The Los Angeles Times filed a lawsuit against the city of LA on Thursday, accusing officials of illegally withholding and deleting the mayor’s text messages and other public records from the January fire.
The city has already taken over many of the exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials that the Times Reporter is sought. However, authorities argue that they are not forced to do so under the state’s public records laws.
The times disagreed. The lawsuit on Thursday will force public servants to scrub records or decide which laws they are subject to.
“It’s bigger than these text messages,” said Kelly Aviles, outside of Times’ advisor. “Cities seem to believe they can destroy what they like at any time, and they believe they have no obligation to maintain public records and are not generally obligated.”
Political reporter Julia Wick and investigative reporter Matt Hamilton joined the action as LA residents, aiming to prevent city officials from destroying protected material.
The bus was in Ghana when the fire broke out on January 7th. She joined the Biden administration’s delegation to fett the country’s new president despite warning about the potential for a wind explosion in Santa Ana.
That choice may determine her political future. The exchange published by The Times this week gave the mayor’s early actions the first clear picture when the city set it on fire and burned it.
However, these interactions with her staff and government officials could remain secret as Bass messages were set to automatically delete them after 30 days.
Authorities initially said that Wick had not existed before being deleted. After months of going back and forth through the paper, the mayor’s office said it could recover the text that was eventually deleted, providing about 125 messages last week, pointing out that an unspecified number has been “edited and/or withheld” under the legal exemption.
“The mayor’s office has responded to hundreds of public records requests since she was elected, and we will continue to do so,” said David Michelson, the mayor’s lawyer. “The mayor’s office will release responsive text to a PRA request from the Times last week, and the office will continue to respond to public record requests.”
Still, Michaelson told Wick that the text is beyond the scope of the California Public Records Act.
The mayor’s text is “ephemeral,” and is protected from public scrutiny as he told Wick in an email on March 7th. He cited the Supreme Court’s 1981 decision to cast “flapping thoughts and random information” exempt from recording requests.
However, the ruling does not apply to official text messages or other electronic communications, argued by Times attorneys. In an era of life and death decisions made on a 6-inch screen, the paper suit claims to be as durable as the two-thumbed politician pens the hand. Under California law, public works writing, regardless of form, is subject to record law and must be handed over.
“The city’s clear position that authorities can remove text messages as “epiphany” at any time until a civil servant’s request is received will destroy presumptions of access to public records,” the Times lawsuit said. “The only thing civil servants have to do to avoid public scrutiny is to destroy the text right after it has been created.”
The mayor’s textbook is not the only record that city hall appears to have been destroyed, the lawsuit allegedly a. Nor is it the only thing paper journalists are still seeking as part of an ongoing investigation of the fire.
On January 9th, investigative reporter Alene Tchemedyian asked then-fire chief Christine Crowley and her subordinates for “emails, text messages, reports, planning documents and notes.”
On February 19, City Hall reporter David Zannizer petitioned “copy of communications regarding emergency preparations, strong winds, wildfire conditions and National Weather Service” involving City Council Speaker Marquis Harris Dawson.
Zahniser received several records, but did not receive the text message he was asking for. Tchemedyian’s request was totally denied.
Questions about how American leaders communicate and what these interactions will happen have gained new urgency this week after it was revealed that they accidentally added journalists to signal group chats while planning an air raid in Yemen.
On Thursday, Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge James E. Basberg ordered participants to chat, ordering them to preserve the entire exchange and take over the record.
According to a Times lawyer, such material from the law of public records was masked from the law of public records, which denies reality.
“What you have to keep and what you have to hand over is based on the content of the communication, not on the form or method of communication you choose to use,” Avilas said.
The lawsuit seeks to ensure that key records are “not only destroyed at the whims of the city.”
Source link
