Ban on Lake Worth Media continues...

When city manager Susan Stanton blocked city computers from visiting LWM, no one knew what would be next. This kind of censorship is more common in dictatorships and communist regimes than coming from a local government where the city manager fires most of code enforcement because she doesn't want "a police state," says she encourages opposing points of view and believes in open and transparent government.

Showing partiality, discrimination or prejudice in applying web blocks during an election where one candidate's site is blocked by the city manager ...while leaving his opponent's sites open to city employees... is an ethical violation of the International city managers association of which Stanton claims to be a member.

Tenet 7 of the Internation city manager's association:

"Refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in professional administrators. Refrain from participation in the election of the members of the employing legislative body."

In an email to a resident, the city manager said: "As a member of the International City
Manager's Association I have an obligation to refrain from all political activities which undermine public confidence in the city. My direction is to re-engineer the way we are doing things ...and how we communicate as a community."

She certainly has re-engineered how we are doing things and communicating. BEFORE she got hired she said that her "abililty to effectively communicate with City residents is heavily dependent on good relations with the media." Yet, as soon as she took office and without the slightest provocation, she targeted LWM by fabricating problems such as LWM "sticking the camera in people's faces and disrupting meetings." She then justified the imposition of new media rules that reduced the effectiveness of video coverage.

When a reporter asked Stanton about LWM, she called a factual and fully documented report concerning Mr Reyes... "a rumor" and went on to heap scorn on LWM by saying to the reporter, "I never confuse blogs with news." She even said to a commissioner (Suzanne Mulvehill) that the gag order on Mr Reyes "wasn't a gag order" but later told another commissioner (Retha Lowe) that it was "a gag order." She says she doesn't doesn't want "a police state" yet she selectively censors information reaching employees in such as way as to give advantage to the political rivals of one candidate who she doesn't like. She says she doesn't "reveiw blogs" and so we would assume she banned LWM without even reading anything on it... etc etc. http://icma.org/main/bc.asp?bcid=40&hsid=1&ssid1=2530&ssid2=25

Political advertisement paid for and approved by William Coakley for Mayor