In January and February, both Lisa and Tony spoke at city council regarding one of open government primary themes, records retention. Encinitas You Need Us included clips here.
Visit Lisa Shaffer's website where, among many campaign features, the following excerpt on relevance for a Sunshine Ordinance, in council news this past year.
"The City Council wisely agreed not to protest a court order to pay legal fees resulting from failure to release a report that was requested by a member of the public. Even the UT sees how wrong the Council majority was to try to withhold the report."
"On January 18, there is an item on the agenda to approve destruction of public records that are two years old. Given that it sometimes takes more than two years to figure out that something wrong has happened, it's a dangerous practice to destroy public records. In fact, in the case referred to above, when the City was ordered to release emails and other documents relevant to the case, the response was that the records no longer exist. This is wrong. We need a Sunshine Ordinance that would, among other things, protect correspondence and other public documents for at least 7 years."Tony Kranz has repeatedly appeared before the city council to request that a Sunshine Ordinance be placed on the agenda. Tony's website has recently been updated and an excerpt related to a Sunshine Ordinance follows:
"It took a judge’s order for the city to release the draft document from a $100,000 consultant’s report. Thousands of dollars were spent by the city on their own legal defense, and having lost in court, the city had to pay for the other guy’s attorney. Citizens shouldn’t have to file a lawsuit to get government documents (not subject to privacy laws) released. I will make sure that the city adopts and implements policies that will make it unlikely these matters will have to be fought in court."A vote for Lisa Shaffer and a vote for Tony Kranz in November would give this community a strong group with Teresa already seated on the council. It could be the ending of a particularly secretive approach to governance in favor of transparency and sunshine.
