge baseball fan who enjoys camping and exploring new, tasty restaurants! You can follow him on X here.
