CPRA Doesn't Apply to the City

The city released the final pavement management report. The city has been underfunding streets work.

During the summer of 2010, city staff denied access to the report and claimed that the report was not finalized (which doesn't exempt documents from disclosure anyways).

A lawsuit was filed to gain access to the draft (according to staff) document and to the correspondence between the city and the consultant about the report.

The report was subsequently released and the final report was dated March 2010.

The lawsuit continues to gain access to the draft document (or an explanation of how a draft can exist when the final has already been produced) and correspondence with the consultant, which are likely to demonstrate that the city was not being honest about the condition of the report. Instead of addressing the issues of the case it looks like the city's strategy is to obfuscate. Here is the response to the city:

Petitioner and Plaintiff (“Cummins”) brings this motion to strike portions of Respondent and Defendant City of Encinitas’ (“City”) Answer to Cummins’ Verified Petition for Writ of Mandate and Declaratory Relief (“Petition”) to stop the City from jerking this Court and the parties around any further. For example, the City admits it is a municipal corporation but denies that it is subject to the California Public Records Act applicable by law to all cities in California (Government Code § 6250, et seq., “CPRA”). The City unqualifiedly denies that it received a demand for records then denies the authenticity of the responses from City employees to the CPRA demand.

In eleven instances, the City denies (usually on lack of information and belief) verified allegations as to matters which are presumably within its knowledge or matters of public records. Such sham answers should be stricken.

It's funny that the city denies the records requests, as the requests were discussed openly in front of the council by Tony Kranz. All the filings can be found at the bottom of this post.

People have been asking me for an update and how to help. Well, this is the update and how to help? Easy, write letters that suggest the council takes on a sunshine ordinance that truly makes open government a policy that is difficult for staff and the council to selectively ignore. If that doesn't work, let me know if you're ready to get signatures for an initiative. We could piggy-back a couple initiatives if that's what we have to do.