There was a block on Rock.

For the past month, e-mails from a colorful and combative developer named Rock Ferrone never reached the inboxes of their intended recipients -- Allegheny County officials.

Unbeknownst to members of County Council, the administration of county Chief Executive Dan Onorato had installed what might be called a "Ferrone filter," blocking all of the developer's e-mails.

When officials in the county Department of Economic Development stopped returning his e-mails, Ferrone just assumed he was being ignored.

"Quite frankly, I was getting aggravated," he said.

But on Monday, Dennis Davin, the department's director, assured Ferrone over the phone that he wasn't being ignored. He was being filtered out, like so much pornographic spam.

Rocks, it turns out, have emotions, and this one got angry.

He called county Councilwoman Jan Rea, R-McCandless, and she got angry, too.

She hadn't known that Ferrone had sent her e-mails in January.

"I think this is just outrageous that anybody would have been prevented from reaching their representatives in county government," Rea said.

The power of the press quickly shattered the block on Rock, though.

When I called the county's computer department to ask about the problem, Manager Per Madsen promised to look into it.

Less than an hour later, Ferrone's e-mails began rolling into county inboxes again.

Onorato maintained yesterday that the existence of the block came as much as a surprise to him as it did to Rea.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he told me.

Davin accepted responsibility, saying he was attempting to protect his employees, and only his employees, from the venom of Ferrone, who has adopted a rather unconventional approach to winning county government support for his proposed West Deer office park.

Ferrone has put up a Web site called www.thewrongdecision.com, which is devoted to portraying Onorato as corrupt.

If that's the developer's strategy for obtaining additional county funds for his project, it is backfiring.

The relationship between Ferrone and the Onorato administration has become so chilly that council took the unusual step on Jan. 4 of formally asking the chief executive to cooperate with the developer.

It was right around then that Davin asked the county's computer division to block Rock's e-mails from the inboxes of economic development employees.

But the county does not have the technology to filter e-mails on a department-by-department basis. So once Madsen's crew added Ferrone to the filter, nobody in county government could receive an e-mail from the developer.

And no one thought to notify County Council.

"The legislative branch is independent," said county Councilman Vince Gastgeb, R-Bethel Park. "Nobody should infringe on our right to get communication."

County Manager Jim Flynn, Onorato's top appointee, said he didn't learn about the Ferrone filter until yesterday, either.

From now on, Flynn said, "nobody will get a block unless it's run past my office."

That should make Rock relieved.

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