Protestors call for dismantling Gilbert communications team

By Tom Blodgett
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Angry residents, spurred by a report from a conservative news site, descended on Gilbert Town Hall on Jan. 23 to call for the abolishment of the town’s Office of Digital Government and redirecting the funds elsewhere in the town. 

Some of the residents speaking at the Gilbert Town Council meeting also called for the department’s director, Dana Berchman, to be put on administrative leave pending investigation or outright be fired as a result of the report from AZ Free News, which alleged Berchman and her department is charged with monitoring the social media and emails of town employees to ensure adherence to a progressive agenda. 

The Office of Digital Government is the town’s marketing and communications arm. Monitoring employees’ social media and emails is not part of its mission, but the employees maintaining the town's social media accounts do note responses to their posts or when someone tags them in their own post, town officials said. 

Nonetheless, 16 of the 20 speakers during the “communications from citizens” portion of the agenda addressed concerns about ODG, calling its activities an unconstitutional infringement of employees’ and town elected officials’ First Amendment rights. 

One speaker, Jeff Manny, compared ODG activities to the Ministry of Truth's enforcement of authoritarianism from George Orwell's novel "1984."

Among others who spoke were Steve Berman, who served as Gilbert mayor from 1989 to 1991 and 2001 to 2009; mayoral candidate Shane Krauser; and town council candidate Monte Lyons. Twelve of the speakers have ties to the Arizona Legislative District 14 Republican Party organization as officers or precinct committee members. 

“The role of government is to provide our citizens with things they can’t provide for themselves — roads, sewers, fire protection, police protection, garbage and the like,” Berman said. “The Office of Digital (Government) doesn’t do any of those things. It just spies on the community and reports to the city manager.” 

Berman echoed the call to dismantle the department and suggested the money saved could be used on 15 new police positions.  

One speaker did push back on the narrative. Though Natalie DiBernardo was there to speak on another matter, she said that while she was running in the 2022 Republican primary election for the Arizona Houses of Representatives, several of the people present had bullied her.

"Half of the members who spoke tonight about ODG and Facebook and all this have also done this to me when I ran for office," she said. "They bully women."

Under state law, council cannot respond to public comment except  to direct staff to study a matter or to ask that an item be placed on a future agenda or for individual members to respond to criticism.

Mayor Brigette Peterson, noting it was a personnel matter that falls under the purview of the town manager, asked Town Manager Patrick Banger to look into the matter and report back to council. 

Asked by the Gilbert Independent for a response to the criticism, the town issued a statement after the meeting defending the work of ODG as the official source of communication from the town to residents and businesses. 

The statement credited ODG for “record levels of community engagement and interaction over the years.” 

The department was created in 2012 as the Office of Communications. It changed its name sometime during fiscal year 2016-17 to reflect the town’s emphasis on digital outreach in its communications as it does not use print or mail.  

Without paper or mailing expense, the result is its operational budget for the current fiscal year is $225,280, according to the town's budget records. It has 13 full-time equivalancies for personnel at a cost of $1.64 million.

The name change also reflected the department taking on more information technology-related initiatives, including the town website, the 311 service to report non-emergency issues and the town’s “Alex” open-data portal. 

The Jan. 18 story from AZ Free Press, which was further boosted in a release that day from the conservative public-policy think tank the Goldwater Institute, closely mirrored a 2021 complaint filed with the town by Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit group that describes itself as a political watchdog and frequently files public-records requests in its efforts. 

The Judicial Watch complaint had four allegations. 

• The town has promoted “the political Marxist agenda of Black Lives Matter ... as well as Democrat Party elected officials”; 
• The town has “approved and is actively promoting and engaging in political speak by publicly supporting the BLM political and social agenda while using taxpayer funds”; 
• Berchman “used town of Gilbert and taxpayer money to express her personal political views and agenda by using the town of Gilbert’s governmental social networking to support a particular political platform, which includes that of Marxism and the BLM organization”; and 
• The town is engaging in employment discrimination by enabling or allowing disparate treatment of employees based on “conflicting political, personnel and policy issues within the town of Gilbert.” 

