SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — San Jose’s former mayor and city officials violated state transparency laws when responding to press requests by the San Jose Spotlight, a judge has determined, finding the officials failed to prove they searched appropriately for internal records.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas Kuhnle ruled in favor of the nonprofit news organization, which said in its lawsuit that former Mayor Sam Liccardo blocked its efforts in 2020 and 2021 to obtain city business records, including messages to and from Liccardo’s personal email account, California Public Records Act.
San Jose Spotlight’s staff says the city redacted information without adequate reason, failed to search thoroughly for records and routinely skirted public records laws by preventing the public from analyzing city officials’ interactions with special interests.
The city fought the claims, and a previous order denied the news outlet's request for declaratory relief. But Kuhnle reversed course on Tuesday, writing in a five-page order that the city and its former mayor failed to detail what procedures they followed to adequately locate the records which San Jose Spotlight requested.
“They say nothing about what they did to search Liccardo’s private email and text message accounts for records responsive to the particular requests at issue here. There are no details,” Kuhnle wrote. “They do not disclose the actual key words used, the date range of their searches, how many records the key words flagged, or how many records were withheld because they were privileged or did not concern city business.”
The judge also criticized the city for allowing high-ranking officials to use private accounts for public business, without establishing other processes to account for and store those records.
A prior public records case involving San Jose and Liccardo went to the California Supreme Court in 2017, over requirements that employees use or copy government accounts on all communications regarding public affairs.
“California Public Records Act compliance is burdensome," Kuhnle wrote. "But as demonstrated here, the task becomes more formidable when public officials use private email and text message accounts to conduct public business.”
City Attorney Nora Frimann did not respond to a request for comment before press time.
Ramona Giwargis, co-founder and CEO of San Jose Spotlight, said in a statement that the order is a complete vindication of "dogged efforts to hold the city of San Jose and former Mayor Liccardo accountable."
“Government cannot operate in the shadows, and public officials should not and cannot conduct stealth government through texts on their private phones, as Mayor Liccardo tried to do," Giwargis said. "We hope this is a wake-up call to the city councilmembers and Mayor Matt Mahan to conduct business openly, as they should.”
The First Amendment Coalition joined San Jose Spotlight as a plaintiff. The organization's legal director David Loy called the order a victory for transparency and upholding the right of the public to obtain and view internal documents.
“They could save themselves all this trouble if they would simply do the common sense thing and require employees and elected officials to use official accounts, or at least copy official accounts, and retain the records and follow those protocols,” Loy said in a news release. “There needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture of transparency in which transparency and accountability need to be thought of as the first duty of democratic government.”
Kuhnle previously ordered Liccardo and his chief operations officer Rhonda Hadnot to detail their search procedure and public records training in declaration, San Jose Spotlight reported. In July, the judge ordered the city to turn over at least 200 pages of records still being withheld after more than a year of litigation.
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