Maybe you recall that about two weeks ago I was forced by the weirdly intransigent refusal of CD14 rep Jose Huizar’s staff to comply with even the most minimal requirements of the California Public Records Act into filing a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court pleading with a judge to hang these blockheads by their toes in Grand Park until they freaking handed over the goods.
And because egregious, shameless, absolutely appalling noncompliance is a pattern and practice of these jokers over at CD14 well, today I was forced for the same reasons but a different request, to file yet another writ petition. You can get a copy here, written by the dogged and able Doug Ecks, who’s also handling my previous petition against Huizar’s office and who successfully handled a similar matter against Gil Cedillo earlier this summer.
Here I was seeking about three years of emails between Richelle Huizar and CD14 staff including Jose Huizar. Richelle Huizar was long seen as Jose Huizar’s anointed heir to the CD14 dynasty, but in the wake of his fairly super-sized legal problems she made the probably wise decision to withdraw from the race. And she wasn’t likely to be mere bycatch, either. Her position as a fundraiser for JH’s former high school was at the very center of the scandal.
So given her years-long embroilment in the ongoings at City Hall, and given the fact that everyone does everything by email these days, I thought it would be illuminating to take a look at these records. But alas, it was not to be. Jose Huizar staffer Isaiah Calvin eventually handed over a pathetic 51 pages of material, insanely redacted, obviously exceedingly, ludicrously incomplete.
And he refused to explain why he was withholding all the rest of it beyond a bare and unelaborated invocation of the infamous section 6255(a) of the public records act. In pertinent part this little stinkbomb says that an “agency shall justify withholding any record by demonstrating that … on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.”
So yes, it’s true. Isaiah Calvin was claiming that the public interest in withholding all but 51 pages of what I will bet pretty much anything will turn out to be thousands of emails is so freaking high that it not just outweighs, but clearly, CLEARLY, outweighs the public interest in releasing them. Fat chance of that, so I asked Calvin to explain. He, steeping in the infinite arrogance of those for whom violations of the law carry no consequence at all, ignored me. Hence this lawsuit. And stay tuned, because maybe sooner, maybe later, but there’s no way we’re not getting some good stuff out of this!
Image of Richelle Huizar, former heir apparent, is ©2019 MichaelKohlhaas.Org and of course you’ll wanna peep this lil item.