 In October 2021, Banger sent the complaint to an outside investigator, labor and employment law firm Pierce Coleman out of Scottsdale. 

The firm concluded in its January 2022 report the town “applied standard and consistent procedures to its official speech and communications” and “the town’s social media messaging and public communications were balanced and even.” 

In reviewing the town’s social media posts, the investigators found the town to have expressed balanced political viewpoints in the town’s official speech. 

While there appeared to be a townwide emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion issues, including supporting many events, holidays and causes, there was an even greater emphasis in public posts on police, firefighter, military and other public service officers’ celebrations, according to the report. 

Additionally, investigators did not find any indication Berchman used the town’s social media or any other town resources to express her own personal political views or any political agenda. 

The AZ Free News story, which used anonymous sources and brought up several of the charges from the Judicial Watch report, quoted from Berchman’s personal social media accounts, indicated employees were disciplined for not following an approved agenda and suggested that ODG may be the reason why the town had been slow in communications about teenager Preston Lord’s death on Halloween weekend at a Queen Creek house party. 

While it quoted Berchman and Banger from previous podcasts, it does not indicate that the outlet contacted or tried to contact Berchman or other town officials for a response to the story’s criticisms. 

The AZ Free News is a project of the Arizona Freedom Foundation, according to its website. Arizona Corporation Commission records show the foundation's board of directors include Scot Mussi, president and director the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which advocates for a limited government agenda; former Arizona State Sen. Tom Patterson, who was chairman of the Goldwater Institute from 2000 to 2015; and Eric Porteous, editor of AZ Free News.

In its response to the Gilbert Independent request, the town indicated ODG keeps the town’s messaging unified. 

“We recognize that our community relies on us to share information and engagement opportunities in ways that are fully inclusive, and we are committed to ensuring that our communications reflect this at all times,” the statement read. “This sacred trust should not be violated or compromised by anyone wishing to promote divisive ideas or ideologies in the name of the town of Gilbert.  

“To that end, while the town recognizes and respects the First Amendment rights of all of its employees, the town has been clear that it will not tolerate divisive, offensive or culturally insensitive posts from employees purporting to represent the Town.” 

One speaker Tuesday, former Gilbert firefighter Steve Lavalle, said he was dismissed for making a comment about coffee being black that was interpreted as racist. He added that his engineer, Josh Reynolds, was dismissed because he flew a Back the Blue flag on his fire truck during a Back the Blue rally. 

That rally came in 2020 when the town was managing dueling Thursday night protests near Town Hall from Back the Blue proponents and Black Lives Matters supporters.  Town employees had been instructed not to take sides in the protests.

The Pierce Coleman investigation from 2021 also covered the cases of four firefighters and a heavy equipment operator for the town who had complaints filed against them for their political expressions on items such as the Jan. 6 events at the Capitol and COVID-19 vaccines or mask protocols. 
 
In the cases of the heavy equipment operator and three firefighters, the town noted the complaints but did not take any disciplinary actions based on the records reviewed since the employees did not violate a town policy. 
 
The fourth firefighter, however, faced progressive discipline, according to the report, for making derogatory comments about town coworkers and attributing his opinion to others, then later for violating town policies by using town resources to create a political statement video and expressing political opinions while representing that he was a Gilbert firefighter. 

Lavalle charged the town lied about its firefighter hiring practices and investigators failed to find emails that support his claim. 

Reynolds, who was not dismissed but retired from department, was served with new restraining orders from the town and Fire Chief Rob Duggan before the meeting Tuesday and escorted out by police. Three employees, including Berchman, and the town originally filed restraining orders against Reynolds in January 2022, according to Maricopa County Superior Court records. Duggan and the town recently renewed their complaints.

In its statement, the town said it had no need to address “false claims from anyone, including disgruntled former employees,” from the original article. 

“These claims were fully investigated by an independent, third-party firm, and the town was fully exonerated in 2021,” the statement read. “The town remains confident these false allegations are meritless.” 

We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X. 

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).