The Los Angeles Times filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles Thursday, accusing officials of illegally withholding and deleting the mayor’s text messages and other public records and removing them from the January fire.
The city has addressed many exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials sought by other journalists. But officials argued that they were not allowed to do so under state public records laws.
The times do not agree. Thursday’s lawsuit found that authorizing public officials to scrub records or decide which legal provisions are dangerous precedents.
“It’s bigger than these text messages,” said Kelly Aviles, an outside consultant outside the Times. “The city seems to think they can destroy everything they want at any time and have no responsibility to keep public records.”
Political journalist Julia Wick and investigative journalist Matt Hamilton joined the operation as Los Angeles resident to stop city officials from destroying protected materials.
Bass was in Ghana when the fire broke out on January 7. Despite warnings, despite warnings about the incoming Santa Ana wind.
This choice can determine her political future. The exchange published this week in The Times set the mayor on fire and burned down the mayor’s early actions.
However, communication with her staff and senior government officials may remain secret, as the bass message has been set to automatically lower after 30 days – far far less than the two-year retention period outlined in the city’s administrative code.
Officials initially told Wick that the texts did not exist, and then said they had been deleted. After several months of back and forth the newspaper, the mayor’s office finally said it was able to recover the deleted text, providing about 125 messages last week, noting that other unspecified messages were “deleted and/or used” under the exemption to the law.
“The mayor’s office has responded to hundreds of public record requests since election, and we will continue to do so,” said Mayor’s attorney David Michaelson. “The mayor’s office released a responsive text to the Times’ PRA request last week and the office will continue to respond to public record requests.”
Michaelson still told Wick that the texts were beyond the scope of the California Public Records Act.
Michaelson told Wick in a March 7 email that he was not subject to public scrutiny. He enumerated the 1981 Supreme Court ruling that regarded “ephemeral thoughts and random information” as requests for exemption from record.
However, the ruling does not apply to official text messages and other electronic communications, Times lawyers believe. In the age of making life or death decisions on a six-inch screen, paper suits show the durability of politicians with two thumb types with handmade pens. Under California law, any writing on public business, regardless of its format, covers the Recording Act and must be handed over.
“The city’s obvious position is that officials can delete text communications as ‘short-term’ at any time until a request for public records undermines the presumption of access to public records,” the Times lawsuit said. “A step that all public officials must take to avoid public scrutiny is to destroy texts immediately after they are created.”
The lawsuit says the mayor’s text is not the only record that the city hall has been destroyed. They are not the only newspaper reporters still seeking to investigate the fire.
On January 9, investigative journalist Alene Tchekmedyian sought “emails, text messages, reports, planning documents and memos – about fire planning and deprivation of resources from then-LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley and his subordinates.
On February 19, City Hall reporter David Zahniser requested “a copy of the letter regarding emergency preparation, strong winds, wildfires, wildfire conditions and the National Weather Service” involving City Council President Marqueece Harris Dawson, who served as acting mayor for Bass.
Zahniser received some records but did not get the text he requested. Tchekmedyian’s request was rejected in total.
There is a new urgency this week about how U.S. leaders communicate and after senior white officials were revealed to have mistakenly added a reporter to a signal group chat while planning an air strike in Yemen.
On Thursday, Washington, D.C. Federal District Court Judge James E. Basberg ordered participants in the chat to keep the exchange as a whole and hand over their records.
The Times lawyers say that obscuring this material from public record law, currently involving their brief arguments, is irrelevant to reality.
“The content you have to keep and the content you have to close is based on the communications, not based on the form or method of communications you choose to use,” Avilas said.
The lawsuit aims to ensure that important records are “destroyed not only on the city’s temporary front.”
