The most popular and obvious response is that the council and staff and city attorney are hiding things.
Candidate Tony Kranz has spoken at council along with Kevin Cummins on this theme of document requests for years. Cummins' recent lawsuit win against the city. seem to confirm this suspicion beyond any doubt. But, Jim Bond's attitude in the clip below reveals something added. Cultural, social traditions are front and center; like the paternalistic, authoritarian notion that he has superior ability which the voting / requesting public lacks. Whether entitlement or deliberate attempts to conceal and confuse, it really isn't our elected officials' right to tell us what we should or should not be requesting for public documents.
Jim Bond is so far off the charts in his seeming lack of respect (or even grasp) of people's rights to public records, words fail. He has no right to even ask why a person wants a record. Of course he asked his questions for a laugh, "What would make you happy?" "What would make you just shut up and go away forever?", he did not say.
This is the second time within a month Lisa Shaffer requested specifically the city manager correspondence for 2009 be pulled rather than destroyed. She almost succeeded when Barth made a motion that the new City Manager Gus Vina keep the 2009 city manager correspondence. He agreed until Deputy Mayor Gaspar humiliated him. He reversed himself, the council majority voted against saving these documents and had a good laugh doing it. EYNU editor has some work to do in assembling some of the most obvious potential 2009 City Manager themes that then City Manager Phil Cotton, the City Attorney and the Council Majority of Stocks, Bond and Dalager shared. That is just one fishing expedition, you all are invited.
Disclaimer: The opinions in the post are those of the editor, not the City Councilwoman Teresa Barth or the 2012 City Council Candidates Lisa Shaffer and Tony Kranz.
2/19/12 Update: Cited in the blog post above, the January 18, 2012 council meeting included Council Candidate Lisa Shaffer's first attempt to save the ERGA (Encinitas Ranch Golf Authority) correspondence (currently under audit) records and 2009 city manager correspondence.
The specifics are important. As stated before, the likely correspondence issues for 2009 may well include Manager Cotton's correspondence over extremely volatile events like the Orpheus Trees being hacked down without anyone assuming responsibility. The documents might be silly stuff. The larger issue is first amendment rights to information. These guys aren't our daddies and we are well aware of we would like to be able to request, to review, to question and / or to store of any city documents, our public documents and records.
It is a fortunate thing that we have intelligent, articulate, dedicated and experienced people like Lisa and Tony running for city council. If you haven't met them yet, it's time.
