Which makes this editorial smackdown quite surprising, and refreshing.
Encinitas’ foolishness gets proper rebukeIf the U-T is not going to cover for the gang anymore, Stocks' and Muir's re(?)-election will be more difficult. Media coverage of their crony Dan Dalager's crimes was what led to his ouster by the voters in 2010.
An unacceptable case of petty government secrecy came to a predictable but sorry conclusion this week in Encinitas. The City Council decided not to challenge a court order requiring that the city pay $56,175 in legal fees to a man who sued the city because it wouldn’t turn over a draft report on road maintenance done by an outside consultant.
Kevin Cummins, a local activist, wanted to see the document to determine whether the city’s financial issues were getting in the way of needed road repairs. The city’s lawyers used the tired dodge of saying the draft report was a work product, not an official document covered by the state Public Records Act. Even after losing their first round in court, Encinitas officials chose to appeal, only to be embarrassed again when the California 4th District Court of Appeal declined to review the ruling.
Reader E. comments:
I suspect the UT is starting to smell something reeking in Encinitas. Now that the report needs to be released, I wonder what financial issues will be discovered that "The Club" spent more than $50K trying to hide.The road report in fact has been released and shows that while the roads are currently in "good" condition, there is a growing maintenance backlog that will increase future road repair costs. The bigger smoking gun is that the city has destroyed all communication between staff and the outside consultant. The city has a practice of destroying e-mails so that the public and the press can't get a view of the backroom scheming.
The cost of this fiasco was $80,000 in legal fees - they had to pay the opposing contingency lawyer, plus "internal" costs (Sabine?)
ReplyDeleteThere are now commercial services that preserve E-mails - the city should be forced to subscribe to one, as it is clear that they won't do it themselves. Where is Dumanis on this rotten City Council? - o yea, she was the one who cut Dalager slack on his criomes....
This is just ridiculous. It is not only that they spent $80,000 of our tax money, but that it could have been used for something that could have benefited someone else besides Glenn Sabine.
ReplyDeleteActual professional people don't have to have a union or have their emails destroyed to cover their work. The only thing professional about most of our City employees is their pay scale--not their performance!