The Grand Jury said the city is out of compliance with state public records law
SANTA CLARA — Getting public records from the city of Santa Clara is much more difficult than it needs to be, a civil grand jury has found.
In a report released Tuesday, the Santa Clara County Grand Jury criticized the city’s public records management as inadequate and disorganized, resulting in unnecessary delays.
“The Grand Jury found that obtaining public records from the City is a time-consuming and difficult chore,” the report states.
The grand jury reached that conclusion after experiencing first hand what it’s like to request public records from the city.
Last year, after a Santa Clara mayoral candidate filed a complaint about two contracts the city awarded public relations consultant Sam Singer, the grand jury tried to investigate the city’s contracting procedures. But it was stymied by the city’s lack of response to its public records requests, and that triggered a subsequent investigation of the city’s public records process.
“The City’s disorganized record keeping is hindering its ability to do the people’s business in a transparent fashion,” the report states. “The Grand Jury is concerned because it has greater access to public records than a private citizen does, yet it had significant trouble obtaining documents despite multiple requests.”
In a statement, the city took issue with the report’s finding that it isn’t complying with the California Public Records Act and pointed out that problems with public records responses “are not uncommon in other municipalities.”
The city also said it’s taken steps to centralize record-keeping, including hiring a new public records manager who started in January, but said those improvements will take time.
“The Civil Grand Jury partially acknowledges the steps the City has taken to improve its process, but set an unrealistic time frame for Executive Leadership who have been in place for less than 2 years, and a Public Records Manager who has been in place for less than 6 months, to develop and implement systems that are complex and far reaching throughout the City administrative infrastructure,” according to the statement.
Mayoral candidate Anthony Becker, who lost to Mayor Lisa Gillmor in November, filed a complaint with the Grand Jury in October alleging the city deliberately set up two contracts with Singer, approved by the city manager, to circumvent a rule that the City Council must approve contracts exceeding $100,000.
The grand jury began looking into Santa Clara’s contracting process in December, submitting several requests for those issued by the city and its stadium authority. The report describes weeks of delays and notes that when the grand jury finally received boxes of documents it couldn’t find those it asked for.
A second set of requests for public relations contracts took almost three months, and the grand jury “still could not get a complete set of documents that should have been easily retrievable and disclosed.”
City spokeswoman Lenka Wright said the city has “completely fulfilled” the Grand Jury’s public records requests.
The grand jury cited some examples where records it was told didn’t exist were found within minutes during visits to City Hall.
The report concludes the city lacks a “functional records management system” and that the excuses cited by city staff — seasonal city hall closures, employee turnover, lack of training or understaffing — aren’t valid.
The city has been trying to implement two new records management systems for the past 18 months, but neither is yet operational and the city did not provide a time frame for when they would be, the report notes.
Planning Commissioner Suds Jain said the city needs to make public access a greater priority.
Planning commissioners didn’t have city email addresses until Jain pushed for it recently. Before that, when the city received a public records request through some of Jain’s emails, he said he had to search through his private email to find them.
“I’m not going to say it’s intentional or nefarious. It’s sheer disorganization on the city’s behalf,” Jain said.
“I think the benefit of this grand jury report is to give a kick in the pants to Santa Clara to move faster and devote more resources to these public information requests.”
June 19, 2019
The Mercury News
By Thy Vo
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