By admin 
While controversy has swarmed around clashes between Chapin’s mayor and town council during a string of contentious meetings in recent weeks, residents of the town close to Lake Murray have raised a different concern — whether the town is censoring their Facebook comments.
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During the two most recent council meetings, which are livestreamed on the town’s Facebook page, residents have noticed the comments section under the video has been turned off, not allowing anyone interested in the proceedings to comment on what they were seeing. That’s a change from earlier meetings streamed on the same platform.
The change led viewers to sound off after both of last week’s meetings were livestreamed, although on community pages other than the town’s.
“It’s unconscionable that when the heat gets turned up the people who elected him get turned off,” one viewer wrote under a video of a meeting shared on the Chapin Rants & Raves page.
It’s unclear what legal requirements if any regulate a town’s Facebook presence. The intersection of government and social media is an evolving area of the law.
Mayor Bill Mitchell compared comments on the Facebook page to heckling the council in person during a meeting.
“If someone wants to attend the meeting, they should be able to do that without the meeting being disrupted,” Mitchell said. “It shouldn’t be disrupted by the council members, and it shouldn’t be disrupted if they’re watching at home. It’s like these hecklers are pestering the citizens of the town who just would like to hear the town business.”
The mayor said he’s tried to research what restrictions there might be on a public entity’s Facebook page, and “I don’t know where the lines are on First Amendment rights,” he said. “I can’t get clear precedent one way or the other.”
Social media users have taken the issue to court in other cases. Federal judges have ruled in some cases that public officials who delete negative comments or block certain commenters have violated their constituents’ free speech rights.
“Switching off the comments section would have the potential to violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, because it is the government suppressing speech,” said Jay Bender, a Columbia attorney who specializes in freedom of information issues.
A spokesperson for the S.C. Municipal Association said that while the organization offers social media training to its member cities and towns, municipal governments take a wide variety of approaches to how they use Facebook and other sites.
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”Although allowing public comments is not required, the Association recommends a consistent approach by either allowing or disabling comments,” said Communications Manager Meredith Houck in an email.
The change in Chapin’s policy is recent. The video for the Aug. 31 council meeting on the town’s Facebook page includes 154 visible comments, many of them critical of the mayor and council’s performance.
“Man I knew in the first 5 mins that I needed my [popcorn emoji] and boy is was I right! This is absolutely golden cinema judge Judy type stuff!” one commenter said of the municipal proceedings.
At that meeting, Mayor Bill Mitchell and the four other council members debated whether Mitchell had appropriately hired an attorney, Georgia-based Bubba Samuels. Samuels was engaged as a “utility attorney” by Mitchell as the town faces a lawsuit from Lexington County over Mitchell’s refusal to issue sewer taps for new housing development.
Councilwoman Vicky Shealy was critical of the mayor’s decision to limit comments on council meetings live streams, even as other posts on the page about the town’s Labor Day parade and other notices still have comments open.
“I don’t know why, probably because they weren’t good for him,” Shealy told The State. “I don’t know legally if he can do it. Everybody in Chapin and out of Chapin shouldn’t be cut out regardless. I don’t care if they say things about me that are ugly. It’s called freedom of speech.”
Comments were open Wednesday on the most recent livestream, which was cut short because three of four council members didn’t show up, denying the meeting a quorum. Just days earlier, council members had walked out of a meeting after clashing with Mitchell, but Shealy said she was sick during Tuesday night’s meeting and Councilwoman Ainslee Bost is out of town.
The Tuesday regular meeting that lacked a quorum has been rescheduled for Thursday. “I assume everyone will be there Thursday,” Mitchell said.
Citizens who aren’t able to comment on the livestreams may have the basis for a lawsuit for deprivation of free speech rights, Bender said, but “this is more a political question than a legal question.”
“The first recourse is to get people calling council members and ask who is making this decision, and then the council could take an action politically to allow comments,” Bender said. “If people who believe comments are appropriate stand up and say so, there will be comments on the website.”
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